Greta

Director Neil Jordan

Actress Chloë Grace Moretz at an event for Greta

Actress Isabelle Huppert doing her thing

GRETA                       D                    

Ireland  USA  (98 mi)  2019 ‘Scope  d:  Neil Jordan             Official Site

This is not Isabelle Huppert as the gregariously sunny and overly friendly tourist in Hang Sang-soo’s delightfully funny Claire's Camera (La caméra de Claire) (2017), but something more along the lines of Paul Verhoeven’s twistedly demented, over-the-top Elle (2016), where Huppert steals the show as a rape victim gone psycho in retaliation, a howling audience pleaser that likely sent Huppert more scripts along similar lines, with this film exploring similar territory.  Here, in an English-speaking role, she’s a wildly exaggerated, wacko stalker character, amusingly borrowing an Olivier Assayas technique utilized in Personal Shopper (2017), where a cellphone becomes an instrument of horror, sending shockwaves of anxiety through the audience in what seems an outrageous sequential sequence of editing, each emailed photo showing a glimpse of someone being followed, literally tracking her by the second, yet there is no one that can be seen, creating a creepy feeling of ghostly invisibility.  Huppert inhabits that unfilled space where you don’t want to go, feeling quite comfortable in the role, perhaps relishing the opportunity, as after each shot is finished shooting, the subsequent relief afterwards is probably a cascade of laughs, as this was probably much more fun to make than to sit in a theater to witness, where it’s all about psychological gamesmanship, offering a few clues along the way, but nothing that would suggest where this one is going.  Neil Jordan hasn’t made a film in 6-years, so something about this intrigued him.  Working with Huppert, who has over 120 film credits to her name, appearing in 20 films premiering in competition at Cannes, also more than 25 stage and nearly 20 television movie appearances, may have been the attraction, as who wouldn’t want to work with her?  She’s a French legend and icon, among the greatest to ever do it, still a force to be reckoned with.  That said, this is not among her better films, but is among her more trashy roles, as she is slumming in B-movie schlock film territory, brazenly going where few artists of her stature ever venture, as it’s considerably beneath her elevated rare air, as she won’t be nominated for any awards with this one, yet it’s to her credit that she’s willing to take on “any” role. 

Never one to shy away from horror films, this is a throwback to the era of films like THE SHINING (1980), DRESSED TO KILL (1980), FATAL ATTRACTION (1987), CAPE FEAR (1991) or BASIC INSTINCT (1992), where seemingly normal characters went off the rails in a ridiculously big way, becoming psychopathic avengers or killers, with overly familiar movie stars having naughty fun scaring the living bejeezus out of audiences.  While there tended to be Hitchcockian sexual undertones, that doesn’t exist here, instead relying upon an unknown factor, namely the death of a parent, which creates a certain amount of sympathy, making it that much easier to exploit the underlying vulnerabilities of the character.  Enter Frances McCullen (Chloë Grace Moretz), a Smith college graduate working as a waitress while living in a stunning Tribeca loft apartment gifted by the wealthy father of her best friend Erica, Maika Monroe from Robert David Mitchell’s urban zombie epic It Follows (2014), who feels like a Valley girl transplant from Southern California, speaking a girl lingo that seemingly only exists in the movies.  Surprisingly short on character development, we never learn much about anyone in this film, no back story, no other friendships to speak of, no social life to draw upon, basically a blank canvas that is sprinkled with various clues throughout, but everything is set in motion from a single seemingly innocuous event, the discovery of a handbag on the subway, with Frances intent on returning it to its rightful owner.  While Erica is all about stealing the cash and tossing the bag, Frances retorts, “That’s just not the way we do things where I’m from.”  Riding her bike across the bridge to Brooklyn (then leaving it unlocked), Frances discovers Greta (Huppert), a middle-aged widow who seems to get by offering piano instruction, playing Liszt as a past time, seemingly leading a lonely life, reaching out to Frances like a long-lost daughter, as her own is too busy living her life in Paris.  Suggesting she might get a pet dog for companionship, Frances agrees to help her pick one out, with Greta choosing the mopiest dog in the kennel, the most disinterested and least desirable, exuding no signs of friendliness, just one day away from being put to sleep.    

