Tag: Alec Baldwin

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

The fifth in the MI franchise, Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise have elevated the series to James Bond status

MI5PosterDaniel Craig and the new James Bond left a campy-sized hole in the hearts of many an action movie lover. The films became so polished, so good and even so plausible that while no one was clamoring for a throwback to Pierce Brosnan ice palaces and invisible cars, there’s a sense that spy stories could be a little less serious.

Enter “Mission: Impossible”, which five entries in has shed its TV adaptation roots and finally taken Bond’s place on the franchise throne. Previously the “MI” series has been a malleable Tom Cruise vehicle: a Hitchcockian thriller in the hands of genre stylist Brian De Palma, a visual showcase in the hands of John Woo or a dense conspiracy caper in the hands of J.J. Abrams. The fourth film, “Ghost Protocol”, was so delightfully cartoonish (in the hands of none other than Pixar’s Brad Bird making his live-action debut), that even dangling Tom Cruise off the tallest building in the world was not the most outrageous part.

So what is ironically fresh about the latest and fifth entry, “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”, is that Director Christopher McQuarrie isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. The film has not taken on yet another new life in the hands of a new director but has found a comfortable groove that combines the best of all four previous films.

The most notable trait of course must be Tom Cruise, who continues to impress and prove why he’s a bankable star despite never once setting foot in superhero spandex or body armor. In purely Bond fashion, Cruise opens “Rogue Nation” with an incredible set piece detached from the plot of the main film. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt leaps aboard a taxiing plane and hangs on for dear life even after the plane takes off.

And that’s Cruise’s career in a nutshell: trying so hard and still able to hold tight against all odds even as every young teen star takes flight.

Here Cruise’s Ethan Hunt undergoes the Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon” treatment, being suspended from the ceiling and beaten and tortured, only to acrobatically crack some skulls and escape. He’s on the run after coming across an agent he believes to be the head of The Syndicate, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). The Syndicate is a shadow organization made to destroy the IMF, and which Hunt believes was behind several global accidents he and the IMF were been unable to avert.

Lane’s frail, crippled tone behind glasses, a German accent and a short haircut make him sound like a man struck by lightning as a child. He’s a convincing ghost, and one of the franchise’s more memorable villains, if still behind Philip Seymour Hoffman from “MI:3”.

But the IMF is also facing a challenge from the CIA and their operation head, played by Alec Baldwin. The CIA is in denial that any Syndicate even exists, and the IMF’s biggest lead is a double agent named Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) who they first encounter attempting to murder a German chancellor.

It’s enough spy mumbo jumbo to keep the wheels moving and not too much to overwhelm the story in Macguffins and pseudo-science jargon. And the help of returning cast Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames continue to keep things light and tongue-in-cheek.

Because part of what makes “Rogue Nation” so refreshing, and for that matter all the “Mission: Impossible” movies, is how outlandish and oversized the film’s various set pieces can become, and yet are never once CGI maelstroms. One scene takes place in the backdrop of an opera in Vienna, and to say it’s magnificent, musically edited, and operatic is an understatement. Then there’s an underwater scene where Cruise has to hold his breath for three minutes while avoiding rotating gears and security blocks. It’s preposterous and near impossible to describe or rationalize, but in 2015 it’s more memorable than any horde of disposable robots.

These are traditional action movies after all, but when Bourne has gone gritty, the “Fast and Furious” movies have grown into their own superhero films, and John Wick has gone downright minimal, it’s nice to see that Ethan Hunt’s missions still look impossible.

3 ½ stars

Still Alice

Julianne Moore is a revelation in the modest film about Alzheimer’s disease.

StillAlicePosterThough most fictional movies are not trying to be documentaries, there’s a desire we crave for authenticity in characters, storytelling and habits. To make a truly “authentic” movie about a woman suffering from a disease or disability might not be much of a movie at all. People grow old and sick, and those affected try to adapt and move on.

“Still Alice” tells the story of a woman struggling with Early Onset Alzheimer’s, and it’s a modest movie without the added frills or melodramatic hooks of adversity, romance or history that attempt to turn a story about disability into a more traditional narrative. In that way, “Still Alice”, along with Julianne Moore’s impeccable performance, feels like the most authentic movie about Alzheimer’s yet.

So many disability movies involve characters that are defined by their disabilities. Watching “The Theory of Everything,” you’d be fooled into believing that all Stephen Hawking did in his life was have Lou Gehrig’s disease. And for the bulk of “Still Alice”, that’s all Alice Howland (Moore) is: a 50-year-old woman with Early Onset Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t delve deep into her past or explore her life outside of her family, but what Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s film does is tell the story of a woman who fears losing herself, both physically and symbolically. Alzheimer’s is just a means to that end.

Alice is a renowned professor of communication at Columbia College, and her life’s work of research is also her life. She’s a woman who thrives on her intellect and her family, and that seems to be enough. She goes running on campus and uses practically made-up words like “Hadj” to win at her Words With Friends obsession.

