NYFF: "Martha Marcy May Marlene"

Her name is Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) but we first know her as Marcy when she slips quietly out of a crowded farmhouse where women much like her sleep in huddles, like a happy litter of puppies. Her absence is quickly noted by one of the men on the farm named Watts (Brady Corbett) and Marcy hides in the forest while her once slumbering sisters and their men search for her, continually calling out "Marcy May." Once Marcy has reached a neighboring town, she makes a trembling entirely inarticulate phone call. An unidentified woman answers:

Martha, is that you?" 

Marcy Doesn't Live Here Anymore

We know instinctively that she is, though we know little else in these first few minutes of writer/director Sean Durkin's feature debut Martha Marcy May Marlene. 

The woman on the phone is Martha's estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) who whisks the young woman away from the mountains to the even more idyllic river side landscape surrounding the far less crowded summer home Lucy shares with her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). What's comforting to us in their recognizable domesticity, is obviously alien to Martha. The narrative is all friction between the past (Marcy) and present (Martha) and shifts between them sometimes imperceptibly and other times forcefully. The past scenes become in essence an unlocking of the puzzle of Martha's life on the farm with the father/husband figure and shepherd (John Hawkes, Winter's Bone) and his free love flock (to the movie's credit the word "cult" is never uttered). These revelations about Martha's previous life have the pesky tendency to lead the moviegoer to yet more disturbing questions which will probably not have answers.

Patrick sings an entranced Marcy a song he wrote for her.

Martha... possibly hits a few of its scariest notes too obviously, but mostly it's a model of restraint and cool control. That's particularly true of Elizabeth Olsen's interiority as the title character. She's trusting that her blurry contradictory identity -- an uncomfortable mix of rigid thinking, moral confusion, and open physicality -- will be enough to sell this lost woman. The fine ensemble cast is also a boon: Hawkes brings his Winter's Bone friction of menacing stranger and filial protector and Corbett and the other cult members are a believable mix of old phantom selves fading into shadows of Patrick. In the present tense scenes, which could almost read as a satire of stories about obnovious in-laws if it had anything like a sense of humor, Paulson and Dancy sketch in a realistic background marriage that's challenged by the needy relative in the foreground. But it's the writer/director that's the movie's true star. Durkin's screenplay's rich subtext that neither Martha nor Marcy are anything like their own woman, no matter the surroundings, shines. He also makes several smart choices in the filmmaking, often eschewing the comfort of close-ups and traditional scoring, to build a quiet cumulative menace. The cinematography in particular by Jody Lee Lipes is just right with its diffuse earthy warmth as seductive blanketing for a story that's anything but.

Elizabeth Olsen and Sarah Paulson in "Martha Marcy May Marlene""What's in a name?" the doomed Juliet once asked, trying to argue their meaning of Romeo's away. But her efforts were in vain. None of us initially choose the names we're given but as we move through life, plenty of us make small adjustments, concessions, and shifts along the way to shore up our increasing ownership of self.

Before seeing Martha Marcy May Marlene, I liked its "name" a lot. Having now seen the film it's representing, the title vaults over into a thing of pure genius. Film titling is an undersung artform. You could theoretically call this movie about a somewhat nondescript girl haunted by her former life in a cult in New York's Catskills Mountains just about anything. But "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is the perfect, yet far from obvious, choice. It's a riddle, an incantation, a theme. What other name but a series of them could so accurately capture the mystery, simplicity, and loss of self, that's the haunted vacuum center of this stunning debut? A-

Previously on NYFF
The Kid With a Bike races into Kurt's hearts.
George Harrison: Living in the Material World is music to Michael's ears.
A Separation floors Nathaniel. A frontrunner for the Oscar?
The Student makes Nathaniel cram for quizzes that never come.
Carnage raises its voice at Nathaniel but doesn't quite scream.
Miss Bala wins the "must-see crown" from judge Michael.
Tahrir drops Michael right down in the titular Square.
A Dangerous Method excites Kurt... not in that way, perv!
The Loneliest Planet brushes against Nathaniel's skin.
Melancholia shows Michael the end of von Trier's world. 

The Little Mermaid... She's Gotta Have It.

With this week's Disney announcement that The Little Mermaid will get 3D rerelease treatment (along with other pictures) that put The Lion King back on everyone's lips, I thought it was time to republish this piece on the classic film...