  

While these women are bonding, Frances freaks out Erica a bit by avoiding an invitation to a party, instead spending time with Greta, who Erica calls an “old lady,” which seems like misplaced priorities, with Erica berating her “She’s not your mother,” but Frances is actually calling her a friend.  That is, until she discovers Greta has a storage space filled with the exact same handbag, each one with a different girl’s name and phone number attached, signs of a deceitful plot with ominous implications, ignoring her altogether afterwards.  Greta ups the ante, flooding her cellphone with unanswered calls, showing up at work unexpectedly, growing desperate in her absence, showing signs of deteriorating mental instability.  Ignoring her altogether, Greta stands across the street from the restaurant where she works, remaining in that fixed position all day, then suddenly appears outside her apartment.  Calls to the police get her nowhere, as no one’s been threatened, where the police suggest that she simply ignore her.  Yet when she shows up with a restaurant reservation, she throws one hell of a hissy fit, played without an ounce of subtlety, turning demonstrably violent, where she has to be physically removed from the premises, hauled away in a paddy van, with Frances asking the police if she should still just ignore her?  She immediately files for a restraining order, but it takes months to obtain a court hearing, leaving her in a state of limbo.  Of course, things only escalate from there, as Greta turns up unexpectedly just about anywhere, where one of the best scenes in the entire film turns out to be a jolting shock of extreme fear that ends up a dream sequence, yet it magnifies the hold this woman has over Frances’ life.  Before long that hysterical fear becomes her reality, as Greta turns into a hidden monster with the most ridiculously vile motives, turning uglier by the minute, becoming a Gothic horror thriller so over-the-top that its shameless ambition seems designed to creep people out, yet Huppert, a true mastermind of lunacy, sunnily goes about her business, even dancing from the sheer joy of the evil she inflicts, as she’s a woman on a mission, undeterred by any and all obstacles, which she views as mere child’s play after a while, so easily manipulating others seemingly without effort.  Even Jordan regular Stephen Rea makes a brief appearance, but once the storyline takes on the psychotic deliriums of Greta’s deranged state of mind, the film becomes nauseatingly disturbing, too depressing to fall into the camp category, perhaps lacking the lesbian context it needs, especially since she plays the all too recognizable Liebestraum (Dream of Love) on the piano, Liberace Liebestraum.wmv - YouTube (4:34), the kind of lush melody featured in 30’s and 40’s heavily romanticized black and white love stories, instead regressing into the grotesque pleasures of torture porn, becoming little more than a crudely sadistic infantile fantasy.

2014 Top Ten List #3 Clouds of Sils Maria

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA               A                       
France  Switzerland  Germany (123 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Olivier Assayas 

His best film in years, known only as SILS MARIA in France, Assayas stunningly returns to peak form in this modernized twist of his earlier film Irma Vep (1996), a film about the making of film, this time starring Juliette Binoche instead of Maggie Cheung, written by Assayas specifically for her in a project he describes as “A Juliette Binoche movie about Juliette Binoche with Juliette Binoche” in a film about an international theatrical star Maria Enders (Binoche) who is asked to perform in a film adaptation of the play that made her famous twenty years ago, but this time switching roles, no longer playing the beguiling 18-year old rising star actress in the part that made her famous, but the older leading lady, a tired, middle-aged business woman having an affair with the manipulative young female ingénue who eventually drives her weak-willed boss to suicide.  Partially financed by Chanel, which supplied the actresses with clothes, jewelry, accessories and makeup, this also allowed the director to shoot this sumptuously looking film on 35 mm.  Shot on location by cinematographer Yorick Le Saux in the mountainous Swiss Alps towns of Sils Maria as well as Zurich, Switzerland, Leipzig, Germany and South Tyrol, Italy, the locations are an integral part of the story, as Wilhelm Melchior, the author of the aforementioned play Maloja Snake, is a creature of those spectacular mountains, filled with their own secrets and mysteries and naturally occurring phenomenon which begin to take on human characteristics while also offering its own commentary on the changing nature of time passing, which is visibly seen in a fog-like cloud formation that drifts through the valley between the mountains in the form of a snake.  Melchior becomes an unseen central force in the film as Maria, at the height of her stardom but also in the middle of a contentious divorce, is accompanied by her more laid back American personal attendant Valentine, Kristen Stewart in Converse shoes, while traveling to Zurich by train to accept an award on behalf of Melchior, where on route they learn of his sudden death.  Assayas immediately shows us the back side of a famous artist, the side we never see, as Maria seems terribly dependent on the expert social media skills of Valentine, who meticulously plans everything out for her ahead of time, but also acts as a human receptacle for her more candid comments that the public never hears. 

