American Made (2017)

Jack and I really liked this story of Barry Seal, a real pilot who worked for the CIA, the Contras, and others in the late 70s and early 80s. Tom Cruise is perfectly cast as the impulsive, audacious Seal, in an entertaining performance.

Cruise (last blogged for Edge of Tomorrow) makes us think of Top Gun and even Risky Business as his Seal has talent, charisma, and guts to get ahead. Domhnall Gleeson (rhymes with PHONE-ull, most recently in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens) has bravado of his own as "Schafer," Seal's CIA recruiter, and Sarah Wright (I can't be sure why she looks familiar, maybe her series arc on Parks & Recreation?) is great as Barry's devoted wife Lucy.

There are occasional historical film and still clips from the real events, including the disclosure that director Doug Liman's (helmed Edge of Tomorrow) father Arthur L. Liman was Chief Counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Reagan Administration's arms-for-hostages scheme known as the Iran-contra affair, which definitely involved our pilot, Barry Seal. The script by Gary Spinelli (his second) was on the 2014 Black List of most liked unproduced screenplays. We also appreciated the technical explanations of some of the aeronautics feats.

The cinematography by César Charlone (last blogged for Blindness) is terrific, and I must mention the magnificent aerial photography by Dylan Goss (here are the movies in this blog for which he's done that job: Up in the Air, Valentine's Day, Samsara, Rock of Ages, Now You See Me, Elysium, Million Dollar Arm, Annie, Sicario, Straight Outta Compton, Concussion, The Boss, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Blade Runner 2049. And that's not close to all of his aerial photography credits).

A warning to my fellow sufferers of MPMS, also known as Motion-Picture-Motion-Sickness: you will not do well watching this on the big screen without medication, so be prepared or wait for video. Here's my full list.

We boomers loved the period music from one of the periods we lived. Here's a playlist that includes pop tunes as well as some original music by Christophe Beck (last scored Sisters, another one full of recent period music). Imdb has a pretty complete list of the songs.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics at 87 and its audiences at 80 are flying high with this one and we agree.

There's a little bonus written at the end of the credits--geography buffs will enjoy it. And with 32 producers, this movie goes on my list for the producers plethora prize, though it's going to be hard to beat the current leader with 41. Here's my list of those.

This movie is a big milestone for babetteflix. It is number 1000--I have now written about one thousand movies on this blog since September 3, 2008 (a few weeks after my only child left for college). Inspired by Julie & Julia, wherein Julie Powell kept count in her blog of how many recipes she cooked, I began counting movies on my blog. Sometimes I forget to write about one and add a short summary later in honor of my obsessive-compulsive personality (not a disorder in my case, I guess). Another milestone will be coming up because the blog contains summaries of nineteen movies that I saw before the start date and OCP makes me want to know exactly how many distinct movies I have seen in that time period. Three drafts to write (as of today) and still counting! I have an alphabetical list where I update the numbers each time.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Jack and I liked this sci-fi action story of the future interactions between humans and robotic/android beings known as replicants. A sequel to the 1982 hit, it features magnificent cinematography, production design, and special effects.

Ryan Gosling (last blogged for Song to Song) puts aside emotions to star as K, a youngish replicant who works for the Los Angeles Police Department hunting older replicants who might interfere with the new world order, as led by his human boss Robin Wright (most recently in Wonder Woman). Two comely replicants are played by actresses new to me: Ana de Armas as K's holographic girlfriend Joi and Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, assistant to corporate warlord Niander Wallace, played by Jared Leto (last blogged for his Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyer's Club), who despite being pictured on all posters, isn't in the movie much. Harrison Ford (most recently in these pages for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens), starred in the original movie and reprises his role of Deckard, making his first appearance after an hour and 45 minutes of the 2:44 running time has elapsed. It's nice to see Mackenzie Davis (after The Martian, we appreciated her starring role in the Emmy-winning episode of Black Mirror) and Carla Juri (played Inka, a nice German friend in Morris from America) as the immune deficient scientist.

