Brooklyn (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Brooklyn

 "Brooklyn" by director John Crowley is a conceptual time capsule and a tribute to the affectionate and spirited films of the 1950s. With its generous rolling sweeps of the camera, it is as authentic as it is moving.

In a 1952 Ireland, Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) an inquisitive young girl, has a chance to go to America, with the hopes for better opportunities.  She boards a passenger ship but immediately becomes ill, due to increasingly rough seas.

Eilis makes the crossing, and takes a job at a huge gold-toned department store in Brooklyn but becomes the outcast. She endures crippling homesickness, and is endlessly under the judgment of a gray flannel gaze. She is sarcastically treated by her boss, Miss Fortini (Jessica Pare) and a pair of Waspy girls (Emily Bett Rickerts and Nora-Jane Noone.)

While playing at being a chaperone, Eilis meets the street-smart but sweet American Tony (Emory Cohen), who bears a resemblance to Bobby Darin or a young Dion. Tony is immediately hooked and so is Eilis.

Tensions rise with melodrama in Ireland juxtaposed against a kind of fairy tale Brooklyn with shiny cars, movie theaters and madras shirts, underscoring the existence of Eilis as "the other," unsure of her emotions and not knowing whether to laugh or cry. The apprehension is soon at its height.

Ronan is neither weepy nor ecstatic in her role. Rather she opts for pitch perfect authenticity as a visitor in a strange, over-confident planet known as Brooklyn. The actor has the diversity to be unassuming as well as to portray a girl next store sensuality akin to Maureen O Hara in John Ford's "The Quiet Man."

Both Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters show well as a priest and a tough boardinghouse head, respectively. In this story, Brooklyn becomes more of an abstract place pointing to the heart of a young man rather than a literal borough.

John Crowley has given us a rich, colorful and gentle film that is easy on the eyes, but by no means a trifle.  While playing on the old Hollywood of Douglas Sirk or the aforementioned John Ford, the director delivers an amiable antidote of innocence that stands in contrast to our current state of immigrant paranoia and outright fear.

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com

Week of Nov. 20 - 26 (Rhoades)

Tropic Overview

This Week’s Minimalist Lineup at Tropic Cinema Delivers Big Films

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Film Critic, Key West Citizen

Tropic Cinema opened a new film this week that’s sure to be an Oscar nominee, and carries over three others that are getting lots of popular buzz. As it happens, all are based on actual events.

“Spotlight” takes its name from the team of Boston Globe investigative reporters who uncovered child abuse in the archdiocese in Boston, a scandal that reverberated all the way to the Vatican. Think: “All the President’s Men.” Here the reporters were supervised by Ben Bradlee, Jr. Trust me, this is a great newspaper movie you don’t want to miss. Capital Times reports, “The film takes the dogged, persistent, mundane work of old school newspaper reporting -- digging through records, interviewing people, connecting dots -- and makes it the stuff of high drama, exciting and even heroic.” Detroit News says “Spotlight” is “spot-on.” And Tri-City Herald raves, “Simply put, one of the best -- if not THE best -- movies of the year.”

Another great movie is “Bridge of Spies,” Steven Spielberg’s retelling of the ‘60s prisoner exchange between Russian spy Rudolph Abel and downed U2 pilot Gary Powers. Tom Hanks plays the everyman lawyer who negotiated the exchange. Dallas Morning News says, “Authentic re-creations of the period, including duck-and-cover clips about a nuclear holocaust that frightened young students, serve as a reminder of a time, not unlike our own, when the threat of terror kept a steady and disturbing beat.” And Buzzfeed describes it as “a heart-on-its-sleeve affirmation of American values.”

“Suffragette” gives us Carey Mulligan as a 1912 London woman who joins the women’s suffrage movement. While this is a fictional character, the events were grittily real. Fresno Bee observes, “Mulligan turns in a strong performance, going from a woman who has quietly resigned herself to a certain life to a woman who is willing to speak out for others.” And X-Press calls it “a worthwhile reminder of how far women have come and the price they had to pay to get here. We’re left to imagine how much more there is to be done.”