While Maria is obviously shaken by the unexpected death, this doesn’t stop her from doing a planned Chanel dress photo shoot once she arrives at the hotel, where her immediate transformation from ordinary train passenger to international diva is a bit stunning.  Much to her chagrin, they have also invited actor Henryk Walk, Hanns Zischler, a self-centered, autocratic older man in the manner of Erich von Stroheim who took full sexual advantage of the young actress at the beginning of her career, which she has never forgiven, to provide his commentary about Melchior, as they were also close personal friends.  After the Awards ceremony, she meets an in vogue German movie director, Klaus Diesterweg (Lars Eidinger), considered hot property due to his series of successful films, who offers her the older role of his adaptation of Melchior’s play.  While she initially expresses no interest, Val talks her into taking the role, suggesting she would reach an entirely new audience, and with this decision comes the title card announcing “Part 2,” which takes the audience completely by surprise, as there was never any “Part 1.”  This idea of an actress reaching a point in her career (Binoche is 50) when she is no longer considered young and desirable for leading roles, but becomes thought of only for less desirable parts as a character actor, is considered the death of their careers to some actresses, and has been explored before by John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands (in her late 40’s) in Opening Night (1977), one of the gutsiest films about theater ever made, right alongside Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT (1952) and Desplechin’s ESTHER KHAN (2000).  All are dialogue-driven vehicles featuring extraordinary performances, where Rowlands (whose name Binoche amusingly appropriates when disguising her identity) was pathologically reticent to take the part, not yet ready to cross the threshold, while Binoche is clearly more comfortable as an aging actress, partly because she has continued to work with all the best directors and still receives scripts that are written with her in mind.  She couldn’t appear more natural in a film while still playing a role, always seen as warmhearted and charismatic, but the real surprise is Stewart, who matches her scene for scene throughout the entire film by completely underplaying Binoche’s theatrics.  What’s particularly interesting is how quietly reserved and contemplative Binoche is in English, as if always holding something back, while saving her more extroverted outbursts for French language scenes.  

Some of the best scenes in the film are reserved for Binoche and Stewart who work brilliantly together, retaining a hint of the sexual undercurrent expressed in Melchior’s play while also expressing their own unique feminine personalities quite differently, as they retreat to the Melchior estate in the mountains to prepare for the role, which the playwright’s widow Rosa (Angela Winkler) has graciously offered, as she needs to get away to avoid all the constant reminders of his presence.  As they read through the play’s scenes, offering fresh extemporaneous comments as they go, Assayas intelligently dissects the present through the past, with both women displaying strong-willed characters with probing intelligence and an acerbic wit, but also an affectionate side where they’re simply happy to be in each other’s company.  As they weave in and out of the play, while also preparing elaborate meals or taking long walks through the picturesque mountainside, it’s impossible to tell where the play ends and reality begins, as they seamlessly intersect with a surgical precision.  While both women have their own star power, which is beautifully utilized by Assayas, it’s curiously deferred to the ideas of the play, as if they are mere players in the world of art, expressed without an ounce of pretension.  This honesty is then contrasted with the director’s shrewdly calculating choice to play the ambitious young girl, Chloë Grace Moretz as Jo-Ann Ellis, an actress Maria has never heard of.  As Val thumbs through Google searches, hilarious YouTube videos, and even more demented celebrity interviews where Ellis comes off as a teenage prima donna and a full-time party animal whose center of the universe is never far from herself, Maria finds this ghastly while Val is impressed by her ability to hold the audience through each of these arrest records and real life disasters, where she remains exactly who she is without any hint of compromise.  The fact that she’s a walking disaster in real life means nothing, as she knows how to command the screen.  This contextualization couldn’t be more hilariously insightful about what Hollywood is today, while the scene of the film that takes one’s breath away is the appearance of the snake, which finally appears at a crucial stage in the film, expressed through the eloquence of Arnold Frank’s 1924 ten-minute silent short film CLOUD PHENOMENA OF MALOJA (Das Wolkenphänomen von Maloja), which is an awesome declaration of the artistic significance of cinema in its purest form, literally dwarfing what we see today, given such a beautifully sophisticated articulation by Assayas who has made another truly exhilarating film.    