Director Denis Villeneuve (Oscar-nominated for Arrival) works from a script by Hampton Fancher (he co-wrote the original and a couple of other movies) and Michael Green (co-writer of Logan).

The aforementioned photography is thanks to Roger Deakins (last in these pages for shooting Hail, Caesar!), and includes wide shots of sci-fi milieux, with a nod to production design Dennis Gassner (won an Oscar for Bugsy (1991), was nominated for Barton Fink (1991), Road to Perdition (2002), The Golden Compass (2007), and Into the Woods; and is also known for fine work on The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The Truman Show (1998), Field of Dreams (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Big Fish (2003), Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall, to name a few) and his crew.

Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer, who collaborated on the sweet score for Hidden Figures, give us a scary soundtrack that can be streamed for an hour and a half (including five short songs by others) from this youtube link.

I moved to LA and began film school in 1982. We saw the first Blade Runner in one of our screening rooms and I distinctly remember being depressed by the dark, foggy atmosphere shown in the future of Los Angeles, wondering what I had gotten myself into. It took place in 2019. This 2049 LA is even more depressing but I didn't take it personally when we saw it two weeks ago.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics at 88% and its audiences at 81 are liking this one a lot. Fan-kids should see it.

Gotham award nominations for independent films

The nominations came out last week. The awards will be at the end of November. Some of these movies haven't been released anywhere yet, those that are in the blog are linked.

http://variety.com/2017/film/awards/gotham-awards-nominations-2017-1202594047/

Best Feature
Call Me by Your Name (Sony Pictures Classics)
The Florida Project (A24)
Get Out (Universal Pictures)
Good Time (A24)
I, Tonya (NEON/30WEST)

Best Documentary
Ex Libris – The New York Public Library (Zipporah Films)
Rat Film (MEMORY and Cinema Guild)
Strong Island (Netflix)
Whose Streets? (Magnolia Pictures)
The Work (The Orchard and First Look Media)

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award
Maggie Betts for Novitiate (Sony Pictures Classics)
Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (A24)
Kogonada for Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field)
Jordan Peele for Get Out (Universal Pictures)
Joshua Z Weinstein for Menashe (A24)

Best Screenplay
The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (Amazon Studios)
Brad’s Status, Mike White (Amazon Studios)
Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory (Sony Pictures Classics)
Columbus, Kogonada (Superlative Films/Depth of Field)
Get Out, Jordan Peele (Universal Pictures)
Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig (A24)

Best Actor
*Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project (A24)
James Franco in The Disaster Artist (A24)
Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (Universal Pictures)
Robert Pattinson in Good Time (A24)
Adam Sandler in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Netflix)
Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky (Magnolia Pictures)

Best Actress*
Melanie Lynskey in I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Netflix)
Haley Lu Richardson in Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field)
Margot Robbie in I, Tonya (NEON/30WEST)
Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird (A24)
Lois Smith in Marjorie Prime (FilmRise)

Breakthrough Actor
Mary J. Blige in Mudbound (Netflix)
Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name (Sony Pictures Classics)
Harris Dickinson in Beach Rats (NEON)
Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in It Comes at Night (A24)
Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project (A24)


* The 2017 Best Actor/Best Actress nominating committee also voted to award a special Gotham Jury Award for ensemble performance to Mudbound, The award will go to actors Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, and Jonathan Banks.

Victoria & Abdul (2017)

Jack and I loved this story of the friendship between the elderly Queen of England and a young Muslim servant from India at the end of her life. Dame Judi Dench is spectacular in this "unofficial sequel" to Mrs. Brown (1997), which I highly recommend, too. More on that in a moment.

