Film fans of a certain…ahem…age are often grousing about the current state of cinema, saying that “they don’t make em’ like they used to”. BROOKLYN is the rejoinder to that tired dismissal. Of course it helps that the story’s setting is over sixty years in the past. But to quote another “old chestnut” it’s a love story that’s timeless. Well, it’s more of a coming-of-age love story, told through the wide eyes of Ellis (Saoirse Ronan), a sweet colleen barely past her teens. And yes she is Irish, with the film’s plot originating from the “emerald isle”. It is 1952 and she is eager (and a tad anxious) to begin a new adventure, for thanks to her connections at the local church, she is leaving her beloved mother and older sister to start a new life in America. We’re on board with her in the meager steerage cabin of the ocean liner for the often turbulent voyage. Once off the boat, she’s living with several single girls (some from the “old sod”) in a boarding house run by the supportive, but firm, Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Waters), and working the counter at a department store, a job procured by the sympathetic Father Flood (Jim Broadbent). Ellis battles homesickness, but her spirits are lifted by an unexpected romance with a sweet Italian-American, Tony (Emory Cohen). But when a tragedy forces Ellis to return home, things have changed in her little Irish village. She’s afforded employment and meets a new man, lanky local Jim (Domhnall Gleeson). Ellis promised Tony that she will return to NYC, but, well…what’s a young woman to do?
BROOKLYN is anchored by a confident mature performance by Ronan in the first of no doubt many leading adult roles. The supporting players are superb, including two actresses from celebrated US TV shows. John Crowley doesn’t rush the pace, and never overwhelms the charms of the screenplay by Nick (ABOUT A BOY) Hornby from the novel by Colm Toibin. The dazzling cinematography from Yves Belanger paints the authentic period sets and fashions with a warm, golden glow. BROOKLYN lets us all experience one hopeful immigrant’s journey and wraps us up in a cozy blanket of romance and nostalgia.
BROOKLYN screens at Landmark’s Tivoli Theatre on Friday, November 6 at 7 PM as part of the 24th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival. Purchase tickets here
If you were asked to participate in a behavioral science study, and got paid for it, and the study involved torturing and possibly killing another human being, would you see the study through to its end? Would you continue to administer electric shocks to a complete stranger, a person who has already said they have a heart condition?
Now, you cannot see the other person, as you administer the electric shocks from another room, but you can hear them beg for mercy, hear them ask to stop the experiment, and then finally grow silent, possibly unconscious or maybe even dead.
Would you continue the experiment? Especially if there were an ”authority figure” wearing a gray lab coat who insisted that you had to continue the experiment, no matter what. Especially that you had to continue even if you thought you were killing the other test subject, another human being.
Most people would say no, most people if asked straight up if they would do such a thing would claim they could not consider it. Yet, a series of tests administered by Stanley Milgram in 1961 proved that most people will go ahead and give what they think are ever increasing electric shocks to a perfect stranger, if someone in authority tells them they have to.
EXPERIMENTER tells the fascinating story of how Milgram came to run these tests and the fire storm of controversy they created, shock waves from which are still being felt to this day.
I can recall taking a class in psychiatry at Jefferson Junior College in Hillsboro, Missouri in the early 80s and reading about Milgram’s experiments. Many in the fields of psychiatry, psychology and sociology were quick to denounce Milgram’s tests and what they seemed to prove. That people can be ordered to do anything, as long as someone in authority gives them the go ahead.
Milgram’s experiments were not created in a political vacuum. World War II was still recent news in 1961. Milgram was Jewish, his parents were both lucky enough to leave Europe before the Nazi’s came to power and started the Holocaust which cost the lives of 9 million people, most of them Jewish.
Milgram’s primary focus was “why would otherwise sane, rational, moral people participate in mass murder ?” Milgram and his team of researchers were shocked and saddened to see that most people, against their own moral code and conscience, if told to do so would go ahead and keep administering the electric shocks to an unseen but heard victim. The cries for help were tape recorded by the way, no one was ever really shocked in these experiments.