The Little Mermaid (1989)  | Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker Screenplay by Roger Allers, Ron Clements, and John Musker (very loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale) | Music by Alan Menken Lyrics by Howard Ashman | Starring the Voices of: Jodie Benson, Pat Carroll, Kenneth Mars and Samuel E Wright | Production Company Walt Disney | Released 11/17/1989

American members of Generation Y or Z and beyond may have a good deal of trouble imagining this but it's true: once upon a time, animated movies were considered highly uncool. They were strictly for babies. Teenagers disdained them. Adults took their children under duress. They barely caused a ripple at the box office. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ignored them. CGI was not part of the national vernacular. Strange but true.

In a very short window of time, from November 1989 through February 1992, three major events changed modern perceptions of the animated film in a gargantuan way. Let's take them in reverse order: The third big-bang was the moment when Beauty & the Beast (1991) was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, the first time that a cartoon had received that pinnacle mainstream honor. The middle part of the three-part revolution was when hipster American audiences began to discover that there was more to the form than Walt Disney. Katsuhiro Ôtomo's Japanese sci-fi spellbinder Akira was the key that opened the door for anime, now very big and influential business in America. But the first key event in animation's rebirth (stateside at least) was the release of Disney's "28th animated classic" The Little Mermaid; an orgasmic reawakening of the most flexible and fantastical of film mediums...

"She's Gotta Have It!"

The heroine of Disney's modern breakthrough film is Ariel, a teenage mermaid. Since this is a fairy tale (and a Disney one at that) she's also a beautiful princess: the youngest daughter of King Triton who rules the ocean. Only trouble is, despite her quick smile and high spirits, she's restless and unhappy... dissatisfied with her life of privilege under the sea. She wants to trade up. Literally. Since this is a late 1980s film (and a Disney one at that) she's also the headstrong entitled type. This princess isn't going to whisper her need. She's no Oliver with his meager allotment of gruel, politely asking for more.

music, sexuality and animated evolution after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

RIP "The Playboy Club" (Sept 2011- Oct 2011)

The peacock network brings us the TV season's first cancellation. And whaddya know? It's their new show with the brightest plumage, "The Playboy Club". I've been soaking up the general response to this show and "Pan Am" with some interest since they're the two shows that Mad Men spawned, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and the most flattering form of theft.

It's unkind to speak ill of the dead so I want to thank The Playboy Club for shining such a bright spotlight on Broadway babe Laura Benanti as she sang onstage and bitched backstage. She was the show's indisputable MVP for its very short run so some other series would be smart to snatch her up. I normally don't wish "series regular" status on Broadway's headlining musical stars because it makes them vanish from the stage but my friends and I have held a comic grudge against Benanti for years since it took us four times of paying for her shows to actually see her perform. Maybe we had terrible luck but... well, let's just say it seems like her understudies go on... A LOT.

[Updated Editor's Note: There's a reasonable explanation in reader comments as to why Benanti was absent from shows so much in the Aughts. Terrible injury.]

Though Pan Am is appreciably better as reviews suggested, the emphatically polarized 'two thumbs up/all thumbs down' greeting is something I couldn't really get behind as they have/had some of the same strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths: Great, sexy, and showy choice of milieu in that it's a potentially fine breeding ground for multiple stories and visual pizazz, a sassy leading brunette that's fun to watch (Laura Benanti / Christina Ricci), and super attractive men in suits.
Weaknesses: Period setting plays all cosmetic with no soul, depth, or nuance (don't get me started on the dialogue in either show... way too modern), beautiful leading blonde who is dull to watch (Amber Heard / Margot Robbie ... is the actress just not bringing it or are these characters too blank) and uneven acting.

So what's the decisive factor in one show winning instant fans and the other a speedy cancellation? I'm thinking confidence, both behind-the-scenes (who knows what executives are thinking) and onscreen. Pan Am struts through its airport like it owns the world and that dead bunny had something of a nervous twitching tail. Confidence in your own voice, even if you're still finding it, goes a long long way towards being heard.

NYFF: "The Student" and "A Separation"

In an effort to not fall behind on NYFF coverage, here's a double feature from Argentina (possible Oscar submission) and Iran (Oscar submission!) .

THE STUDENT
Have you ever longed to learn every detail of the chaotic, multi-partied, backroom deal heavy politics of Argentina through the metaphorical microcosm of elections at a Buenos Aires university? If you answered "yes" than Santiago Mitre's The Student is the movie for you! If you answered "huh, what?" than I should quickly add that I'm not entirely sure that that's what The Student is on about. The movie's continual barrage of name-and acronym heavy information, both in dialogue and in dry omniscient narration, and its crowded character map of continually changing alliances and sudden betrayals suggests to me that politically aware Argentinians would understand and revel in its deeper implications more clearly than I possibly could.

