favorite movies #21: the way, way back

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #21 - The Way, Way Back (2013) - Sam Rockwell is one of those actors who seems charming and effortless, but I suspect there’s a lot more roiling under the surface. I still think he has yet to find the perfect vehicle for his talent, but he’s come close in quite a few, and manages to steal every scene he’s in. This is a sweet coming of age story with a slightly dark underbelly (mostly in the person of Steve Carell), and I love it. It’s a perfect end of summer movie, too.

Duncan (Liam James): This is the only place I'm happy. 

Owen (Sam Rockwell): What's going on? 

Duncan: I hate him. 

Owen: Who? 

Duncan: Trent. My mom's boyfriend. He said I was a three. He asked me what I thought I was on, a scale from one to ten. He called me a three. Who says that to somebody? 

Owen: Someone who doesn't know you. 

Duncan: I didn't want to have to answer! I shouldn't have to answer! 

Owen: Listen to me. That's about him, man. That's all about him. It's got nothing to do with you. 

Duncan: [vehemently] Yeah? How do you know? 

Owen: 'Cause I know, okay? Don't worry about how I know. My dad was the same way. That's why I don't like patterns and rules. And that's why you can't buy into that shit. You gotta go your own way. And you, my friend, are going your own way.

summer movies

The New York Times had a summer movie preview section this past Sunday and for the first time in a long time there were a whole lot of movies that looked interesting to me.

The kid got interested too, as I was reading off some of the descriptions of upcoming films featuring actors or concepts that appealed to me. So I have adapted their list to reflect our summer movie preview.

What I want to see (on my own):

May

GREETINGS FROM TIM BUCKLEY - I love Jeff Buckley's music, so this sounds pretty interesting to me. With Penn Badgley, Imogen Poots, William Sadler and Norbert Leo Butz.

THE GREAT GATSBY - I am almost positive that I won't like this, and it will be a huge mess, but director Baz Luhrmann is sure to have made a visually stunning mess with great costumes.

THE ENGLISH TEACHER - I'm not always in the front row to see a Julianne Moore movie, but this sounds fun. She's "a small-town schoolteacher [who] risks it all to mount a high school production of a play by her former star student (Michael Angarano), who has come back home after failing to establish himself as a playwright in New York. Bonus: Greg Kinnear and Nathan Lane.

June

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - Joss Whedon, Shakespeare, Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion. 'Nuff said

WORLD WAR Z - I usually avoid zombie movie like a post-apocalyptic plague, but hey, Brad Pitt.

BYZANTIUM - This one sounds a bit like The Hunger, but it stars Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan and is directed by Neil Jordan, so it's definitely worth a shot.

THE HEAT - Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy sound like mis-match made in heaven. And they're cops.

July

THE WAY, WAY BACK - Sam Rockwell. Here's the NYT description: "A shy 14-year-old (Liam James), neglected by his mother (Toni Collette) and her new boyfriend (Steve Carell), gets some essential life lessons from the manager of a water park (Sam Rockwell) over summer vacation. Nat Faxon and Jim Rash directed; with Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Maya Rudolph, Amanda Peet and Rob Corddry." What a cast. And again, Sam Rockwell.

THE ARTIST AND THE MODEL - I'm not sure I'll be able to catch this French film at the theater, but it sounds great; "Jean Rochefort plays an aging sculptor who escapes the troubles of Vichy France by moving to a remote village in the Pyrenees, where a Catalan woman (Aida Folch), her life shattered by the civil war in Spain, becomes his new model. With Claudia Cardinale; Fernando Trueba (“Belle Epoque”) directed, in black-and-white."

GIRL MOST LIKELY - Kristen Wiig, with Annette Bening as her mom.

ONLY GOD FORGIVES - Ryan Gosling, with Kristin Scott Thomas as his mom.

BLUE JASMINE - Woody Allen assembles another fantastic cast: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg.

August

AUSTENLAND - Keri Russell is looking for her own Mr. Darcy, and any movie with Jennifer Coolidge has got to be fun.

What I want to see (but may end up having to wait for on cable):

May

FRANCES HA - A tale of girlfriendship, starring Greta Gerwig.

June

VIOLET & DAISY - Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan turn to crime to get designer duds. With James Gandolfini.

COPPERHEAD - A Civil War story set in the north (New York), with Billy Campbell, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda.