“Steve Jobs” is Aaron Sorkin’s take on the founder of Apple -- his rise and fall and rise again. But the true focus is on his ruthless rule, personal hubris, and the illegitimate daughter he denied. Daily Star says, “Brainy, brilliant and intensely frustrating -- the latest Steve Jobs movie is a lot like the man himself.” Legend of Leia notes, “The staginess of the movie is its greatest benefit, allowing the characters and the dialogue to shine...” And Ex-press concludes, “Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet create all the dynamic tension required to propel Aaron Sorkin’s minimalist screenplay into epic terrain.”

Four films, four must-see moviegoing experiences.

srhoades@aol.com

Spotlight (Rhoades)

Front Row at the Movies

“Spotlight” Reporters Didn’t Back Off

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Whenever Ben Bradlee, Jr. got together with his dad they talked shop. Newspapers and journalism. Maybe a little baseball.

 As all the world knows, Ben Bradlee was the Washington Post executive editor who backed Woodward and Bernstein in their exposure of Watergate, the scandal that dethroned a US President. And his son was the Boston Globe deputy managing editor who led that paper’s famous Spotlight Team in exposing longtime sexual abuses in the Catholic Church.

Both of these stories won Pulitzer Prizes for their papers.

“We used to note the similarity of the two stories,” Ben Bradlee, Jr. says. “Both started with what appeared to be small stories, one about a local burglary, the other a piece about one bad priest. Little did anyone expect them to become global exposés that shook the foundations of two important institutions.”

Ben Bradlee, Jr. spent 25 years with the Boston Globe, 10 as a reporter and 15 as an editor. In November 1993 he was put in charge of the Globe’s investigative unit, a handful of reporters known as the Spotlight Team.

It was this small group of journalists who over a two-year period (July 2001 to August 2002,) uncovered a history of sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Boston, a discovery that caused reverberations reaching all the way to the Vatican. Church documents, official testimony, and victim interviews unveiled a story of secrecy and deception. The Archdioceses had gone to extraordinary lengths to cover up the scandal. Over the past decade it had quietly settled child molestation claims against at least 70 priests.

“The story was in the documents,” Bradlee says, shaking his head as if trying to clear away a bad memory. “They were sexually abusing kids.”

The Boston Globe received that 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service “for its courageous, comprehensive coverage ... an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church.”

A book titled “Betrayal” followed. And now a movie.

“Spotlight” -- named after the Globe’s investigative team -- is playing this week at the Tropic Cinema.

“A movie was the last thing we were thinking of,” Bradlee says. “But it’s been a pleasant distraction.”

Film producers Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust pitched the idea to the reporters. “They had lined up a great director (Tom McCarthy), a great script, and an A-list cast,” says Bradlee.

Playing the four investigative reporters on the Spotlight Team are Mark Ruffalo (as Michael Rezendes), Michael Keaton (as Walter “Robbie” Robinson), Rachael McAdams (as Sacha Pfeiffer), and Brian d’Arcy James (as Matt Carroll). Liev Schreiber (as Marty Baron) takes a seat at the editor’s desk. And Bradlee is portrayed by John Slattery (best known for TV’s “Mad Men”). Toss in Stanley Tucci, Jamey Sheridan, and Billy Crudup -- and you have a great ensemble cast.

“John Slattery contacted me, then took the train up to Boston the next day,” recalls Bradlee. “We had lunch, talked over several beers. That was followed up by many dinners. We became friends.”

How was Slattery’s portrayal? “I kid him that he put too much swagger into my character. But colleagues tell me he got it about right.”

Marty Baron was the new editor at the Globe, a fresh arrival who had worked at the LA Times, New York Times, and Miami Herald. It was his idea to pursue the story.

“All four reporters had been raised Catholic, but Marty was Jewish.” The warnings from the Church were subtle. It was pointed out “this outside editor would one day be gone, but that the reporters had to stay and live in their communities.”

But nobody backed off.

“We were proud of the story. We nailed it. We held an important institution accountable.”

srhoades@aol.com

Spotlight (Brockway)

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Steve Jobs (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Steve Jobs

Actor Michael Fassbender gives a tour de force performance in "Steve Jobs" a biopic about the maestro of Apple, Inc., directed by Danny Boyle.

