Film Freak Central

ICYMI (11/24/17)

Opening this Thanksgiving weekend in select cities is Joe Wright's Winston Churchill drama Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman and a Costco tub of latex. And don't miss Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut Lady Bird, which has been quietly expanding into more theatres. Our own Walter Chaw covered both films at this year's Telluride.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

Planes, Trains & Automobiles
****/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Steve Martin, John Candy, Laila Robins, Michael McKean
written and directed by John Hughes

by Bill Chambers It took thirty years and multiple viewings before I finally realized that John Hughes's Planes, Trains & Automobiles is about many things, but mostly it's about a trunk. A behemoth fit for a starlet taking a cruise to Skull Island, the trunk is the property of travelling salesman Del Griffith (John Candy), who peddles shower-curtain rings for American Light & Fixture.¹ Indeed, it's his avatar. Stuffy ad exec Neal Page (Steve Martin) trips over it while racing special-guest-star Kevin Bacon for a New York City cab at rush hour. It's fate. Del will obliviously steal the taxi Neal does manage to flag down, but it's not until they wind up sitting across from each other in LaGuardia that Neal puts a face to the trunk, reinforcing his bias against the moustachioed stranger--a sort of benign Ignatius J. Reilly who, between his girth and his luggage and, arguably, his indifference to Neal's boundaries, is the textbook definition of a man-spreader. The trunk disappears for long stretches, though it has a habit of bobbing back up into the frame the second you've forgotten about it completely. It's uncanny that way.

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017) - Netflix

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
**/****
directed by Chris Smith

by Alice Stoehr A few decades ago, Jim Carrey was a rising star of stand-up comedy ready to leave the Toronto suburbs. In mid-'90s Hollywood, he became a household name. Now he's wistful and solidly middle-aged. "Every time you open your mouth you learn something about yourself," he says. "Especially when you play characters." This introspection forms the spine of Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, a documentary about his performance as Andy Kaufman in the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon. The present-day Carrey wears a leather jacket, with a salt-and-pepper beard on his famously rubbery face. Shot head-on or from a three-quarter view, he recounts turmoil on the film's set: "Most people felt that the movie was happening behind the camera." A trove of long-suppressed behind-the-scenes footage woven around the interview shows Carrey disappearing into his role, much to director Miloš Forman's chagrin. He insists his co-stars address him as "Andy;" parades around as Kaufman's loathsome alter ego, Tony Clifton; and repeatedly antagonizes wrestler Jerry Lawler, who plays himself in the movie. Kaufman's real-life family drops by the set and can hardly believe the resemblance.

Justice League (2017)

*/****
starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams
screenplay by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw Marrying the worst parts of Zack Snyder with the worst parts of Joss Whedon (who stepped in to complete the film after Snyder had a family tragedy), DC's superhero team-up dirge Justice League shambles into unnatural half-life with a message of apocalyptic doomsaying presented now without puke filters, so that it looks like a movie my mom watches on her television with the motion-smoothing turned on. The same trick has been attempted with a script burdened by Whedon's patented hipster-ese, which went stale about halfway through "Buffy"'s run, let's face it. The Flash's non sequiturs (Whedon's suggesting he's autistic (which isn't funny)), Aquaman's hearty, get-a-haircut bro-clamations ("I dig it!" and "Whoa!" and so on)--all of it is so poorly timed that it's possible to become clinical about what happens when a punchline is grafted onto a piece at the eleventh hour, and it doesn't help that no one in this cast is known for being even remotely funny or glib. Jason Momoa is a lot of things; Noël Coward ain't one of them. When Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) shakes her head bemusedly (I think) and says warmly (I guess), "Children. I work with children," you get that sick, embarrassed feeling that happens when you're watching a person you want to like succumb to flop sweat and overrehearsal.

Hana-bi (1998) - Blu-ray Disc

Fireworks
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Beat Takeshi, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima
written and directed by Takeshi Kitano

by Walter Chaw Nishi loves her very much, but when she tries to link arms with him for a photograph, he pulls away. He's not comfortable with his emotions. He's from both a culture and a profession that frowns on that sort of thing. When his co-workers talk about him, they do so in hushed tones and warn one another not to get too familiar, even in their gossip. He's lost a daughter and his wife is very ill. They make allowances for him one day and it results in the crippling of his partner. Nishi avenges him, but another young cop dies in the process. Nishi, dispassionate, empties his gun into the bad guy's skull. But his partner is still abandoned by his wife and child for not being the man he used to be. None of this is how it's supposed to work. Men are taught to be a specific way and promised rewards for their stoicism and brutality. I'm 44 years old. It's taken most of my adult life to begin to unravel the ways that expectation and breeding have made it hard for me to tell my wife, whom I love in a devastating way, "I love you." I was afraid to have kids because I didn't know if I could tell them I loved them. I have two. I tell them every day. I make myself. Takeshi Kitano's Hana-bi deals with the consequences of masculinity--perhaps the most trenchant exploration of the theme not written or directed by Walter Hill. The film understands that some men can only express themselves through motion, which isn't enough in the best of times and is laughably insufficient in the worst of them. Of all the '90s masterpieces of world cinema, Hana-bi is my favourite.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

**½/****
starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins
written by Eric Pearson and Craig Kyle & Christopher L. Yost
directed by Taika Waititi

by Walter Chaw I've reached a limit with facility, I think--a point at which things that are professionally-executed and entirely meaningless just slide off into a kind of instant nothingness. I'm talking about machine-tooled product, a brand like Kleenex or Kellogg's, where the only time there's any awareness of consumption is when the experience of it is unexpected in some way. There's a reason people see the Virgin Mary in potato chips sometimes. Variation in extruded products is so exceedingly rare that it's akin to holy visitation: some accidental proof of the supernatural; a glitch in the Matrix. Marvel films are akin now to your daily lunch. You can remember the stray meal. Mostly, it's something you do knowing you've had one yesterday and are likely to have one tomorrow. If you're like most of us, you could probably eat better.