July

THE HOT FLASHES - Another sports underdog movie, directed by Susan Seidelman with a great "mature ladies" cast: Brooke Shields, Wanda Sykes, Virginia Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Camryn Manheim. And Eric Roberts, too.

RED 2 - The first one was fun. It's probably just a DVD, but the cast is hard to resist: Bruce Willis, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and David Thewlis.

R.I.P.D. - "When a cop is killed in the line of duty, he’s promoted to the Rest in Peace Department and assigned to find his killer, from the other side." With Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeff Bridges.

August

BLOOD - Will probably be ultra-violent, but how to resist some of my favorite Brit actors, "a brutal police chief"  played by Brian Cox, his sons, played by Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham, and their colleague, played by Mark Strong.

THE FROZEN GROUND - "A 17-year-old street kid (Vanessa Hudgens) gives an Anchorage detective (Nicolas Cage) the vital clue he needs to stop a serial killer (John Cusack). With 50 Cent." This sounds like such a mess, but I love me some Nic Cage. I don't care much for John Cusack, so I would probably enjoy seeing him as a bad guy.

What I am willing to see with the kid:

EPIC - We liked Rise of the Guardians and this one is based on another book by William Joyce. Plus, Colin Farrell and Chris O’Dowd are two of the voice actors.

June

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY - The trailer is clever. How bad can it be, with Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Charlie Day, Sean Hayes and many others in a Pixar film?

July

DESPICABLE ME 2 - The first one was cute, so I was prepared for the kid wanting to see this one. Steve Carell and Russell Brand are back, also joined by voice actors Ken Jeong, Steve Coogan, and Al Pacino.

THE SMURFS 2 - I knew before the credits rolled on the first one that we would have to see this.

August

PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS - We both liked the first movie, and the sequel has Nathan Fillion and Stanley Tucci — not-too-shabby.

What we both want to see:

May

STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS - Yeah, Star Trek, Spock, blah, blah, blah. Cumberbatch!

NOW YOU SEE ME - An interesting cast with a crime/magician twist: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.

June

MAN OF STEEL - Henry Cavill looks great in the previews as Superman. He's got A-list back-up:  Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne and Russell Crowe.

July

THE LONE RANGER - Johnny Depp as Tonto, but will anyone care about the Lone Ranger? It will be interesting to see Depp in a movie with Helena Bonham Carter and no Tim Burton.

GROWN UPS 2 - Hey, I liked the first one, so sue me.  The gang's all back — Adam Sandler and all his friends: Kevin James, Chris Rock and David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph, and Maria Bello. Hopefully Steve Buscemi will turn up for his usual cameo.

I'll have to check this list again in the fall and see how I did ...

it's hard getting old — about schmidt and everybody's fine

I recently watched two very similarly-themed movies that feature older, recently widowed men and their tenuous attachments to their families, About Schmidt and Everybody's Fine. Both feature great actors getting to play something very rare in Hollywood movies — their age.

In About Schmidt, from 2002, Jack Nicholson is wonderful as Warren Schmidt, a man who has kept life at a distance. As the movie opens he is retiring from a job as an insurance actuary. The opening shots of Omaha's Woodmen of the World building, where Schmidt worked, are fantastic and set the tone for this "life viewed from a distance" film. Schmidt himself has lived most of his life at a distance, void of emotion.  He may or may not have liked his job, but he has certainly spent most of his time involved with it rather than his wife and daughter. A few days into his retirement he is already bored and resenting all of his wife's routines and tics. But almost as soon as he starts to catalogue her faults, she dies, suddenly. His daughter Jeannie, played by Hope Davis, comes for the funeral, but she clearly doesn't care much for him and can't wait to get back to her life in Denver and planning her upcoming wedding.

Awkward airport goodbyes, L-R: Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis and Jack Nicholson

Schmidt isn't sure what it's all about anymore.

Schmidt, "I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me?"

Schmidt decides to sponsor a child from Tanzania, Ndugu, and the film includes voiceover narration of his informative and inappropriate letters to the young boy. As he tells Ndugu, Schmidt strongly disapproves of Jeannie's fiance, waterbed salesman Randall (Dermot Mulroney). But she won't listen  to him and has no desire to come home to Omaha and take care of him. Scenes of Schmidt rambling around his house and life after his wife has died couldn't help but remind me of my dad after my parents' divorce. Whether he was happy in his marriage or not, Schmidt clearly feels rudderless without his wife around.

Kathy Bates is hysterical as Randall's randy mom, Roberta.