Hick

HICK                          D                    

USA  (95 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Derick Martini                        Official Trailer

You may not want to hear things that make you uncomfortable. But if you just allow girls to be more than one thing, not just virgins, not just whores, not just princesses, not just basket-cases, not just hot chicks, if you just allow us to be, say, human…you might just learn something.      —Andrea Portes (author of Hick)

Rarely has a film with a cast this good sputtered so badly, where one can only place blame with the director, whose previous film LYMELIFE (2009) was another dialog driven work aided by excellent performances.  Adapted by the author, Andrea Portes, from her first novel, there’s plenty of sharp dialog here written from a teen perspective, though it’s undermined by the crudeness of the characters and much of what was probably meant for humor gets lost in a whirlwind of white trash caricatures that thrive on the worst of human nature.  Ultimately this retreats into a horribly misguided and ugly mess, where were it not for the stars, this film should never have been released.  What was probably imagined as a kind of fatal attraction simply never gets started in this amour fou.  At the center of this storm is Chloë Grace Moretz, from HUGO (2011), LET ME IN (2009) and KICK-ASS (2009), an adorable, somewhat pouty young actress who has her work cut out for her, as she’s literally in every shot, also providing an inner voiceover narration and personal drawings as well, all offering insight into her thirteen-year old soul which is just getting started in life.  Moretz, herself, is charming, but no one else is, so she’s left on her own offering a spirited performace that drifts through a wasteland of aimlessness.  The child of two barnstorming drunks, Juliette Lewis and Anson Mount, both inseparable, locked in a tortured marriage, spending their lives arguing, getting wasted and having sex, while Luli (Moretz) survives the chaos existing on small fantasies and macaroni and cheese while drawing colorful pictures of a better life somewhere else, thinking anywhere is better than the dead-end life of rural Nebraska.  It doesn’t take much prodding for her to head for the open road the day after her 13th birthday, carrying with her a Smith and Wesson .45 given to her by her uncle.  Known for her flippant attitude and fast mouth, she’s something of a smart aleck who has survived by being a bigger pain in the ass than those deadbeats and losers around her, creating needed space for herself where she can be on her own.

Heading for Las Vegas, she may as well be heading for Nome, Alaska, as she never gets very far, finding life on the road filled with despicable characters all pretending to be on her side.  Putting up a strong front, she encounters a gimp-legged cowboy named Eddie (Eddie Redmayne), whose pathetic attempts at country charm only provoke crude descriptions of what she plainly thinks of him, expressed in a firebrand of foul mouthed invectives, where she’d rather walk than spend another minute with this loser, so she exits gracelessly.  Not to be deterred, she manages to get a ride with Glenda (Blake Lively), played as a red-haired coke sniffer whose idea of petty cash is whatever she can steal from the next cash register.  Using Luli as bait, the plan works perfectly, only the store clerk drops dead on the spot when Luli goes into her pretend seizure routine, meant only as a distraction, but apparently it was too much.  Glenda takes Luli under her wing, arriving soon enough at the home of a friend, an upscale Texas rancher, Lloyd (Ray McKinnon), a mean and quick-tempered lowlife who gets off degrading and humiliating others.  But it’s here that she meets Eddie again, as he’s working for Lloyd, where one might think fate is bringing them back together.  But they get along no better this time than they did before, still the same nervous lout he was in the beginning, though here he displays even creepier motives, cowardly using Luli as an enticement to settle a losing bet in a pool hall, and then when she’s half raped, he barges in like a bat out of hell to supposedly rescue her.  Despite all attempts to establish some chemistry between them, Eddie is too far off his rocker to be of any interest to anyone.  When he gets all liquored up, full of himself with his newly won prize, ready to reap the reward in some cheap motel for rescuing the fair damsel in distress, the story only gets more wretched, though there is an all too brief reprise with Rory Culkin that allows Luli to glow before she gets sucked into the darkness. 

