There was a lot of buzz when A Most Violent Year came out for Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, but it came away with no Oscar nominations. The movie is set in the early 1980s in New York City and Oscar Isaac is Abel Morales, a business man with a focus on heating oil who is looking to expand his business; Jessica Chastain is his wife, Anna Morales. Oscar does his best to remain a legitimate and law-abiding businessman, even as his trucks and drivers are being assaulted and hijacked by unknown assailants. A Most Violent Year takes us to the seedy underbelly of the business world in the 1980s (and probably the 1960s and 1970s and perhaps today if The Sopranos is to be believed) with Abel taking out loans at ridiculous terms and rates and competing with the Mafia and fighting to keep the justice system (represented by David Oyelowo Assistant District Attorney Lawrence) off of his back. I found myself rooting for Abel to succeed against the money lenders, the Mafia and his other competitors. I liked this movie, it's got an intelligent plot, occasionally confusing, and Isaac and Chastain deliver the goods (they are both chameleons and disappear into their roles); Albert Brooks was totally unrecognizable to me as Abel's attorney. The first thing that actually struck me about the movie was the way it looked; it had this gritty/gauzy look, like a filter was used. There are a lot of pretentious films out there, trying to be too smart for their own good, and they annoy me; this is not one of those films. Check it out.
6/14/15 Last Days in Vietnam, nominated Best Documentary 2014
I think this is the first of the 2015 nominated feature documentaries I have seen, and it's very powerful and moving. The focus of the documentary, directed by Rory Kennedy, is the evacuation of Americans as well as their South Vietnamese allies and families. The men interviewed worked at the American Embassy in Saigon, or soldiers or sailors who helped transport the Vietnamese out of Vietnam; Vietnamese were also interviewed, some were children or teenagers at the time, others were soldiers or intelligence officers helping the Americans. The Vietnam war went on for over twenty-five years, beginning with French involvement in Indochina and then the Americans took over until 1975, and it can get very confusing if a film tries to cover it all, so it is very helpful that Kennedy focuses on one particular set of events, those leading up to and including the evacuations. Not only is the history of the war confusing, even forty years later it can stir strong feelings when talking about the 'rightness' or even 'righteousness' of fighting the Communists, a position that has often put US policy in bed with right-wing dictators. And did you see how fast I went down that rabbit hole? That's what happens when you talk about Vietnam. Kennedy looks at the war in a telescoped way that cuts out a lot of details regarding the South Vietnamese regime, the American politics and politicians, so this is just one piece of a very large puzzle - but it's worth watching. First, politics cannot deny that there were many heroic individuals who knowingly disobeyed orders to help get their comrades and families out of Vietnam; pilots who flew almost 24 hours back and forth between the embassy and aircraft carriers delivering their human cargo; sailors who embraced the now homeless and stateless refugees on their ships. Second, the brave Vietnamese who left everything behind to embark on a very uncertain future, possibly in America, but at that time, nobody could guarantee what was going to happen; and I use 'brave' intentionally because it takes a lot of guts to go to a foreign country where you may or may not speak the language, you probably won't be welcomed with open arms and you may never get back to your homeland. Last Days in Vietnam is not the whole story, but it is an important episode in a war that still often divides this country.
6/19/15 Damn Yankees, Ordway Theater, St. Paul., MN
A friend had an extra ticket to last Friday's performance of Damn Yankees at the Ordway in St. Paul, so I went along. I had no expectations and only a vague idea of the story, except that it had a baseball storyline and it was a musical. This was a little more than a friend of mine who thought I meant the 1980s hair band. The show opens with loyal Washington Senators fan, Joe Boyd (Lawrence Clayton) watches his team lose again as his wife Meg (Ann Morrison) bemoans the loss of her husband for six months of the year to watch baseball. Mr. Applegate (Monte Riegel Wheeler) mysteriously appears to offer Joe the chance of a lifetime - to play for his beloved Senators, but it's a deal with the devil as he must leave his old life behind, including Meg. Joe takes the deal and becomes Joe Hardy (Thay Floyd) a hitting phenom. Joe misses his old life, and often wanders his neighborhood, hoping to see Meg, even though he can't tell her anything. Mr. Appleton fears he is losing his hold on Joe and brings in Lola (Tari Kelley), his devilish assistant to keep him on the dark side. There is a lot to like about this production: the band, which plays on stage in 'bleachers', was great and never overpowered the actors; the actors; , leads and supporting cast, sounded great and brought a lot of joy to the songs, including songs like "Heart" and "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets" (the two songs I had heard before), and "Those were the good old days" sung by Mr. Applegate as he reminisces about disasters and plagues was a lot of fun and played with appropriate campiness; the set which used the space on the stage very creatively (the Ordway stage is not very large, or it did not seem that way to me from my seat on the side). It was a great night for baseball, or a musical about baseball (a bit of trivia - the Washington Senators eventually moved to Minnesota to become the Minnesota Twins).
