Everything Must Go (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Everything Must Go

As a stand alone film with Raymond Carver touches, "Everything Must Go" does well. The film, based on the Carver story "Why Don't You Dance?" centers on an alcoholic advertising exec  Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) who loses his high status job and camps out on his front lawn. Rather than follow the events of the story as is, the film does a capable job of capturing the spirit and tone of Carver. Ferrell is well meaning, hapless, and shell shocked as the overwhelmed Nick. And we can imagine Carver writing about him. Nick just sits like a blob. 

The film lacks some of the stark eeriness of the original source material which is nearly impossible to duplicate, but with each new person Halsey meets there is a certain apprehension. And yes, there are some traditional Ferrell moments: Nick trips over the wall trying to get in his house. And when he slashes his boss's tire, he frustratingly cannot seem to take the knife out. This is almost a cartoon but just when we think Ferrell is going to let go and ape it up, he holds back and becomes monosyllabic and whispering---a shell of a himself. There is more yearning and desire in Ferrell's portrayal here than in the voyeur of the original story but there is much to contemplate within his disconnected eyes.

The direction by Dan Rush is appropriately detached for the most part. The camera lingers on each peice of soggy furniture. Every encounter has a germ of paranoia waiting to be expressed. Two Highlights are the actors  Rebecca Hall and Christopher Jordan Wallace as the friends that Nick meets by chance and may or may not keep.

If "Everything Must Go" has faults, it is in its sentimental touches including a fortune cookie and a sunset.  Raymond Carver was not sentimental in the slightest. But despite this error in judgment, the sight of Will Ferrell sitting in his deflated La-Z- Boy compliments Carver's brief, enigmatic story and gives it a double life.     

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Week of May 27 to June 2 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann
     Have you ever been to a film festival? If so, you’ll recognize the mix of a major star vehicle, and a couple of small human interest stories that make up the Tropic’s program this week. The theater’s own little festival, just for us.
     The big movie is THE BEAVER, featuring Mel Gibson in his first return to the screen after his weird Mayan adventure story Apocalypto, and his even weirder drunken personal behavior that threatened to wreck his career. Jodie Foster, who directs The Beaver and plays Gibson’s wife in the movie, has told interviewers she cast him in the role because he had the unique talent to make this difficult script work.
The story is about Walter Black, a depressed alcoholic (Gibson) who manages to ward off suicidal behavior by ventriloquizing a beaver hand puppet who replaces his tormented self. There is an undeniable comic element to seeing the former Braveheart and Mad Max as a sagging shell of a man dependent on this alter ego, which speaks with a Cockney accent and reminds viewers of Senor Wences or the Geico lizard. But it’s also impossible to separate Walter Black from the real Gibson, whose travails gave him ample insight into the character.
     Balancing these story elements was not an easy task. The script for The Beaver was something of a legend, rated as the best unproduced script in town by a website that rates such stuff (tinyurl.com/3st62jv). But Foster, looking for a third directorial project (after Little Man Tate and Home for the Holidays), was not one to be deterred by difficult material, not when she had Gibson. “There isn’t anybody—anybody—who isn’t blown away by this performance,” she says.
     She is also astute in her casting of Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and Anton Yelchin (Star Trek, Terminator Salvation) as the lead supporting actors. He’s Walter Black’s older son, a teenager so angry at his father that he fills a wall with post-it notes of his father’s behaviors that he must learn not to emulate. She’s his love interest, a superficially popular girl who has her own torments.
     It’s a dark movie, no doubt, but for Foster, and maybe for Gibson, too, it’s about getting through crisis and emerging stronger. That’s something we all can use. In any event, it’s “a film of power, wit and thought-provoking ideas.” (Orlando Sentinel)
     THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED based on a case study by famed neurologist Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) also deals with a troubled relationship between a father and son. Henry Sawyer (J.J. Simmons – Juno, Law and Order) is a straight-laced engineer whose son ran away from home as a teenager in the Sixties to follow the Grateful Dead. Now it’s twenty years later, and the son has an odd neurological condition that has so addled his memory that he can’t tell past from present. To bond with his lost son, Mr. Sawyer has to expand his musical tastes beyond Bing Crosby, to Dylan and the Dead. Full of wonderful music – if that’s your taste – and the neurological aspects are factual. “A powerful, even shattering look at music's power to unite where it once divided.” (Onion A.V.)
     HARVEST is also a family story. The well-to-do patriarch Siv Monopoli (Robert Loggia) is at the end of his days, but still full of vim and vigor. His wife (Barbara Barrie) suffers from dementia, but is cheerful. His children have gathered at the family place on the Connecticut shore. “Meticulously written and exquisitely acted,” it’s been gathering audience awards on the festival circuit and drawing big crowds at a New York opening earlier this month.
     The events calendar this week features a live performance from the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. COPPELIA, the story of a doll come to life airs live on Sunday morning at 11:00am EDT (7pm in Moscow) with an encore showing at 7:00 EDT.
     Full schedules and info at TropicCinema.com or TCKW.info
Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com