In the hot tub with Kathy Bates

Roberta, "You already know how famously they get along as friends, but did you know that their sex life is positively white hot? The main reason both of my marriages failed was sexual. I'm an extremely sexual person, I can't help it, it just how I'm wired, you know, even when I was a little girl. I had my first orgasm when I was six in ballet class. Anyway, the point is that I have been always very easily aroused and very orgasmic, Jeannie and I have a lot in common that way. Clifford and Larry, they were nice guys, but they just could not keep up with me. Anyway, I don't want to betray Jeannie's confidence, but let me just assure you that whatever problems those two kids may run into along the way, they will always be able to count on what happens between the sheets to keep them together. More soup?" 

Schmidt, "Eh... no, I think I'm fine now."

And Nicholson is fine as Schmidt. The camera spends a lot of time on his face, and we get to suffer along with him as he travels the open road, trying to connect with his daughter, with life.

Robert De Niro takes a road trip to visit his kids

Robert De Niro plays a similar character, Frank Goode, in Everybody's Fine, which came out in 2009. It's a remake of an Italian film, Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno Tutti Bene, which I haven't seen. Frank has four children, and none of them want to visit him after their mother dies. One by one, he tries to pay each a visit, some interactions more successful than others. Frank realizes that his kids were able to tell his wife anything, and that now it is easier for them to lie to him. Three of the grown kids, Robert (Sam Rockwell), Rosie (Drew Barrymore), and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) are equal parts suspicious of his motives and grief-stricken. Each has some substantial issues or secrets to work out with their father, but they aren't as disconnected from Frank as Schmidt's daughter Jeannie is in About Schmidt.

Rosie, "We could just talk to mom."
Frank, "Oh, but you couldn't just talk to me?"
Rosie, "Well she was a good listener, you were a good talker."
Frank, "Well so that's good, we made a good team."

De Niro and Drew Barrymore

Everybody's Fine doesn't strike as deep a chord as About Schmidt does, but it is still a nice little film. There is some added drama, as De Niro's Frank has a heart condition and spends most of the movie without some of his necessary medicine, but viewers only have to look to the title to be reassured of the outcome.

As much as aging is depicted as difficult — it's always hard to be on the other side of youth and promise — both men in these films are doing the best they can and are trying to live their lives with dignity. Both films are ultimately uplifting, and definitely worth a look.

sympathy for the devil

When I was just a kid the United States went through its biggest political scandal, Watergate. As Sam Rockwell's James Reston, Jr. reminds the audience at the end of the film Frost/Nixon, the -gate suffix has been added to every scandal since.

My dad, who at the time was the political reporter/Trenton correspondent for the south Jersey newspaper The Daily Observer, was glued to the television throughout the Watergate Hearings, taking copious notes. It was summertime, when my brother and I and even my mom would spend most of our waking hours running around outside, but I remember each of us coming in periodically to check on him, to see if anything had "happened" on T.V. His obsession, the country's obsession, became the whole family's.



As I watched Frost/Nixon the other night I was amazed by Frank Langella's performance. The play and the players are so great that it is hard to judge it critically as a film. I'm usually not a huge fan of Ron Howard's work, but I was riveted. Rockwell seemed at first a bit too cardboard in his one-note outrage. A lot of his early dialogue was expository. But someone had to be the one to provide context, to express the anger and despair at the time of the tarnishing of the Oval Office. We take politics and dirty tricks to be such par for the course these days that it's hard to imagine what it must have felt like at the time to be shocked that a presidential campaign would resort to payoffs and crooked measures to secure an election.

But in the 1970s everyone was shocked. Or, if not completely surprised, at least extremely upset at the illegal lengths an incumbent president might go to win the Presidency. While my dad took notes from the television, my mom, an artist, sketched the trial participants. Her doodles became political cartoons. My dad, although absorbed in the hearings, was not completely oblivious to what was happening around him. When he saw my mother's cartoons he showed them to his boss at the Observer, which led to her doing a few cartoons for the paper, and also doing a caricature portrait of my dad, which would run from that point on with his column.

I didn't understand everything that was going on at the time. I didn't even realize at first that Watergate was a place. But the message was clear. The President of the United States was involved in a crime. With burglars. It was like some distortion of the villains found in the cartoons my brother and I would watch on Saturday mornings. Also clear was that Nixon probably wouldn't be the President much longer. That was really hard for a kid to understand, to accept. Although I expect the grown-ups were having trouble with it, too. Neither my mom nor my dad were Republicans, but they had voted for Nixon in 1972. Maybe the fact that they had crossed party lines made the betrayal a bit more intense for them.