EXPERIMENTER is quite simply an astonishing movie with a message that really needs to be seen by every man, woman and child on this planet. The Nazi Holocaust was just one incident of mass murder that continues to happen all over our world. People in every nation on Earth have proven over and over that they will pull the trigger on innocent people, if someone in “Authority” tells them they are obligated to do so. Milgram’s research was denounced because the truth hurts.
Peter Sarsgaard gives an incredible performance, somewhat similar to Oscar Issac in A Most Violent Year. Milgram speaks in well modulated, precise sentences. He appears to be what he is, a well educated, thoughtful academic committed to his research and insistent on telling his results to the world.
Winona Ryder (and how nice to see her in a lead performance again) is very good as Milgram’s wife but the script really doesn’t give her much to do except be a dutiful wife defending her husband’s work.
We see how even in the 60s the media would pounce on any new “scandal” and distort the original intent of a new piece of work. Milgram appeared on Dick Cavett, among other talk shows. His research was dramatized on television. He was both denounced and praised. He and his team conducted other tests, most notably a test involving letters left on car windshields that needed to be mailed, to a fictitious person, to test how honest people might be.
His own students did not believe him the day he announced that President John Kennedy had been shot; they assumed it was another test.
EXPERIMENTER was filmed in a highly stylized manner. Most of the sets are not only obviously sets but some appear to be painted flats only, much like Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, only minus the expressionist styles. In the driving scenes old fashioned rear projection is used, highlighting the unreality of the film itself. In a couple of scenes we even, literally, see “the elephant in the room.” Of course none of the characters take note.
I have written of this before, Experimenter is the kind of movie that deserves a wide audience; it needs to be exhibited in theaters. But I doubt that it will, it is not a blockbuster type of film, EXPERIMENTER is wise, thoughtful, intelligent and has something serious to say about the human condition, in all of us. Pretty much the kiss of death at the multiplex. Please don’t pass this one up.
If you are uptight and faint of heart, SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE is not your movie. Still here? Ok, good. If you aren’t easily offended, and are looking for a laugh mixed with some jump scares, this movie is for you!
In SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, three life-long scouts team up with cocktail waitress after a zombie outbreak spreads through their town. They don’t have long to use their survival skills and try to make it out before it’s too late.
Sound like a familiar plot? Sure… but I promise that you haven’t quite seen a zombie movie like this. This movie is completely predictable, but fun! Director Christopher Landon combines the modern-day tale with elements of 80’s horror and adventure films. In other words, there are plenty of cheesy, raunchy moments… and yes, even boobs. I’m an old school, campy horror fan, so I found this movie to be funny. Some won’t. I guess you could say that this film is like blue cheese… it’s not for everyone!
Cast members Tye Sheridan, Joey Morgan, and Logan Miller work together extremely well. You can tell that they really got along, and they were believable as friends. Actress Sarah Dumont, on the other hand, was hit and miss. There were moments where her kick-ass, bad girl act really paid off, and moments where she fell really flat. She kind of has this flat, hard to read acting style going on to where I couldn’t tell if it was part of her character, or not. David Koecher is funny as usual, but he’s not in the film enough to be a huge influence. Cloris Leachman, on the other hand, wasn’t in the film enough, but really added the laughs for me! To have a legend do what she does in the film is incredibly ballsy, and it paid off!
One cool thing that Landon did in this film was use practical effects. This is always a big plus for me, because I think it really pays off in the end. It’s so easy for filmmakers to cop-out and use CGI, and the slightest mistake with it throws you out of the movie. With practical effects, the audience tends to be more forgiving. Plus, no one wants an animated zombie. Give me a real human splattered with blood and flesh wounds!
The jokes in this film are really going to upset some people, and make them cringe. There are plenty of crass, ‘I can’t believe they went there!’ moments. Even I made a few audible gasps in the theater. If you are easily offended, I’m going to tell you to just stay home right now. This movie is just going to piss you off. Sometimes we need a break from our PC society, and I commend Landon for having the balls to tell jokes with no apologies. I know critics are going to eat this film alive, but can’t we just go into a movie and take it for what it is? It’s not trying to be the next big Oscar contender… It’s just trying to have fun! Take it, or go rent FORREST GUMP.