The film is told in three thirty-minute segments mostly concerning the inventor's personal life: the fraught relationships with co-founder and friend Wozniak (Seth Rogen), with his  interim CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), and with his daughter (played by  Perla Hanley-Jardine, Ripley Sobo and Mackenzie Moss).

Jobs is near pathological in his obsession to make Apple a success. He is more than a bit like Patrick Bateman in "American Psycho", a near sociopath. Nothing gets in his way.

Jobs is pale and tight, half man and snake in his black turtleneck. He perpetually stalks his invisible prey, moving from hallway to hallway, room to room with eyes like magnets of ego. Jobs is more at ease touching plastic consoles and surfaces than his friends or his daughter.

The dialogue, written by Aaron Sorkin is masterful in its machine gun rapidity, chock full of dismissive and cutting non sequiturs that highlight Jobs' sublime and utter coldness. Jobs enjoys exchanging techie wordplay with his marketing exec, Joanna Hoffman (a nearly invisible Kate Winslet) rather than snuggle with his part time girlfriend Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) or his daughter Lisa. There is no room for human to human touch  The only biped that Jobs seems to share a bond with (albeit briefly) is Wozniak, his friend and the co-creator of the first and second Apple computers.

Jobs comes to an impasse with John Sculley over the first Mac. Sculley says the Mac is a dud. Jobs demands to highlight the Minion-shaped machine, electing himself a Da Vinci of a digital age. He evicerates his staff and is forced out. It doesn't help that Jobs hired young men who were actual neo-nazi skinheads as extras in his exquisite 1984 Super Bowl commercial.

A decade later, Jobs is back. He is now a Warholian wizard of a smaller computer era. Pop is everything. Like Andy Warhol, he moves Apple into a huge factory-warehouse with wall-size photographs of Alan Turing, John Lennon and Bob Dylan under the glib but incorrectly worded slogan of "Think Different".  The Macs are now in bright neon colors, manufactured again and again and again, into infinity.

He tries to make amends to Lisa but instead focuses in on her Sony Walkman: "A brick". Jobs quips, "Are we still in the Dark Ages?" Jobs can't give her love so he will give her a product, a sexy rectangle of a thousand songs that can fit in her pocket.  However ingenious, such a thing makes a cold keepsake.

A highlight of the film is Seth Rogen, excellent as Jobs' sincere friend who adamantly strives to make this dictator designer see that he can, in fact, be a better human being and make the right choice. Rogen's portrayal, showing only the slightest of comic touches flirts with the poignant and is certainly his best and most earthy role to date.

 

There is a slight pixel of redemption when Jobs moves on the stage, glancing at his daughter behind the curtain. For a millisecond their eyes meet and he makes tentative steps to her, only to lose form in a blur of light perhaps in recognition of Jobs' death when he apparently exclaimed, "Oh wow!"

Though "Steve Jobs" the film, only shows the dark side of this man, it does a near virtuosic job in scoring some of the terror behind the technology, while thankfully never veering into pulp or artifice.

Alas, the one lasting friend Jobs maintained was the one with himself and he put all of his spirit in his touchable devices. It is no ruse that he wanted Macs to have disk drives that appear to smile. Each computer was an actual mirror of Jobs himself.

This deliberate intention is seen again in the iphones of today. Those dark polished screens passively reflect the faces of the user and carry out our highly individual, often solipsistic and selfish demands.

Sent from my iPhone

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com

Suffragette (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Suffragette

Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) directs this solid and accurate film about women's  suffrage in early 20th Century Britain. The film is compelling, sensitive and well acted, despite it betraying a shade of period drama predictibility.

Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is a young launderess held under oppression by her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw.) Maud witnesses a suffrage riot. Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) encorages Maud to speak at a meeting since she is assaulted by her husband and understandably terrified.

Maud agrees and becomes further impassioned with the cause.

She gets arrested numerous times and Sonny blows a gasket. She places wrapped gunpowder in post boxes and upsets life wherever she can. At work, she slams an iron on her boss's hand.