In Frost/Nixon Frank Langella was beyond convincing as Nixon. If I looked away from the screen or closed my eyes, I heard the former president's voice. It was uncanny, and brought me right back to our living room—with a big box-shaped television, gold pile wall-to-wall carpet, and all the windows and doors open on a hot August day while a single oscillating fan tried and failed to cool the room. Langella also lived through that time, which may have aided his effortlessly capturing Nixon and the era. The timbre of his voice was even a bit like my dad's. Did men enunciate more clearly in the seventies and have gravely, baritone voices? Maybe it was all the cigarettes. Most of all, Langella made me feel sympathetic for a man that was a distant figurehead, an unreal wax figure, and made him real. I can't condone what Nixon did, but I can pity Langella's portrayal of Nixon's desperation that led him to make his fatal choices. I don't feel that way for people like Rumsfeld or Cheney. Somehow the crimes of the "father" seem much less today than those of his disciples.

What happened in the Watergate on June 17, 1972 changed the country. Would such a crime have even been noticed today, with all of the other competing worldwide scandals? Would the public have cared as much? Everywhere you look on the internet you see coverage of Wikileaks, which is sort of today's anti-Watergate. But is anyone really reading all the stories? Or about the scandals attached to Julian Assange? The world has changed so much since 1972.

One of my all-time favorite movies is All the President's Men. It's impossible not to get caught up in its dramatic force and its mystery, sometimes forgetting that what you are watching unfold is based on real events. It is a great film—a history, a thriller, an in-depth depiction of the hard work that went into tracking down a newspaper story. In this case, the biggest scoop of all time. Possibly the last one. Watching Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein is nostalgic and a little bit tragic. The two reporters are relentless and rigorous in their pursuit of the facts. They understand the impossibility of what they are up against, a powerful administration that is willing to go far—but they aren't sure how far—to preserve its power base. There may still be journalists who put the facts above everything else, who risk their lives to get a story, but the state of journalism and print is ... well there really is not much of a state. Print is practically dead, and fact-checking, hell, spell-checking seems to be a thing of the past. My father would be appalled at what passes for political journalism today. I would never want to go backwards, but it is a simple fact that if there was another Watergate tomorrow, there is simply not another Woodward and Bernstein around to track it down, much less a Redford and Hoffman to play them in the movie.




All the President's Men has the outrage, the moral indignation of Rockwell's introductory rant in Frost/Nixon. The president is just a shadow figure in the 70s conspiracy drama. We are only shown him briefly, in television news bits. Howard's film and the years have mellowed how I think about Richard Nixon. It's hard to picture him as Tricky Dick, after seeing him envy David Frost for his ease of talking to people at parties. Langella shows us Nixon's fragile side. He makes me have sympathy for the devil.

moon

Sam Rockwell has long been one of my favorite actors. He continues to fly under the radar, which I don't quite understand. I recently caught Moon on cable and was just blown away. It is fascinating, funny, scary and creepy. It is reverent and referential to movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, while managing to be so much more interesting and entertaining, and Solaris, while staying squarely in the character's head. Or does it?

I feel a little strange all the time, a little bit off-center. I never feel that people are as nutty as me.

Moon is a tour-de-force for Rockwell, who gets  almost 100% screen time. And he's never boring. His only other "other" companion up on his moon base is a robot, ably voiced by  Kevin Spacey. Spacey almost makes the viewer and Rockwell's character feel a little less alone. Almost. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Moon doesn't just tell the story of one astro-worker, but of his existence and the force of personality. When one is alone for months, years on end, not participating in life on earth, can one still be of the earth? Can you grow as a person when you're in an isolation tank?

Is Rockwell's life all in his head, making this a purely psychological thriller, or is this a science fiction film not in setting only? And by the way, the moon landscape, the few times Rockwell's character gets to escape from his base, is stunning to look at. Miniatures are still cool on film.

I have a constant sort of melancholy approach to acting that fuels me. I want to do everything.

I completely recommend Moon, along with its Rockwell moon. And the man can DANCE.

I did the odd bit of theater from the age of ten, but I spent most of my time doing the usual teenage things - you know, thinking I was black, trying to break dance and smoking a lot of dope.

He's charm on two legs.





And he can hold his own with Robert De Niro.





He's just good.





All quotes from imdb.

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