The Beaver (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway 

The Beaver

     Is it possible to separate the man from his work? Given the recent horrendous  tabloid headlines of Mel Gibson's rages, I'm not so sure.
     In "The Beaver" Gibson plays Walter, the CEO of his father's toy company and father of two. Walter is clinically depressed. It seems no one can help him. He storms and rages. He drinks and sleeps all day. And, predictably, Walter's wife leaves him. Alone in a gray apartment, he becomes a suburban Robinson Crusoe, adrift in nothingness. He watches reruns of "Kung Fu" and decides to do himself in. Walter gets tangled in the shower curtain and falls to the floor. The Tv bonks him on the head.  Masochism and suffering is a repeated element in Gibson's acting roles and one wonders if he did not take on Jodie Foster's directorial film as a way of penitence for his real-life  violent, sexist and racist tirades.
     One aspect that the movie succeeds in, is in its ability to show Walter as a dangerous being as if he is fighting a malevolent unseen force known only to himself.  Walter fights with walls, with doorhandles and tv sets. He is a one man army against himself. The solitary fight scenes are physical, loud and bloody-- and more exciting than any "Braveheart" or "Apocalypto" climax.
     The problem is that Mel Gibson and his off screen ravings are so vivid and highly charged that the character of Walter doesn't seem to hold much power. When he reaches for a way out in the form of a hand-puppet it is quirky and self deprecating at first, but  as the story unfolds,  it becomes a predictable, one handed film.
     That is not to say that it is not well acted or filmed. There is an real haunt to Mel Gibson's face. When he suffers, you feel it. And there are bedroom scenes between Walter and his wife, played by Jodie Foster that are hilarious.
     Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) appears as the girlfriend of Walter's oldest son, but despite her considerable talent, she seems a card-board cutout. Her part could have been acted by anyone. The movie is all Mel. 
     As soon as the camera drifts away from Gibson and his sarcastic handheld buddy, the movie loses its quirky hold.
     "The Beaver" is a curiousity in Mel Gibson's impassioned gallery of self immolating characters. Not Since Klaus Kinski has there been someone so iconic and tortured, or even torturous. But Gibson's moments  of humor and physical locomotion  release this movie from its ball and chain of predictability. 

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The Music Never Stopped (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway  

The Music Never Stopped

     "The Music Never Stopped", based on an essay "The Last Hippie" by British neurologist Oliver Sacks is about the power of music to fuse broken connections.
It stars relative newcomer Lou Taylor Pucci as Gabriel, a young idealist musician who came of age in the 60s, only to get a benign brain tumor and have his memory function impaired and  intermittent. By working with a music therapist (Julia Ormand) they were able to awaken areas of Gabriel's brain and restore his verve.
     Yes, this does seem a bit like "Awakenings" the 1990 film also based on the writings of Dr. Sacks, but this latest film has a lighter touch and is easier on the eyes mainly due to the charming charisma of Mia Maestro as Celia, Gabriel's love interest at the hospital. This is not a sad or depressing film. It is often enchantingly upbeat. First time director Jim Kohlberg, clearly cares about this true story and the time of the 1960s as a decade of ideas in music. But the film does have its Hallmark card moments. The first sight of Young Gabriel as he is diagnosed: he is markedly changed in appearance with a full beard and wild hair. Why I wonder? And a few of the parental conflicts seem like acting class moments. Or something out of James Dean. 
     What saves this movie from flower-power shmaltz is the giddy grace of Gabriel as portrayed by Pucci once he is reconnected with the music he adores. Gabriel is plugged in, lost and alive within the music--- all at once. Pucci well illustrates this man's gyroscopic heart. As a young man Gabriel is an all seeking musical vagabond, wild eyed and full of happy rain. Without music he is a hollow shell, sitting on the River Styx of television commercials. Gabriel's hospital room has no television in it. He only has need for 60s rock. Indeed he is a parched desert plant without it.
     Veteran character-actor J.K. Simmons gives more depth as a  controlling father. As does the mother (Cara Seymour). The main center of the film though, remains Lou Taylor Pucci as a whirling dervish of spoken hijinx and hope. 