Alice’s very first mental slip-ups are so miniscule that you could miss them; her family certainly does. After one run on campus, the world around her turns into a blur, the camera spinning dizzily around Alice’s head. Moore’s breathing gets heavy, and the fear that Alice has no idea where she is sinks in.

In one very economical scene, Alice visits a neurologist and goes under a quick evaluation. In a static shot captivated with Moore’s plain, confident work, the camera never breaks, and we never see the doctor’s face. Such a long look seems to put our minds at ease, but it doesn’t stop Alice from testing herself in creative ways, writing words on a chalkboard to see if she can remember them minutes later, or posing questions to herself in notes on her phone.

When the news is confirmed, Alice’s bigger fear is passing the disease on to her children. Her oldest Anna (Kate Bosworth) is successful, married and about to have kids. Her middle son Tom (Hunter Parrish) is just through medical school. And her youngest Lydia (Kristen Stewart) has skipped college and is working to be an actress in L.A.

The whole family is intimate, conversational, understanding, and the movie focuses in on the pain Alice is feeling by making it clear how her disease impacts the life choices of those closest to her.

“I wish I had cancer,” Alice says in plainly cynical terms. With cancer, people understand. But with something like Alzheimer’s, it changes you, and it changes how people perceive you, she believes. “Still Alice” isn’t about the fight to beat the disease, but about how Alice maintains her resourcefulness, intuition and in turn her identity even as her condition worsens, be it in wetting herself because she can’t remember where the bathroom is, or in blindly reading Lydia’s private diary without realizing what it contains.

Why “Still Alice” must be valued above all is that it’s a movie with a middle-aged woman at its core who is experiencing challenges, hardship and emotional peril like a relatable human being. It passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors, and Moore proves to be a revelation, an every woman symbol when there are so few others in the movies. She can be witty, droll and confident but can also fall to pieces in an instant. And her work matches the tonal modesty of the film. Free of clear delineations of time, she goes through a slow, but radical physical transformation and feels convincing at every stage. And in a long career, it’s not a stretch to say this is possibly Moore’s best work.

There’s a sense that “Still Alice” could go further. The directors hint at tension between Anna and Lydia that if explored further could’ve complicated the family’s decision about what to do with their mother. And both daughters are served with devastating news as a result of their mother’s diagnosis, but the degree to which their lives change goes unexplored.

Further, compared to a film like Sarah Polley’s “Away From Her”, “Still Alice” lacks a romantic angle that could help elevate it in terms of cinematic storytelling. But what remains is hardly the shell of a movie, a character or a person; it’s still Alice.

3 ½ stars

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

The recently deceased Elaine Stritch is profiled beautifully in this film about the last year of her life.

At the start of “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” we see the legendary Broadway actress strutting down Manhattan city streets in a giant fur on her way to a rehearsal. She crosses the street and yelps theatrically. An actress she’s worked with recognizes her on the street and Stritch’s comment is “This business sucks.” As the camera follows her, it edits and darts down the street at the spitfire speed of her voice.

Even if you are not familiar with Elaine Stritch, you know this woman. Her poise and the way she is depicted here defines her as a star and a woman who has seen it all. Chiemi Karasawa’s documentary profile is less interested in Stritch’s storied past and more in how she carries herself in the here and now.

“Anyone aging gracefully really knows something,” Stritch says. Having just passed away less than a month ago, not long after this movie was first released, Stritch really did have it all figured out, and yet she was no less afraid of death or any less human. She makes for a wonderful character study not because of her history but because of who she was in 2013 in the last year of her life.

And what we see is a documentary that may as well have been directed by Stritch herself, even if someone else was behind the camera. Always aware of the ins and outs of show business and forever concerned with her image and putting the best show forward, she scolds the cameraman for getting too close (“This isn’t a skin commercial!”) and demands reshoots when he seems to be a mile away.

In fact the film is so selective that it doesn’t bother with its own version of narrated or edited history; her memory will do just fine and be told more theatrically than any editor could muster. Her ability to think on her feet and always play for laughs or an emotion echoes on stage and off. “Shoot Me” mostly follows Stritch during the production of a one-woman show in which she sings the work of Stephen Sondheim. She’s performed these songs dozens if not hundreds of times over, but at this age and this stage in her career, she’s a different actress. “It’s hard enough to remember Sondheim lyrics when you don’t have diabetes,” she jokes during rehearsal. Karasawa plays that lapse of memory for a strong callback later when on stage she visibly forgets her lyric, but manages to turn it into a charming moment of truth and storytelling for the audience.

Not everyone is a Broadway fan or may not even be familiar with Stritch’s resume, but “Shoot Me” is loaded with amusing anecdotes and witty to tender commentary from Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and another recently departed legend, James Gandolfini.

“She is a molotov cocktail of madness, insanity and genius,” a friend says about Stritch. “Shoot Me” gets at that perception with its own confection of ingredients and stories as well as its own sharp tongued look at a woman so deserving of the attention.