TRUTH examines the events around the 2004 “60 Minutes” report on then president George W. Bush’s military service, which led to Dan Rather’s resignation and producer Mary Mapes’ firing. But in truth, the film is as much about the pitfalls of news reporting under the pressure of the 24-hour news cycle, and journalism’s traditional mission, the search for truth. Viewers may think they already know this story but, like the document at the center, not all is what it seems, and the truth is more complicated.
Robert Redford plays Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett plays his long-time producer Mary Mapes, in this drama based on Mapes’ book “Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and The Privilege of Power.” The report, which aired in the heated atmosphere of a presidential election, purported to show that George W. Bush not only used family connections to obtain a slot in the National Guard, avoiding service in Vietnam during that war, but was actually AWOL during part of his service. The document that was shown as proof of the later was immediately scrutinized and questioned by people on the internet, the first case of citizen journalists vetting a news report. The resulting firestorm of questions uncovered flaws in the reporting, undermined Rather’s reputation and lost Mapes her job.
Response to this film is likely to be divided, based mostly on how the viewer feels about Dan Rather. Just as many were prepared to believe the document that Rather reported on had been fabricated by biased reporters, or a least by their source, bent on bringing down the president as soon as the internet questions surfaced (just as others were eager to believe it on face value), there will be those who do not want to see this film and risk the possibility there is something more complex underneath. But the curious, the more open-minded or those concerned about the state of journalism in this country would do well to give TRUTH a look.
Mapes produced the “60 Minutes” segment that exposed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which won her an Peabody award – or at least CBS, after they fired her. She is the real focus of this film, not Rather, and the story is told from her viewpoint.
Topher Grace plays Mike Smith and Dennis Quaid portrays Lt. Colonel Roger Charles, two of Mapes’ research team, whose cross-cultural bickering provide much of the comic relief in the film.
Director and scriptwriter James Vanderbilt uses a restrained tone, evoking earlier films about journalism like ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, although this is a very different kind of story. The film takes a straight-forward approach to events, starting with the seed of the story, and detailing the pressures of getting a story out in a timely manner while doing due diligence on fact-checking.
The document a source had brought to Mapes was a copy, which limited the kind of testing that could be done to verify it, and officer whose signature appeared on it had since passed away. On the strength of handwriting expert verification and with sources verifying the content, the decision was made to air the report despite imperfect documentation.
Questions were raised immediately and the media firestorm ensued. Once doubts were raised, Mapes found sources recanting or even revealing deceit. As the film reveals, Mapes and her team were able to clear up all the issues raised about the document eventually, but it did not matter – once the internet talkers seize it, the scandal became the story, not the content of the report. Fact-checking no longer mattered.
Blanchett does an excellent job as the woman journalist at the center of this scandal. She portrays the doubts and uncertainties she grapples with, balancing the time needed for vetting and mixed results from that process with a looming deadline and pressure to get the program on air before the election. Redford plays Rather like an old-school journalist, committed to uncovering the truth in Edward R. Murrow-style, but perhaps too trusting of his long-time producer and protege Mapes. Late in the film, there is a powerful, chilling scene where Redford as Rather talks about how television news morphed from a public service that made no money into profitable info-tainment. The film is worth seeing for that scene alone.
TRUTH is a strong film about the challenges of journalism now, told through a famous incident that brought down a man who had been seen as a giant of TV journalism and which marked a shift in who reporting was perceived.
TRUTH opens in St. Louis
on Friday, October 30th, 2015
With the success of last summer’s surprise hit CHEF, it was inevitable there would be more movies about professional cooking. The nation seems obsessed with chefs right now, and shows about professional cooking and kitchens dominate TV programming. BURNT stars Bradley Cooper as a once successful chef at a top Paris restaurant, who lost it all and is now trying for a comeback, with the help of sous chef Sienna Miller. But while CHEF charmed audiences with a look into how real professional kitchens work, BURNT goes another route – the reality-show version where temper tantrums trump actual cooking. Those who love chef Gordon Ramsay’s screaming antics will be entertained by BURNT’s over-the-top kitchen melodrama. In fact, Ramsey coached Cooper for the film.