Dench (last blogged for The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and Ali Fazal (new to me) have good chemistry in their platonic relationship. Many good laughs are provided by Adeel Akhtar (The Dictator, Kumail's brother in The Big Sick, lots of TV, more), who plays Abdul's countryman Mohammed. As for the Brits, Tim Pigott-Smith (over 100 credits, including the title role in the Masterpiece Theatre TV-movie King Charles III, about current Prince Charles ascending to the throne. Pigott-Smith died in April 2017 and his passing and that of production designer Alan MacDonald are observed in the credits) is notable as Sir Henry Ponsonby, the queen's private secretary, as is Eddie Izzard (a stand-up comedian, he's been good in Velvet Goldmine (1998), The Cat's Meow (2001) as Charlie Chaplin, Romance & Cigarettes, Ocean's Twelve and Thirteen (2004, '07), Valkyrie, and the wonderful series The Riches, among others) as "Bertie," Prince of Wales. Simon Callow (last in Viceroy's House) has a cameo as opera composer Giacomo Puccini, who, according to Jack, was a bad singer so Callow's performance is spot on.

Director Stephen Frears (last helmed Florence Foster Jenkins, about a notoriously bad singer) brings to life the screenplay by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot (2000) and War Horse) adapted from the 2011 book by Shrabani Basu.

Cinematographer Danny Cohen and late production designer Alan MacDonald both worked with Frears on Florence and the work is beautiful here as well.

The entire soundtrack by Thomas Newman (most recently scored Passengers) can be streamed from this link.

For back story, do check out the movie Mrs. Brown (stream the whole movie from this link or rent from amazon if the link fails) from 20 years ago, wherein Dench's Victoria (1819-1901) is mourning the 1861 death of her husband and in 1863 becomes close friends with John Brown, a Scottish servant, played by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly. Dench was Oscar-nominated for that role.

References are made to John Brown, especially one particularly clever line, in this movie which begins in 1887 with her Golden Jubilee (i.e. 50 years on the throne), four years after Brown's death. In both cases, the queen is lonely and disconsolate after losing her man and the new one cheers her up. For further youthful Vicky viewing, check out The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt, and the PBS series Victoria (you have to be a certain level of donor to stream episodes from their official site), with season 2 coming in January.

Jack wanted me to check two things. As he suspected, the statue shown at the end of the movie isn't actually where the filmmakers show it. And, although, many have written about Queen Victoria's lust for food, her fast eating, the rule that others at the table must stop and have their plates removed when the Queen is finished with her course, and her 50 inch waist (there are some bloomers in a museum somewhere to prove it) on her 4'11" frame, I couldn't find any research proving that she ate with her fingers at royal banquets. It does make for a good scene.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are on the cool side for this, averaging 66 and 72% respectively. We think it's wonderful.

Brad’s Status (2017)

Jack and I really liked this cringe-inducing comedy about a father, played by Ben Stiller, verging on a nervous breakdown while taking his son college visiting. If that doesn't make you want to run screaming from the room, you might like it too.

Stiller (after I wrote about him for While We're Young he had a cameo in Don't Think Twice) is a master at playing neurotic and narcissistic and this is no exception. Jenna Fischer's (best known for 188 episodes of the American version of The Office, she has dozens of other credits, including all ten episodes of You, Me and the Apocalypse and three of The Mysteries of Laura, to name just a few) Melanie is a nice foil to Brad's intensity as his easy-going optimistic wife, and Austin Abrams (at age 21 he's got a number of credits but I don't think I've seen any) is a strong, silent type as son Troy.

Brad's old college buddies, all wealthy, inspire much jealousy even though Brad has chosen to work in nonprofits. Michael Sheen, Jemaine Clement, and Luke Wilson (last blogged for Home Again, The BFG, and The Skeleton Twins, respectively) are great as those men.

Director/writer Mike White (covered in my blog post for Beatriz at Dinner, which he wrote) makes his feature directing debut here after six episodes of Enlightened and a TV movie and onscreen plays another now-wealthy college buddy.

We saw this over three weeks ago but I think we liked the music by Mark Mothersbaugh (scored Beatriz) but, like that soundtrack, none is available online. Here's a partial list of songs.

Clearly, most of Rotten Tomatoes' critics didn't want to run screaming from the room, averaging 81% instead of its audiences who were edging towards the exits at 59. As an Amazon production, it's likely to be found on some of your streaming devices soon.

