Tag: Kyle Chandler

Carol

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara star in Todd Haynes’s first film in 7 years.

CarolPosterRooney Mara as Therese Belivet in Todd Haynes’s “Carol” has perky, rosy makeup, frayed bangs beneath a plain black hair band, cute plaid outfits and a checkered fall hat. She looks like one of the toy dolls in the department store where she works. Enter Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird, who wears a movie star aura with a giant coat of golden fur, a stylish red French cap and later in the car an elegant green shawl to keep her looking perfect.

In fact, both characters are particularly magnetic, and the attraction they form in “Carol” is mutual. “Carol” is a coming-of-age story for the young Therese, but it’s a movie about two people entering into separate worlds and learning to feel at home. Haynes’s film is lush, poetic, and ravishing, a stellar romance in which the unsaid words and thoughts seep into the movie’s background and color everything.

After all, “Carol” is all about backgrounds. Haynes admires the patterned sewer grates in his opening crane shot and the beads of rain on a taxicab that give the whole film an elegiac tone. There are soothing green backdrops viewed through windows and individual stills that have painterly beauty.

Haynes adorns these details with care because the many words and themes of Carol and Therere’s courtship go unsaid. Set in 1952, when being gay was considered a psychological illness, Haynes avoids the thorny jargon and the explicitness of their affair. Carol and Therese are desperate to feel close to each other, and Carol begs Therese to “Ask me, please!” They want to speak their emotions and not have them be taboo.

Unlike the racial tension of Haynes’s other ‘50s period piece “Far From Heaven”, “Carol” is not a social issue film. It’s a deeply personal love story; Carol’s desires are tearing her apart from her husband (Kyle Chandler) and her young daughter, and Therese’s uncertainty about her sexuality complicates her relationship with a potential fiancée (Jake Lacy).

Mara and Blanchett have impeccable chemistry. When they first have lunch together, Therese again echoes her innocence, with Mara ever so slightly propping herself up in her seat as though she’s never had a cigarette before. It’s a wonderful little touch, and she as an actress maintains the film’s mystique by never appearing too indecisive or too waifish. Mara’s an accomplished actress, but here she channels a young Audrey Hepburn’s natural graces.

Blanchett meanwhile channels just about all the rest of Old Hollywood, and slowly she reveals herself to be a flustered, hurt woman without ever losing her poise or leaving her bubble. It’s not unlike the work she did that won her an Oscar in “Blue Jasmine”, but here she’s likeable and ultimately as vulnerable as her innocent young lover.

Phyllis Nagy’s debut script from a novel by Patricia Highsmith (“The Talented Mr. Ripley”) is poetic, profound and beautiful. The cinematography by longtime Haynes collaborator Edward Lachman is dreamy. And the aforementioned costumes by three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell are impeccable.

But above all the technical brilliance, heed a piece of advice given to Therese: “I have a friend who told me I should be more interested in humans.” “Carol” delves deep into the world of these two human beings and finds a home.

4 stars

The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” makes “Spring Breakers” look tame.

Of all the excess bursting from the frame in “The Wolf of Wall Street”, what’s missing is a trip to the normal world. That’s because, who would honestly want to go there? Jordan Belfort certainly doesn’t, but that inability to show the other side of the fence may be part of “Wolf’s” problem.

Martin Scorsese’s film about a real life Wall Street broker who swindled millions from clueless investors in fraudulent stocks and led his firm into a tailspin of sex, drugs and corruption has received a notable amount of criticism; perhaps such a crook doesn’t deserve a wacky, fun biopic based on his life, the critics say.

The question goes, does “The Wolf of Wall Street” glorify the actions of Jordan Belfort? In one way, yes. Jordan’s behavior in the real world is nothing but obscene, and Scorsese gives us three hours to revel in this wild peek behind the curtain.

But in Belfort’s world, this is the norm. The sex romps, the montages and the drug trips all blend together over time, and it provides all the more jolt when in a bizarre twist, something from “fucking Benihana” brings him down.