Cooper plays Adam Jones, a talented but hot-tempered young chef who ran his own Paris restaurant and earned two coveted Michelin stars before flaming out over alcohol and drug addiction, leaving a swath of broken friendships in his wake. Now sober and drug-free, Jones is in London, trying to stage a comeback to try for a third Michelin star. The question is whether he can find anyone to finance a restaurant for him, or talented staff willing to work for him, given his disastrous reputation. Despite past betrayals, he earns the backing of hotel-owner Tony (Daniel Bruhl) and recruits a team of former restaurant staff, plus a rising young sous chef Helene (Sienna Miller). Meanwhile, Jones has to contend with an old rival Reese (Mathew Rhys), whose restaurant boasts a high-tech approach to cooking verses Jones’ more traditional style. Supporting roles are also played by Emma Thompson, Uma Thurman, Alicia Vikander, Omar Sy, Lily James and Sam Keeley.
The film is being billed as a kind of romantic comedy about second chances. There is very little comedy in this tale, and not that much romance. Adam is such a jerk and has done such awful things to his former co-workers, so it is amazing anyone wants to give him a second chance when he suddenly turns up in London. At most, you would expect a restauranteur to take him on as a cook, or sous chef, in their kitchen until he proved himself reliable again. Instead, someone finances a new restaurant for him. It seems all he has to do is smile and sparkle his blue eyes.
As the wife of a former chef and one-time restaurant owner, this reviewer recognizes that director John Wells gets lots of restaurant world details right. BURNT takes us inside some gorgeous restaurants and tricked-out kitchens, and serves up some wonderful looking dishes, with a view of the hot London restaurant scene. While the film gets little details about presentation and trends in cooking right, it misses the bigger picture of how real restaurants run. Good professional kitchens have the speed and controlled chaos of a busy hospital emergency room – abrupt, brusque, business-like – but with surprisingly few of those emotional meltdowns that play so well on TV. Sometimes, you see that in BURNT – and clearly the cast trained and these scenes also feature some real kitchen staff – but too often it is all about the screaming. The kitchen staff working at full-blast was one of the things CHEF got so right, as well as the camaraderie after the kitchen closes for the night. There is none of that bonding of the workplace here in BURNT’s reality-show kitchen.
Actually, it is not just the kitchen that rings false in BURNT. While this film has a good cast, pretty restaurant locations and plenty of shots of luscious food, it is far more style than substance. The whole enfant terrible star who fell and is staging a comeback is a familiar trope, whether the fallen star is in music, movies, or cooking. Everything about this story is familiar – the ex-friend wooed back, the burned backer who decides to take another chance on the star, the egoism and lessons still to learn, the new romance. The story contrives some heated rivalry between Cooper’s Jones and fellow chef … over style of cooking – “cook my way or else” – while real chefs might just disagree. When Jones garners a good review, his rival destroys his own restaurant in one of those artistic tantrum scenes movies love – and which would never really happen unless the chef wanted to be fired and maybe sued by his backers. But it sure makes a nice mess.
BURNT missed an opportunity for a real-world glimpse inside professional cooking and the ones who are really burned in this film are audience members hoping to taste something fresh and real. BURNT is a dish that should be sent back.
With ROOM, Director Lenny Abrahamson and screenwriter Emma Donoghue (who adapted her novel) dramatize the impossible situation of a child trapped for years in a room with his mother who’s continually raped there. ROOM is a difficult but often tedious viewing experience, and while the effort is valiant, the movie doesn’t always hit its desired mark.
ROOM is the tale of 24-year-old Joy (Brie Larson), trapped in a soundproof garden shed for seven years after being abducted. The room has a hot plate and a sink, a toilet a television, and one skylight in the ceiling. Her captor (Sean Bridgers), known as ‘Old Nick’, brings her enough food to survive, disciplines her by cutting off the electricity, and tells her she doesn’t appreciate how good she has it. Oh, and he rapes her when he feels like it, which has resulted in a long-haired five-year old son named Jack (Jacob Tremblay) who has lived his entire life in ‘room’.