As it is I was, like the titular character Roque (Esteban Lamothe), initially only fascinated by this vivid new world opening up all around me without ever quite understanding it. One terrific shot in the movie looks at the back of Roque's head, more specifically his ear, as he drinks up a ton of dizzying new knowledge, with more focus and determination than he ever uses while snorting up a line of coke or screwing his latest conquest. Unlike Roque however, who reveals hidden political aptitude that dwarfs but doesn't quite mask his obvious limitations, the lessons never stuck. Part of The Student's point is how quickly the various rugs will always be pulled out from under you in the dirty game of politics, but the ever shifting landscape eventually frustrates with its perpetual loop of climaxes that become anti-climactic, given that they merely reset the crowded board of players rather than ending the game. The Student's 124 running time becomes an endurance test, a Sisyphian lecture for a quiz that will never come.  B- (C+?)

A SEPARATION
Our next film, which is nearly the exact same length, achieves quite the opposite effect, growing more fascinating with each new scene and abundant detail. Asghar Farhadi's A Separation initially appears to be a well made but standard marital drama, as Naader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) spar in front of a judge over custody of their child Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Simin wants to move to America where her daughter will have more opportunity (though the family seems well off in Iran) and Naader, almost too-willing to let his wife go, is unwilling to part with his daughter. His mind is elsewhere, perpetually worrying about his ailing father who has Alzheimers.

Naader has issues with Razieh (Sareh Bayat), his cleaning woman

The separation, though semi-amicable (no one is losing their temper), sets off a chain of unfortunate events. Through an economically conveyed but richly textured series of plot points, Naader has an altercation with the hired help (a poor couple, also with a troubled marriage) who are supposed to clean house and care for his father in Simin's absence. Soon everyone is in court again albeit for entirely different reasons. What starts as a well acted and sensitively filmed portrait of an unraveling family quickly expands into a vivid exciting portrait of families on precarious emotional ledges. In what can only be described as an embarrassment of riches, A Separation does all of this while also handily becoming the most exciting courtroom procedural movie in many a year. All the hard facts become soft and twistable when filtered through multiple emotional upheavals, religious beliefs, well meaning lies and day-to-day domestic issues.

Simin (Leila Hatami) and Naader (Peyman Moaadi)American audiences accustomed to casually and wrongly assuming a monolithic Middle East culture will find the movie eye-opening and instantly relatable; the tension between economic classes, as well as the secular and religious will feel all too familiar. Best of all, though, A Separation side-steps the easy and common cinematic path of demonizing or idealizing any of its warring characters. Every time you've come to a conclusion about a character or come close to hating or blaming them, writer/director Farhadi (of About Elly fame) opens a new door or window into their soul and circumstances. This prismatically sympathetic and insightful film is one of the best of the year. A 

FWIW: Sony Pictures Classics will release A Separation in US theaters on the dread date of 12/30/11 making it technically eligible for every Oscar category.

Previously on NYFF
Carnage raises its voice at Nathaniel but doesn't quite scream at him.
Miss Bala wins the "must-see crown" from judge Michael.
Tahrir drops Michael right down in the titular Square.
A Dangerous Method excites Kurt... not in that way, perv!
The Loneliest Planet brushes against Nathaniel's skin.
Melancholia shows Michael the end of von Trier's world. 

50/50

Joining the very slim ranks of Cancer Comedies, 50/50 must surely number among the best of them. The film begins with a long shot of 27 year-old Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) jogging. It's unclear why the film begins this way (we never see him exercise again) but it's telling. Adam is about to embark on a sweaty exhausting journey with no set destination and it takes him awhile to come into focus.

As protagonists go, Adam is a passive blurry character. He lets his loud friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) control their friendship. Even though he's only just given her a dresser drawer, his girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) is calling all the relationship shots - including no blow jobs which infuriates Kyle on Adam's behalf. Adam seems content to sit back and take whatever life does or doesn't offer him. Enter: Cancer...

...read the full review at Towleroad

P.S. Are you visiting JGL in the hospital this weekend or do you have other movie plans?

P.P.S. I didn't spend much time on her in the review but Anjelica Huston is just a marvel in her very brief role (2 ½ scenes?). She's had plenty of (unfortunate) time now to hone her skills at delivering full characterizations in mere moments. She gets two of the biggest laughs in the movie but it doesn't end with comedy. She's fierce and touching, too. Brava.