Scorsese’s film makes “Spring Breakers” look tame in comparison. It languishes on each wild act of depravity and sensationalized moment of mayhem, immersing us in Belfort’s world and his narrative revisionism (“My Ferrari was white, not red,” he barks in narration at the open of the film) without any of the context of the people who aren’t making $49 million a year.

But one wonders what can be gained from a film that shares the same lack of nuances as its perverse characters. Even James Franco’s Alien had some layers to him, but Belfort is all haircut and a sales pitch.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” constantly borders that fine line between exploitation and poignant satire. Like Jordan’s life itself, the movie plays like a mess of outrageous set pieces connected only by their sheer energy. It grasps at the political, psychological and philosophical straws snagged by “Spring Breakers,” “The Bling Ring,” “American Hustle” and even Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” but lacks the specifically distinct aesthetic style all of those films had that would give it an extra kick. Continue reading “The Wolf of Wall Street”

The Spectacular Now

James Ponsoldt’s “The Spectacular Now” channels John Hughes-era dramas but is challenging, thought provoking, touching and has a rich subtext.

I’d like you to meet Aimee Finicky. She’s the girl you didn’t notice in high school. She doesn’t wear makeup, but she also doesn’t wear glasses like you maybe expected. She’s nice, smart, responsible, has never had a boyfriend and enjoys reading manga comics. Aimee is kind of adorable in her own way, but then she’s also fairly soft-spoken, timid, without any quirks or real passionate interests. She’s like the anti manic pixie dream girl, which is its own special blessing.

So who is Aimee? What’s her thing? “I’d like to think there’s more to a person than just one thing,” she says, which is a more mature, adult thought than any high school kid will give her credit for.

James Ponsdolt’s third film “The Spectacular Now” is filled with such universal wisdom. It channels John Hughes era dramas but embeds its coming of age tale with challenging, thoughtful and moving subtext that makes it anything but a “teen movie.”  It’s a light, good-hearted, beautiful and romantic film that feels spectacular both now and forever. Continue reading “The Spectacular Now”

Zero Dark Thirty

At the end of “The Hurt Locker,” Sergeant William James returned home from his tour of duty and stood in the aisle of a supermarket, overwhelmed and lost. After all he had seen and done, what more did he know to do?

Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have explored this dilemma yet again in “Zero Dark Thirty,” only now we’re at the center of a cold, revenge fueled manhunt for the most wanted man in the world, Osama bin Laden. Now that we’ve got him, what’s next?

“Zero Dark Thirty” is a stirring procedural drama that examines the more exciting, alleviating, gripping and harrowing moments of our decade long battle with Al Qaeda. And because it feels so thoroughly investigated by Mark Boal and so intensely staged by Bigelow, it is at the center of major controversy in the CIA and US Senate. But there is no nobility here. The film hardly advocates torture. Through depiction, not endorsement, it suggests that our revenge soaked victory may be more hollow than we imagined. Continue reading “Zero Dark Thirty”

Super 8 Review

J.J. Abrams’s “Super 8” is a thrilling sci-fi that uses Steven Spielberg’s classics as inspiration.

Some kids in a small town in the late ‘70s are making a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera. The director Charlie says his movie needs to have a story, characters we care about and real production value. So he gets his middle school friends to read lines like “I love you too,” to paint themselves in zombie makeup and to blow up model trains with real explosives.

To think there was a time when kids actually knew what a movie needed to make a memorable summer thrill.

J.J. Abrams, the director of the spirited and exciting monster movie mystery and adventure “Super 8,” is still one of the new kids on the block in the movie world. He’s a household name on television, but as somewhat of a director-for-hire on franchise pictures like “Mission: Impossible III” and “Star Trek,” he’s been waiting for an original story like this one to show he looks up to the big boys still making movies, specifically Steven Spielberg.

Continue reading “Super 8 Review”