The first hour of ROOM feels by design claustrophobic, especially when Jack is throwing his screaming fits. I felt trapped in room with the kid and looked forward to getting out. Jack reacts to a world he has never experienced with gooey dialog like “The world’s always changing in hotness and lightness.” This is supposed to convey the insight of an innocent child but a little precious prose goes a long way and probably worked better on the written page. The cathartic escape scene at the halfway point is when the film really comes to life, and it’s a most emotional ten minutes. Jack, wrapped in a carpet to be discarded by Old Nick, who thinks he’s dead, finds himself in the back of a truck – in the real world for the first time – and the sequence is shot with odd angles and bright light to show Jack’s confused point of view. It’s too bad ROOM fails to maintain that level of interest once Joy and Jack are free and settle into her mother’s home where ROOM morphs back into a far less-interesting drama. The second half focuses on Joy and Jack struggling to come to terms with the world beyond the room by introducing bland domestic drama and more tedium. Joy argues with her mom (Joan Allen) while her dad (William H. Macy) won’t even look at young Jack. They bake cookies, there’s a suicide attempt, and some discussion about desire to return to Room. A half-baked television interview sequence with a crass reporter comes off like a spoof of tell-all programming handled better in GONE GIRL.
ROOM is solidly made but some flimsy plot contrivances are distracting. Is Old Nick, cunning enough to pull off this atrocity for seven years, really not going to bother to check whether Jack is still breathing before burying him? Why did Old Nick’s repeated rapes not result in more pregnancies? What happens to Old Nick and how are his crimes resolved? Brie Larson is good as Joy, but seems physically off. Wouldn’t someone trapped in a tiny room for seven years be more emaciated, more catatonic, more damaged? Larson seems sad and annoyed at her plight, but too robust. Young Jacob Tremblay, despite his tantrums and affected narration is mostly believable. ROOM is not a great movie but Emma Donoghue’s novel must have seemed like a challenging basis for a film, and it’s a minor miracle that this adaption works as well as it does. 3 of 5 Stars
ROOM opens in ST. Louis October 30th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater
So you’re tired of all the news reports and headlines about those campaigning for the president, in an election that’s still over a year away? Well, why not take in a movie at the multiplex? Here’s Sandra Bullock’s latest all about…a presidential campaign. Ah, but Sandy’s not in the running, although she’s dashing around quite a bit. She’s a campaign strategist who’s working for a candidate all the way south, very south, in Bolivia. So are presidential races there the same as up here, with sound bites, negative ads,and other ways to manipulate the media? You bet your ballot! So what does she come up with, how will her hopeful break away from the ‘pack’? Just one way, as Ms. B explains in the film’s first act, OUR BRAND IS CRISIS.
US Public relations vets Ben (Anthony Mackie) and Nell (Ann Dowd) have been hired by General Castillo (Joaquim de Almieda) to get his old job back. He was the president of Bolivia fifteen years ago, but was voted out when he privatized the local industries. Unfortunately the electorate has a long memory, which may account for him being down 28 points in the polls. But Nell has a plan, and so she and Ben drive up to a desolate cabin in the snow. They hope to lure the legendary strategist “Calamity” Jane Bodine (Bullock) out of a self-imposed retirement. After a stint in rehab, preceded by several unsuccessful gigs, she’s hesitant to get back in the game. But when she hears that the front-runner, Rivera, has hired her old nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), Jane puts away the clay pots and cups and hops on a Bolivian bound private jet. After meeting the third member of the American crew, the prickly Buckley (Scoot McNairy), and the surly, brusque Castillo, Jane hatches a campaign “scenario”: the country is in dire straights, on the brink of collapse, and the general is the only one who can save the day. Bringing in her top aide, “hit woman” LeBlanc (Zoe Kazan), and enlisting an enthusiastic local Eddie (Reynaldo Pacheco), Jane attempts a career comeback, for the candidate and herself, as old demons from the past return.