3 1/2 stars

Click Bait: Alec Baldwin, Oscars and Fraternities

Alec Baldwin’s departure essay grew a lot of ire this week, along with articles on a Duke Freshman and fraternities.

I read a lot of stuff, and not all of it makes it to my social media feed. “Click Bait” is my weekly roundup of links pertaining to movies, politics, culture and anything else I found generally interesting this week.

Alec Baldwin: “Good Bye, Public Life”

I’m quickly coming to realize that siding with Alec Baldwin is an unpopular opinion, but I found a lot of his essay smart and insightful about the way our media and our culture operate today. A few poor choices of words about him being a homophobe fail to paint the full picture of the man. The verbs thrown at him are the same once used against Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, to name a few, he seems to be fighting a losing battle with the press, and everything that’s being said reflects of this choice line from his piece: “In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day.” 

So no, I don’t think Alec Baldwin is a douche.

Apathy and the Oscars

The common fear this Oscar season is that people increasingly don’t care about awards shows, about the Oscars or about movies. I’ve written as much in suggesting that TV is the new medium of choice, while film is only passionately admired by those in an ever shrinking niche. This fear is explored interestingly in this NY Times piece, and it may be corroborated by a recent poll suggesting that two thirds of Americans have not seen any of the Best Picture nominees.

That puzzling stat though doesn’t seem to ask who all did pay for those tickets to see “Gravity,” i.e. the fifth highest grossing movie of the year. Continue reading “Click Bait: Alec Baldwin, Oscars and Fraternities”

Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett is stunning in “Blue Jasmine,” Woody Allen’s portrait of the have-more culture.

 

In a year filled with movies about the have-more culture, Woody Allen has laid bare how the upper half lives. Cate Blanchett is magnificent in “Blue Jasmine,” Allen’s dramatic “Streetcar named Desire” inspired portrait of a crumbling woman amidst infidelity, deceit and blissful ignorance.

I wrote recently about “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” how women in movies tend to keep their composure better than men when faced with a personal crisis, and Jasmine has this down flat. Jasmine is the ever so prim and proper housewife of Hal (Alec Baldwin), an obscenely wealthy businessman and trader who turns out to be a massive crook. She’s been driven out of her home to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) after Hal is arrested, and yet that complication doesn’t stop her from carefully micromanaging her life story such that she can stay in her protective bubble of wealth and stature.

Jeanette is Jasmine’s real name, but the floral connotation had a better narrative. She met Hal while “Blue Moon” played, but then even this appears to be a clever fabrication. Now she aspires to be an interior designer with a license she can obtain if she only figures out how to use “computers.” This will be perfect as it allows her to continue to adorn herself in glamour and luxury without having any inherent skills. Heaven forbid she bag groceries like her sister. Continue reading “Blue Jasmine”

To Rome With Love

“To Rome With Love” is a disappointing follow-up to Woody Allen’s delightful “Midnight in Paris.”

Woody Allen’s “To Rome With Love” is a movie about living out your fantasies of love and discovery. Its stories aren’t likely, so it’s a fantasy of its own, but not in the way of “Midnight in Paris.” Rather, it’s like the warm and gooey dream that feels embarrassingly stupid after you wake up.

In the last few years, Allen has made a trilogy of films in Europe, first in Barcelona, then in Paris and now the Italian Eternal City of Rome. The first problem is that this feels more like a travelogue than any of the others. It invites you into the city and makes time for sightseeing and an admiration of architecture, but then it makes its native Italians into goofy caricatures.

We see Romans as adulterers, Communists, sex craved, tabloid craved, wanderers with no sense of direction and angry mothers brandishing butcher knives.

The movie itself has this two-handed approach to its fantasies. “To Rome With Love” simultaneously tries to pull you toward and away from the romance of the story. The four anecdotes it tells are too dopey to be taken seriously and too familiar and incidental to really laugh at. Continue reading “To Rome With Love”

The Royal Tenenbaums

Wes Anderson doesn’t make deliberately quirky indie comedies or inscrutable art house films. He makes fantasies. “The Royal Tenenbaums” is just the story of a dysfunctional family, not an epic voyage to the bottom of the sea or the tale of an adventurous talking fox, and yet it feels as wonderfully strange and exotic as any of those.

That’s because just about every Wes Anderson film ever made is the most wholly Wes Anderson-y movie you’ve ever seen. His style drips over every moment in his framing, his tone and his quirky imagination. “The Royal Tenenbaums” more than any of Anderson’s films perhaps is like visual poetry in the way the film’s offbeat dialogue punctuates his quick cuts.

His shots are exploding with wild imagery. None of it is natural or has a purpose; it is merely beautiful to look at. One room has two giant murals on the wall featuring tigers and hunters, and another room reveals the head of a giant stuffed badger to be mounted on the wall. Continue reading “The Royal Tenenbaums”