6/20/15 Double Indemnity, 1944, #38 AFI, National Film Registry
I am not going to tell you too much about Double Indemnity the Oscar-nominated film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson because part of the fun of the movie is watching it unfold. What I will say is that as it opened it reminded me of Sunset Boulevard and Laura with its use of a narrator who was part of the story and you kind of have to pay attention. Fred MacMurray is Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who meets Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), the beautiful wife of current client. Robinson is Barton Keyes, an adjustor at the same insurance company, and a friend of Neff's. The movie is dark and moody, and is cited as the first film noir; as I said, it reminded me a little of Sunset Boulevard, with the narrator but also the femme fatale character, both directed by Wilder. I don't recall seeing Barbara Stanwyck in too much other than "Big Valley" and "The Thornbirds", so this was a new look for me; and the same kind of goes for Fred MacMurray, I have seen him in "My Three Sons", Flubber and a few other Disney films, but nothing so serious. They were both very good and very sleazy. Robinson added a bit of comedic relief even as he provided insight into the events that were transpiring. There is a lot of cinematic history tied to the making of the film: Raymond Chandler co-wrote the script with Wilder, but Chandler was so difficult due to his drinking that Wilder later wrote The Lost Weekend about an alcoholic writer; it took a long time to get the film made because it was found to violate the Hays Code, censoring agency of the day.
6/21/15 The Wrecking Crew, not yet nominated 2015
I have been waiting for this DVD to arrive ever since the Kickstarter completed last year. I am so happy that I was able to support Denny Tedesco in his goal to bring the story of The Wrecking Crew to film. The Wrecking Crew was the nickname of a group of West Coast studio musicians in the 1960s and 1970s who played on thousands of songs for a wide range of artists, including Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Nancy Sinatra, The Beach Boys, The Monkees and more. Denny Tedesco is telling the story of his father and guitarist, Tommy Tedesco and his fellow musicians who often played without credits on the albums. The movie has interviews taken over the past years with some of the musicians, including Tommy Tedesco, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, guitarists Al Casey, Bill Pitman and Glen Campbell, bassists Carol Kaye (the only woman from the main ensemble as far as a I could tell), Joe Osborn, just to name a few; studio footage, interviews with some of the artists they worked with; home movies. It is so cool to hear how they very often arranged their own parts or even came up with their parts after being given a basic idea by the producer (Carol Kaye gives some great insight to the bass line for "The Beat Goes On" by Sonny and Cher and other songs). What's crazy is to hear how busy these musicians were, sometimes playing from 9:00 in the morning until midnight, for different artists in different studios. The musicians from The Wrecking Crew encountered the same challenges that their counterparts at Motown (Standing in the Shadows), FAME Studios (Muscle Shoals) and some of the singers in Twenty Feet from Stardom faced, which was a certain amount of anonymity to the music audience (although not to other musicians and singers) as well as the changing landscape of music - bands playing their own instruments, new technologies, obscurity. The music that is included (that was part of the delay in releasing the full film, because Tedesco had to get the publishing clearance to include the music) is a landscape of America at the time, they are songs I grew up with thanks to my parents, and to have the backstory behind the creation gave me a greater appreciation for songs that I took for granted. The movie was in theaters in March of this year, but it's available as a download or DVD, the soundtrack is also available.