She attracts the attention of Inspector Steed (Brendan Gleeson) who admires his adversary. Maud is labeled an anarchist, a threat to the status quo.

The iconic Meryl Streep appears in a fine cameo as the activist Emmeline Pankhurst who advocates violence, when and if necessary.

Shockingly, the film does not shy away from blood. Punches are thrown, bones are broken and women kicked. Blows to the stomach are delivered with impunity.

This is revolution.

 Scorn and fear are sad universalities and here again, men are filled with a shell-shocked disgust.

While the film does flirt with a Thomas Hardy flavor of woe, namely in the separation of the son, George (Adam Dodd), the story retains its suspense, primarily through the excellent acting of Mulligan, coupled with some apprehensive and sizzling camerawork, which transforms Maud into a smartly covert antihero who seeks refuge in old churches. Steed himself becomes a Javert from Les Miserables, obsessed with Maud as he weaves his way through a top-hatted crowd.

Though this is England in the late 1800s, it could just as well be Selma in the 60s. The McCarthy era or Stonewall.

"Suffragette" sports an excellent ensemble cast. In sharp, finely honed episodes it underscores the human condition locked in an infinite struggle for fairness and simply, what is right.

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com

Week of Nov. 13 - 19 (Rhoades)

Tropic Overview

Films at the Tropic Get Real

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Film Critic, Key West Citizen

Four of the five films screening at Tropic Cinema this week are based on real-life events -- the time-frames ranging from 1912 right up to the minute.

“Suffragette” tells of the fight for women’s rights in turn-of-the-century England. Carey Mulligan gives us a laundress caught up in the hullabaloo and Meryl Streep is there as the leader of the militant Suffragette Movement. Ex-press.com calls it “a worthwhile reminder of how far women have come and the price they had to pay to get here.” And Minneapolis star Tribune opines, “Mulligan, in particular, delivers, bringing believability to a role that's quite a stretch, given the transformation her character has to go through from workaday mum to first-wave feminist superhero.”

“Truth” is a more recent history, the story of how national news anchor Dan Rather lost his job. Robert Redford puts his chin forward as Rather and Cate Blanchett nails it as Mary Mapes, the “60 Minutes” producer who precipitated their downfall. Cinemalogue.com observes the film “provokes an intriguing discussion of how politics and big business have changed the risks and angles that news organizations take, with the truth getting lost in the shuffle.” And Seattle Times says it’s “mesmerizing, entirely because of Blanchett…”

“Big Stone Gap” is a picture-postcard view of a small town in Virginia where an avowed spinster (played by Ashley Judd) learns a secret that makes her rethink her life choices. Richmond.com says, “Sure, the script can be simpler than a diner menu. And at times the nostalgia seems manufactured like the goodies at a Cracker Barrel gift shop, but...Big Stone Gap proves to be...a nice change of pace from the summer popcorn-movie season.” And RogerEbert.com concludes, “The movie ambles along amiably enough …”

“Steve Jobs” is screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s take on the co-founder of Apple. Michael Fassbender plays the genius who never knew his own father, yet rejected his own illegitimate daughter. Suburban Journals of St. Louis asks, “Was Steve Jobs' success achieved because of his caustic personality or in spite of it? The answer is inconclusive, which is kind of what makes this movie great.” And Cleveland Plain Dealer adds, “Fassbender's performance is a stunning achievement of subtlety and power, as he presents Jobs as a witty, likable and engaging person in one conversation and a conflicted, shutdown monster in the next.”

And “Bridge of Spies” is another Steven Spielberg tour de force, with Tom Hanks portraying the lawyer who negotiated the trade of Russian spy Rudolf Abel for downed U2 pilot Gary Powers. Siete24.mx notes, “Spielberg and Hanks brings the romance of classic cinema.” And Buzzfeed tells us the film is “a heart-on-its-sleeve affirmation of American values -- not in the loaded contemporary sense of the term, but in the way the country was founded on values we have to work and fight to abide by.”

If only my history classes in college were as interesting as these films!

srhoades@aol.com