Last Days in the Desert

I love Rodrigo García's work, but Last Days in the Desert did not work for me at all. Maybe it was the white people playing all the roles; maybe it was the fact that Ewan McGregor played both Jesus and the Devil; maybe it was the fact that García's film never asked a question to which it didn't already know the answer. Either way, I was bored.

Divergent #3

I really hope that Allegiant was the last of these Divergent films. I really liked the first one, and the second one (Insurgent) was diverting enough, but this third film really jumped the shark.

There is no logic that could explain some of the events of this movie. I will release my complaints that a wall somehow keeps out acid rain in this film. I will also release my complaint that an apparently benevolent council in Providence would allow a dictator they didn't trust to run security for Chicago, even after being told that he was lying to them. But what I can't really release is that our heroine, Tris Prior, couldn't manage to recognize the rhetoric of fascism as soon as she was confronted with it. This fascism, surely, was apparent to everyone watching the movie – Robert Schwentke is not the most subtle of directors – and was certainly apparent to our hero Tobias/Four. But the brilliant Tris is oblivious? Come on. I don't buy it.

Apparently the folks at Lionsgate are trying to figure out a way to fulfill their contractual obligations with the series' author while avoiding making yet another one of these films (there was supposed to be a fourth, Ascendant). And I don't blame them. This thing just gets more and more convoluted meanwhile I seem to care less and less.

Two Films about Florence Foster Jenkins

Remember when there were back-to-back movies about Yves Saint Laurent and it seemed rather strange that they could end up being so different from one another? Well, this year, there are back-to-back films about Florence Foster Jenkins, a much less famous person, and they are, once again, very very different from one another. Stephen Frears' Florence Foster Jenkins (released on August 12) explores a little section of time near the end of the life of an amateur singer and socialite, her relationship with her devoted husband St. Clair, and her desire to sing a concert of operatic music at Carnegie Hall, although she is, in fact, a terrible singer. Frears' film stars Meryl Streep and will dutifully get a great deal of Oscar buzz and probably a couple nominations (Streep and Consolata Boyle for the costumes). The other film is Xavier Giannoli's Marguerite, which fictionalizes the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, sets it in France, and changes the names but essentially explores an identical plotline.

If you've seen the trailer for Florence, then you know what Frears is going for. Florence is a glossy, silly cartoon of a film, that is interested primarily in a kind of emotional reversal, whereby we spend most of the film laughing at Lady Florence and then over time, as we come to think of her as a lost, desperate soul, we begin to pity her in many ways. This approach is a kind of standard movie-making approach to these kinds of characters, it seems to me, and Frears knows how to do something like this well. Big movie studios also have the tendency to treat this period of time in frivolous ways – one might think immediately of last year's execrable Trumbo and its version of the 1950s as a kind of cartoon (Saving Mr. Banks and Hitchcock did this as well). In any case, the point is that Florence is, like the three movies I've just mentioned, more interested in the true story of this really interesting real person and what she did than in actually exploring who the person was, how she might have felt, why she might have made the choices she made, and what the impact of those choices might have been on the people to whom she was closest.

Florence fails as a film because, frankly, it isn't that much interested in Florence herself as a person. Florence looks at Florence as a freak, a curiosity whose story is fascinating because it is so outrageous but who isn't interesting as an artist. In many ways, although Florence is played by the great Meryl Streep, the film pays no attention to the woman's humanity. This is not only because the film's tone is absurd, but also because the plot itself follows Florence's husband, St. Clair Bayfield, and Florence's accompanist, Cosmé McMoon, more closely than it does Florence herself. In fact, we spend more time alone with the two of them than we do with Florence by herself. In other words we see Florence through other people's eyes most of the time, and much of the way we look at her is mocking.