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The Music Never Stopped (Rhoades)

“The Music Never Stopped”

Offers Brain Candy

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Have you ever read that mind-blowing book by Columbia University neurologist Oliver Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales”? It’s a fascinating collection of case histories involving brain disorders.

Another of his books was adapted into a film called “Awakenings,” starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. It was about patients suffering from encephalitis lethargica.

Now we get “The Music Never Stopped,” a father-son drama based on Sacks’ essay “The Last Hippie” from his book “An Anthropologist on Mars.” It gives us the story of Henry Sawyer and his son Gabriel, a kid who suffers from a brain tumor that prevents him from forming new memories. Anterograde amnesia, it’s called. Unable to deal with their strained relationship through normal communications, Henry Sawyer turns to music as a means of reaching his son.

In “The Music Never Stopped” –now playing at the Tropic Cinema – that underappreciated actor J. K. Simmons (“Juno,” TV’s “The Closer”) takes the role of the father. Lou Taylor Pucci (“Thumbsucker,” TV’s “Empire Falls” miniseries) plays the damaged boy who floats in and out of four different states of consciousness.. Cara Seymour (Adaptation,” “The Gangs of New York”) is the mother. We also have Mía Maestro (TV’s “Alias”) and Julia Ormond (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Che”) to round out the cast.

Directed by first-timer Jim Kohlberg, “The Music Never Stopped” offers the three most important things he looks for in a film: “Story, story, and story.”

Kohlberg says, “A friend of mine sent the script to me. I read it and immediately fell in love with it for several reasons. First, I’d actually been kind of a brain science reader and read Oliver Sacks’ books and Proust as a neuroscientist and a bunch of the books by Nobel winners because it’s fascinating to me. So this film was about that, plus it had this wonderful story about fathers and sons and a family that had been pulled apart by music and then brought together by music.”

Needless to say, a movie about using music to reach a person with a brain tumor has to have a great soundtrack. And it does: Dylan, The Grateful Dead, “this amazing soundtrack that I never thought I’d get, not in a million years,” as Kohlberg describes it.

From time to time Oliver Sacks has taken some criticism for his books. One noted researcher said, “He’s a much better writer than he is a clinician.” And his studies have been called “a high-brow freak show.”

However, I’ve always found Sacks’ books to serve a valuable purpose by putting a very human face on gobbledygook medical terms. Whether explaining such neurological phenomenon as visual agnosia, cerebral achromatopsia, Tourette Syndrome, or Lytico-Bodig disease, I prefer to call these stories brain candy.

srhoades@aol.com

[from Solares Hill]

The Beaver (Rhoades)

Mel Gibson Leaves It to “The Beaver”
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

     Mel Gibson has always excelled at playing slightly unbalanced characters. As a young Australian actor, he made his mark as “Mad Max.” He was a developmentally deficient young man in “Tim.” Later, he scored as a mentally-unstable cop in the “Lethal Weapon” series. He was cast a paranoid taxi driver in “Conspiracy Theory.” He even had a run as the melancholy “Hamlet.” Now he plays a depressed toy executive who must rely on a beaver puppet to communicate with his family.
     Great acting – or typecasting?
     Truth is, the real life of Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson has been crazier than any of his characters. Once an A-List actor, he has all but trashed his career by a series of antics that have been described as homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic. Being an avowed Catholic, his divorce from longtime wife Robyn made headlines. His rants during DUI arrests have been splashed over the Internet. And his tirades with former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva were featured on the 10 o’clock news.
     This rep has come back to “to bite me on the ass,” he admits. Set to do a small role in “The Hangover II,” he was dumped from that film after the cast and crew objected to working with him. (See accompanying review of “The Hangover II.”)
     He claims to be manic-depressive. Just like his character in this new film.
     “The Beaver” – now playing at the Tropic Cinema – is one of the most unusual tales to come out of Hollywood in years.
     This is the story of a once-successful toy executive and family man who suffers from suicidal depression. Walter Black (Gibson) can’t seem to get himself back on track … until he starts talking to people using a beaver hand puppet that he finds in a Dumpster. His wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) tolerates this eccentricity because their youngest son (Riley Thomas Stewart) relates to this fuzzy friend of dad’s. But his oldest son (Anton Yelchin) objects to this nutty behavior. What’s to become of this family?
     More to the point, what’s to become of Mel Gibson?
     “I don’t care if I don’t act anymore,” Gibson says, adding “I could easily not act again. It’s not a problem.”
     “The Beaver” marks Mel Gibson’s reunion with Jodie Foster, who co-starred with him in “Maverick.” Foster both directs and co-stars in this quirky film.
     Why did she cast Gibson? “I’m not defending him,” says Foster. “I can't defend what he does. He has to defend what he does. But he’s an excellent actor. He’s a great friend. He’s someone I love. When you love somebody, you don’t just run away from them when they’re struggling. I will always be there.”
     Films either starring or directed by Mel Gibson have earned over $2.5 billion, in the United States alone. He won an Academy Award for directing “Braveheart.” And “The Passion of Christ” grossed in excess of $600 million during its theatrical release, making it the highest grossing non-English language film of all time. Gibson personally earned more than $300 million from “The Passion of Christ.”
     But this one won’t be one of Gibson’s big moneymakers.
     The odd little movie was already topically a tough sell before casting Mel Gibson.
“Obviously, Mel Gibson’s problems have been an issue for the film for distribution,” admits Foster. “But we all know the strength he shows on the screen. He’s also witty. He can be funny and charming. I knew he would bring an affability to the role of Walter. He’s a soulful, interesting guy who knows a lot about struggle.”
And he’s actually a good choice for “The Beaver,” a film that offers the perfect metaphor for somebody who builds something and destroys it at the same time.
     srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]