What’s particularly distressing here is how the dark themes that inspired the book are treated with such a clumsy and heavy-handed manner here, where the story escalates into predictably unsavory territory without any of Luli’s spunk and personal flair for self-preservation that opened the film.  Despite more degrading horrors that lie in store for her, don’t think for a minute that she is beaten down or defeated, but the tone of the film fails to register with her interior moods and growing sense of independence, and instead uses stale and typically predictable country ballads and Dylan anthems that she probably never heard to express open road themes.  But despite being a road journey where the unknown lies around every bend, this film is terribly out of synch and dwells far too long on the ugly and awkwardly uncomfortable moments of a sick and twisted man’s rape fantasies.  This is as far removed from her drawings and voiceover narration as you can get, and the director does nothing to link or connect these polar opposites.  Luli is seen from the outset as a young girl that rails with a sense of personal pride and growing sense of independence, funny, always curious, with a keen intelligence, yet remains fragile and unsure of herself in this godforsaken world, needing love and guidance and something that she can hold on to, but this director has all but abandoned her perky wit and humor and instead allows Eddie’s disgustingly sick mentality to dominate and destroy the picture.  Even if little is graphically shown, nothing good can come from what the director reveals.  The headstrong and precocious girl with the snarky tone, she’s worth spending time with, her wounded life is worth exploring, not the psychopath that probably belongs in another movie who unfortunately takes center stage.  Initially Colin Farrell (as Eddie) and Kirsten Dunst (as Glenda) were slated to make the film, and perhaps things might have been different, but this is a film unworthy of the performance Moretz gives, that instead feels dirty and contaminated. 

Hugo in 3D

HUGO in 3D                            B+                  

USA  (127 mi)  2011  d:  Martin Scorsese  Official Facebook    Official Site  book website

No one questions Martin Scorsese’s sincerity when it comes to movies, as he’s a director obsessed with the history of movies, supporting the video releases of lesser known directors that may have received little exposure initially, and is one of the most outspoken advocates supporting film preservation.  He is perhaps the most knowledgeable American professor on the subject of cinema, as it’s a world he knows inside and out, being the elder statesman of American directors, having made movies since the late 1960’s, including two of the most critically acclaimed films ever made, RAGING BULL (1980) and GOODFELLAS (1990).  Everyone may have a different favorite, but no one disputes his mastery of the art form.  As a child, his mother thought it odd that he insisted on watching Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s THE RED SHOES (1948) over and over again, as he was mesmerized by the construction of such an enchantingly beautiful film. Throughout his career, most all of his films have catered to adult subject matter, where language alone, let alone excessive violence, may not be suitable for smaller children.  With this film, a screen adaptation of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a book which won the Caldecott Medal in 2008 for the most distinguished children’s picture book, Scorsese has finally found the right source material to make his first children’s film.  While the book is 533 pages, more than half are pencil drawings by the author where the illustrations are used to balance the way the story is told and ultimately understood, so a supremely gifted visual artist could only enhance the experience, which Scorsese chose to render in 3D, another first in his career.  The 3D glasses do darken the already darkened atmosphere, but also offer a bit of playfulness to some of the scenes, perhaps stretching the imagination somewhat, especially seeing 100-year old historic archival footage in 3D, which has never been done before, but they are by no means necessary to appreciate this film, which has a wonderful story.  However, with Scorsese at the helm, why not opt for the best?