Home Again (2017)

This fluffy comedy about a separated 40-something woman moving home to LA, having an affair with a much younger man living in her guest house with his colleagues, and trying to keep herself, her girls, and her mother happy felt old school, especially since we saw it in a historic Westwood theatre while visiting Los Angeles five weeks ago. But probably some of that old school feel is owed to the heritage of its director/writer Hallie Meyers-Shyer (her debut for both), the daughter of veteran rom-com couple Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer (Meyers was last blogged for It's Complicated, she last worked with her now-ex-husband Shyer on The Parent Trap 1998 remake, and is a producer on this project).

Reese Witherspoon (after I wrote about her in Inherent Vice, she co-starred and co-produced the terrific mini-series Big Little Lies) is a great choice for the conflicted Alice. An even better choice is Candice Bergen (her glorious career has earned her an Oscar nomination for Starting Over (1979), and several Emmys and Golden Globes for her 247 episodes of Murphy Brown; and other highlights include Carnal Knowledge (1971), Rich and Famous (1981), Ghandi (1982), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), 91 episodes of Boston Legal (2005-08), the not-very-good remake of The Women, and a cameo in Rules Don't Apply) as Alice's former movie star mother, complete with lovely old photos of Bergen.

The three young men are played by Nat Wolff (last blogged for Grandma), Jon Rudnitsky (21 episodes of Saturday Night Live which, apparently, I did not see), and the impossibly handsome Pico Alexander (new to me) as Alice's paramour. Michael Sheen (most recently in these pages for Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer) is credible as Alice's estranged husband, and Lake Bell (last blogged for Million Dollar Arm) has a hilarious bit as a spoiled trophy wife.

John Debney (most recently scored The Jungle Book) wrote some music but I can't remember it nor find it online. It doesn't help that he wrote a song called Home Again for a sci-fi movie called Zathura. But I recall enjoying the songs. Here's a list of some of them.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are hating on this one, averaging 31% to its audiences 52. It's definitely not great art. But we picked it because we wanted something light on vacation. If you want to see it, it'll be available to stream in November and rent or buy in December at the usual outlets.

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

As expected, Jack and I liked very much this dramatization of the 1973 Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs tennis match, the personal lives of the players, and the social challenges of the time. Emma Stone (last blogged for La La Land) and Steve Carell (most recently in these pages for Café Society) are terrific as King and Riggs. So are Andrea Riseborough (last in Nocturnal Animals) as the tour hairdresser Marilyn who plays a pivotal part, Sarah Silverman (most recently blogged for The Book of Henry) as the women's tennis spokesperson Gladys Heldman, and Elisabeth Shue (Oscar-nominated for Leaving Las Vegas in 1995, she was also good in The Karate Kid (1984), Cocktail (1988), Back to the Future parts II and III (1989 and '90), Mysterious Skin (2004), and, as herself, Hamlet 2, among others) as Riggs' wife.

Originally Danny Boyle was set to direct from a script by Simon Beaufoy (last blogged for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen). When Boyle had a scheduling conflict with T2 Trainspotting, he stayed as producer and brought in the married directing team of Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (most recently in these pages for Ruby Sparks, they directed Carell in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Good choice. It all feels pretty authentic, including the use of historic footage, although apparently the filmmakers took some liberties with various timelines. After seeing the movie, you may want to read this analysis.

Before his birthday in August, Carell and Stone, at 54 and 28, mirrored the age difference between Riggs and King (55 and 29) in 1973. No big surprise that there were tennis-playing doubles for both of them, with Stone's and Carell's faces added in post-production.

We enjoyed hearing the hits of the 70s, listed here with clips, as well as the original soundtrack by Nicholas Britell (last blogged for his Oscar-nominated score for Moonlight), which you can stream from this playlist.

I can't find the exact quote, but I heard King say (or read that she said) that, despite her record twenty Wimbledon titles, including six for singles, and many other accomplishments in the sport, she is best known for this match which was more about entertainment than athleticism.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are averaging 84 to its audiences' 76%. Just go see it to remind yourself that we've come a long way, baby (in some ways but not in others)!