Week of May 20 to May 26 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann
     Another literary adaptation joins JANE EYRE and ATLAS SHRUGGED, which are held over.
It’s WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, based on Sara Gruen’s best seller about a sexy circus performer Marlena (Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line, Legally Blonde), her sociopathic circus-owner/ringmaster husband August (Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds), a wandering young veterinary student Jacob (Robert Pattinson - Twilight) and the very special elephant Rosie (Tai – Larger Than Life, Operation Dumbo Drop).
     Just this list of characters makes it sound enticing. The circus is no fancy three-Ringling extravaganza, but a ratty, tatty, traveling show barely making it in 1931 hard times. When it loses its star animal attraction, a horse ridden bareback by Marlena, all seems lost, until August finds an elephant act and discovers that young Jacob has a way with these animals. It’s “a splendid period swooner that delivers classic romance and an indelible insider's view of 1930s circus life“ (Variety). Looking for something to take the kids to? This is also a “good sound family entertainment, a safe PG-13 but not a dumb one” (Roger Ebert).
     Meanwhile Sara Gruen's new book Ape House, about bonobos, has been optioned by Ellen DeGeneres. From what I've heard about the sexual proclivities of these primates, this movie probably won't be for the youngsters.
     IN A BETTER WORLD is certainly no PG-13. It intercuts two stories, one set in an African refugee camp where the Danish doctor Anton provides free treatment, and the other in Denmark where Anton’s son struggles with bullies. As the stories unfold, Anton must deal with an uber-bully in Africa -- a vicious Idi Amin-like warlord, and a thug-like Dane back home. As he tries to set a Gandian role model, his son sinks to a simpler, more instinctive response. The “violence and disturbing content” of this movie has earned it an R rating, presumably because the action is realistic. That’s too bad in a way. The moral dilemma presented is one that could well be discussed with teenagers. The film won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe this year for Best Foreign Film. It’s “a tough piece of work, subtle in some ways, obvious in others, viscerally affecting throughout.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
     For something completely different, consider I AM. When pop movie director Tom Shadyak (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective; The Nutty Professor) was recuperating from a horrific biking accident, he had an epiphany. Giving up his Pasadena mansion, he set out with a skeletal film crew to ask two questions: What’s wrong with our world and what can we do about it. The answer is embedded in the title of this documentary. Sounds heavy, and it is in a way. But Shadyak’s still a goofy comedy director at heart. Thus we learn not only about the connectedness of symbiotic animals but also how yoghurt can feel your emotions.
     I AM is a New Age documentary, but called to mind Jim Gleick’s brilliant new book The Information, where I learned about quantum computing. Did you know that at the subatomic level two particles can react in concert even though separated by great distance and seemly unconnected with each other? Einstein knew about these “entangled particles,” but even he had no explanation.
     Well Shadyak does. Everything’s connected. We’re all in this world together, and we all should do our part to make the best of it. You and me, Bishop Tutu and Noam Chomsky (whom he interviews)…. and the bowl of yoghurt.
     Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com