Of course, it is hard not to mock. Florence Foster Jenkins was a terrible singer, and she gave an infamously terrible concert at Carnegie Hall. This is the stuff of legend. And no matter how one slices it, it is pretty hilarious to hear Meryl Streep screech through the Queen of the Night aria or an aria from Lakmé. But this is as deep as the film is content to go. And the film, in fact, has nothing to say about any of this. Just that it happened. Florence Foster Jenkins is a real missed opportunity, and it seemed to me like a retread of Frears' earlier Mrs Henderson Presents. I was bored.

* * *

Marguerite (which was released in the U.S. on March 11) is something else altogether. Xavier Giannoli transposes the WWII-era tale of FFJ to France between the two wars, setting the story in Paris in 1920 and 1921. Marguerite is a wealthy, eccentric socialite with a love of opera and a huge collection of costumes, recordings, scores, and props. She adores opera, performs concerts for a club that meets in her home, and seems to have no idea that her voice is awful.

The film begins when a young singer from the city, a young reporter from a Paris newspaper, and a young poet all arrive on the scene and manage to hear Marguerite perform. We see this first concert through their eyes, and we get to know the three young people, but as the film progresses, it is Marguerite whom we get to know. The other characters fall away. They are only a kind of narrative way into the story of the singer herself.

The story takes off after the reporter, Lucien Beaumont, writes a review of her work – never lying about her abilities but describing her singing in the generous terms that someone who is fond of the singer might use – calling her courageous and raw and natural and compelling. And she is compelling. When Marguerite sings, Giannoli doesn't simply ask us to cringe or laugh; he asks us to watch her, to try to see her, to understand what this is. I should say, too, that Marguerite is played exquisitely by Catherine Frot, who won a César award for her work. And in fact, the acting is excellent all around (my other favorite was Sylvain Dieuaide who plays Lucien).

On her way to the Dada Festival

Marguerite does some other interesting things, too, sort of merging the lives of Florence Foster Jenkins and Raymond Roussel. Once Marguerite becomes popular with the young artists in Paris, befriending them and beginning to hang out with them, she agrees to perform at a Dada salon (a truncated version of the "Dada Festival" from 26 May 1920), singing the Marsellaise while a film is projected onto her dress. Marguerite becomes a hit with these young people. She is a delightful person, and they enjoy spending time with her, and she is also interesting to them as a bad artist. The Dadas, of course, are interested in "bad" art, in pushing the boundaries of art, in asking us to find art in unexpected places, and their affection for Marguerite's skill-less singing and unbridled love of performing is genuine if tinged with class envy. (Incidentally, I should say that the young poet in these sequences is designed to look exactly like Tristan Tzara but is a kind of amalgam of Tzara and two other Dadas, Hugo Ball and André Breton.)

the brilliant Catherine Frot

What Marguerite does best is allow us in to Marguerite's life. Of course she is delusional. Of course her singing is laughable. Fine. But Marguerite, in its generosity toward this character, sees further. There is not only her bad singing and her silly artistic whims. Marguerite is not a comedy. It is, instead, a real exploration of the life of a frustrated artist and the ways she is exploited and derided in various ways. Much of Giannoli's film is outrageous, certainly – it was an insane time to be a member of the avant-garde in Paris – and so there are a lot of laughs to be had, and it is very funny at times, but Marguerite never stops being about beauty and art and the deep desire each of us has to be loved.

Paradoxically, Marguerite, the 2016 film that completely fictionalizes the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, is a deeper, more fascinating exploration of that artist's life than the film entitled Florence Foster Jenkins.

Captain Fantastic

This was complicated and flawed and a little more sentimental than I wanted it to be. And also I loved it and don't care about its problems. There is so much to recommend about this picture.

Hail, Caesar!

Hilariously clever. All of the actors are great – and it is truly a great company of players – but for me Alden Ehrenreich really stole the show.