From the opening shot, we’re quickly reminded of the overly cute, Frenchified version of Paris in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s AMELIE (2001), which features swooping camera shots and picture postcard panoramas, as the camera pulls the viewers into an extended sequence that sweeps across the city landscape, guiding us past historical monuments through the Parisian streets and into a busy train station, finally resting upon the eyes of a young child perched high atop a rooftop looking out over the station below, peering through an inside opening of a clock tower.  But this is not your typical children’s adventure story, despite the French accordions playing as people in the crowded streets of Paris run right past one another, bypassing the friendly shops and outdoor café’s, creating a stampede effect in order to get to their trains on time.  Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is the child in the opening shot, a bright young boy cloistered away living high above the fray through the ventilation ducts and cavernous back passageways in a darkened 1930’s world filled with blowing steam and giant churning gears constantly turning, where the clicking sound is everpresent as he’s literally living behind the elevated clocks of the train station, like Quasimoto or The Phantom of the Opera.  In flashback sequences, his father (Jude Law) taught him to fix clocks and develop a fascination for fixing things, tinkering with various spare parts that he finds or steals, along with handfuls of food, but his father and his uncle die, so he now lives a Dickensian existence on his own, an orphan secretly inheriting the family job of winding all the clocks at the station so that they run on time.  His real life’s obsession, however, is trying to repair an automaton, an item discarded and rescued by his father from a museum, a small steel creature in the form of a human that runs on gears and springs and wires.  But so far Hugo has been stumped at making it work. 

Instead Hugo’s regularly harassed by the bumbling train inspector (Sasha Baron Cohen) and his vicious Doberman tracking hound, threatening to send any loitering orphans to the orphanage, which he does with a sadistic relish, an orphan of the war himself taking pride in carrying out his civic responsibilities by bullying and manhandling the little buggers, throwing them in a tiny locked cage like one might do with an escaped pet.  Hugo is also mistreated by a grumpy old man with a continuous scowl on his face that runs a toy shop (Ben Kingsley), who’s constantly berating Hugo as a thief as he’s forever stealing tiny parts needed for clock repairs.  The old man absconds with Hugo’s secret notebook, the one given to him by his father with all the drawings on how to construct the automaton, where he’s hoping it will help him figure out how to make it work.  When the old man threatens to burn it, Hugo follows him to his home where in the window he sees his goddaughter Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), a girl about his same age, so he pleads for her help in the matter.  Something of a bookworm, she’s more interested in an adventure, so the two set out together on a mission of discovery, where she wears around her neck a secret key that may mysteriously help with the automaton, but also includes her first trip to the cinema watching Harold Lloyd’s dangling rooftop clock sequence in SAFETY LAST (1923) harold Lloyd Safety Last (on YouTube 5:55) and regular visits to the library where the elderly librarian (Christopher Lee) directs them to books on the history of cinema, which opens up a whole new world.  Apparently this is a movie for kids with intelligence who aren’t afraid of difficult or complicated emotions and love to find things in the dusty bins at the library, much like the director's own childhood.  Even as this film initially meanders to find its footing, Scorsese fills the screen with a rich and meticulous tapestry of vivid detail, always dazzling the eye with visual originality and flair.

Saving the best for last, through a series of spectacular flashback sequences, the grumpy old man, Isabelle’s godfather, is none other than George Méliès, one of the founding fathers of cinema, who around the turn of the century made a collection of moving pictures that specialized in magic acts and special effects, like disappearing heads or dancing skeletons, flying objects, missiles to the moon, mermaids and underwater sea creatures, all of which Scorsese lovingly recreates here and were thought destroyed during WWI when movie interest waned and Méliès was forced to sell his celluloid prints, as requisitioned by the Army, which melted them down for the liquid contents in making boot heels.  With Hugo’s rabid interest in rediscovering these films, Scorsese has a field day bombarding the viewers with a mesmerizing collage of turn of the century films, updated in 3D, offering special visualizations never before seen or even imagined.  This is a bonanza of unique discoveries, nothing less than spectacular, including hand print colorizing, something Guy Maddin used to love to do, offering a one-of-a-kind glimpse into the birth of cinema as conceived by none other than America’s reigning film historian.  This is a child’s adventure story where the world of adults is threatening and occasionally hurtful, but one that’s constantly changing and inventively different, that offers a chance at real discovery, where if you pursue your curiosity in life, you just might find your interests could change the shape and vision of the world.  This is a film near and dear to Scorsese’s heart, as who would have thought some kid from the Little Italy neighborhood in New York City, where he witnessed firsthand how gamblers and mobsters ran their underworld rackets, would end up becoming one of the foremost film historians and preservationists, not to mention one of the premiere artists of the past century.  This is a spellbinding trip to the movies that becomes an excursion into the history of movies itself—delightful.