I loved everything about this: the weird homosexuality that was apparently everywhere; the spoofs of Esther Williams and Gene Kelly; the fact that the Communists really were plotting the downfall of Hollywood; the Soviet submarine; Channing Tatum (he's perfect); the Ben-Hur riff (Hail, Caesar: a Tale of the Christ hahahaha); and the fact that Marcuse is a character, lecturing Hollywood types about consumer capitalism. The whole thing is just too clever by half. I loved it.

America America

I respected this Elia Kazan movie a great deal, and I would certainly rather re-watch this than one of his Tennessee Williams pictures again, but I had trouble loving America America. It just never wormed its way into my heart the way I expected it to or wanted it to.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

This is really funny. Some of it was over my head (apparently many of the folks in this movie are on a television show that I don't know, and there were some inside jokes that I didn't get), but enough of this was for general audiences that I laughed a ton.

Panic in the Streets

This is good. I forget how much I love Richard Widmark. This early Kazan film is a lot like Boomerang! in its interest in law enforcement, male bonding, and film noir techniques.

Jeff Nichols' New Little Gem

Let the Midnight Special shine her light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine her ever-loving light on me

Jeff Nichols is just so good. Midnight Special is his fourth film (his fifth, Loving, will be out during awards season) and it is a tense, taught, always exciting sci-fi movie that is full of surprises and twists. I don't want to say too much about this, because I don't want to spoil anything, but I can say that Midnight Special is about a dad trying to help his son, who has special powers possibly related to Cyclops from the X-men. He wears goggles and can only travel at night because the sun does very weird things to him. But dad (Nichols muse Michael Shannon) and another man (we don't really know much about who this guy is at the beginning, but he's played by Joel Edgerton who gives a superb performance) are trying to get the boy somewhere or are running away from something.

Do not spoil this movie by watching trailers. Just watch it without knowing anything.

Jaeden Liberher in Midnight Special

All becomes clear as the movie progresses, and Nichols alternates the sharing of plot information that we need and terrific suspense sequences beautifully. Nichols has also created a kind of alternate world (as, indeed, he did with Mud and Take Shelter) so that the film, if it is a science-fiction film, really works like a mystery more than anything else. On one hand, we watch the fugitives run. On the other hand, we watch a government official (Adam Driver) try to figure out what is going on, and we learn simultaneously with him. But what in the hell is going on? Who are the good guys? Where did this boy with super-powers come from? This we will begin to understand only slowly, and as in Mud, more and more is revealed as the movie progresses even though our perspective this time is not the partial understanding of a kid but the alleged masterful understanding of law enforcement and the federal government.

From Take Shelter

But exposition? Forget about it. I kept thinking maybe we would go back in time in order to explain something about how we got here. But forget about it. This ain't no big Hollywood movie, and the questions with which we are left are doing their own kind of work, lingering and haunting like the troubling ending of Take Shelter.

Nichols' worlds are not places that we can understand completely. Or, rather, what Nichols' films give us are our own world with the wonderful returned to it. If we are asking what in the hell is going on here? How can this happen? the film is reminding us that if our science knows a great deal, if we think we can understand the human brain (as in Take Shelter), there are still many many mysteries out there; there are still inexplicable wonders to be explored. And not just that: we are looking for mystery. The characters in Midnight Special want, like Fox Mulder, to believe in something else. And Midnight Special (and I think Nichols in general) is interested in reminding us that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen in Starman (1984)

In short, this movie is masterfully directed. Nichols gets great performances out of everyone (the other performers are Kirsten Dunst, Sam Shepard, Jaeden Liberher, Paul Sparks, David Jensen and Bill Camp). David Wingo's haunting minimalist score is all low beats and fast drums. And the movie is an edge-of-your-seat, fast-paced, action/mystery/chase/sci-fi kind-of-thing that I loved. It's also a bit of an homage to late 1970s early 1980s sci-fi cinema, especially Close Encounters and Starman. This is definitely one of the best of 2016 so far. I can't wait for Loving to be released in November.

Ooooo. And pay very close attention to the ending.