In her first live action role since Oscar-nominated turn in GRAVITY, Bullock’s star charisma injects much-needed life in many of the story’s soggy stretches. In the scenes back in her tiny snow-bound cottage she projects a great deal of vulnerability with her hesitant line delivery and haunted “seen it all” stare. Upon her arrival on foreign soil, Bullock goes for laughs as Jane battles the effects of the altitude. This plays often as an appeasement to fans hoping for a reprise of the pratfalls from THE HEAT or the MISS CONGENIALITY flicks. But soon she puts down the ever-present bag a’ chips and gets down to business with a hard-driving, “take no prisoners” zeal that propels the plot forward, which seems to mask her sadness over the times she went too far for victory. Once again Bullock ably balances the tough and tender in an expert performance.
Happily, an accomplished ensemble aides Ms. Bullock. Thornton is an excellent sparring partner as the all “too slick” and smooth Mr. Candy, who knows exactly how to get under her skin, with his smug sarcasm twisting like a knife. Mackie is the questioning moral center of the PR team, standing up to Jane when she crosses the line. Dowd is the hardened vet and co-conspirator in Jane’s wild schemes, an “Ethel” to her “Lucy”. McNairy is very funny as the easily irritated and irritating Buckly, always quick with a lousy idea or crass comment. As the candidate, de Almeida, struts about as if the whole affair were beneath his regal, military bearing with a sinister glint in his eyes. It makes us wonder whether he can really woo the populace, as we question his true motives. The delightful Kazan is underused as Jane’s “ace up my sleeve”, but Pacheco has a great deal of youthful charm and energy as the optimistic Eddie who will eventually face the ugly, dark side of politics.
Although the film’s being marketed as a breezy “culture class” comedy, director David Gordon Green breaks out of the stoner comedy cage (YOUR HIGHNESS) to deliver a tough look at dirty side of campaigning. Unfortunately these two goals never quite gel. The high spirits wackiness of making tacky commercials with llamas and racing campaign buses over treacherous mountain roads slams up against ugly internet lies that inspire suicide and exploitation of the poor. Peter Straughan’s screenplay (inspired by the 2005 same-titled documentary) never really finds a way to balance that tone while keeping the story moving at a brisk pace. And the film’s main character is still something of a mystery by the end scenes. At one point she fully plunges back into her old vices (starting with the interminable chain-smoking), boozing with little ramifications other than waking up hung over in a jail cell. In the film’s final moments the script heads down a dark cynical path that is detoured with a contrived hopeful final shot that’s forced (I smell ‘test-marketing’ at work). It’s great to have Bullock back, but her considerable charisma and talents can’t erase the story and pacing flaws of OUR BRAND IS CRISIS.
Julius Rosenwald is not likely to be a name you recognize but this head of Sears, Roebuck was once a man of enormous influence, not just in commerce but in philanthropy. But the most surprising part is the direction Rosenwald’s philanthropy took – funding schools and cultural endeavors for African Americans.
In the documentary ROSENWALD, director Aviva Kempner reveals how this wealthy Jewish American merchant partnered with African Americans to fund good works for African Americans, including help for the Tuskegee Institute, building a chain of rural schools for black children across the South, and providing support for artists such as Marian Anderson, W.E.B. DuBois and Maya Angelou.
As the son of German Jewish immigrants, Rosenwald knew well what it was like to come from a persecuted minority. In the early 20th century, Rosenwald saw the parallels between how Jews were treated in Europe and how African Americans were treated in the U.S., which helped propel him to action.
In the early decades of the 20th century, Rosenwald gave away what would have been a billion dollars in today’s money. That would be an enormous amount in any era but who he gave it to, and how he did it, is a big part of what makes this story so fascinating.
Kempner, whose previous films include “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” and “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” has a sure hand in presenting this forgotten story. Starting with Rosenwald’s parents, she builds up a picture of his character through his business career. Rosenwald’s father began as a peddler, eventually moving to Springfield, Il., where he bought a house across from the Lincoln family home. Abraham Lincoln became a lifelong inspiration to young Julius. After going to work as a teenager, Julius Rosenwald flourished in business, first in clothing manufacture, and then buying into the Sears, Roebuck company, which the documentary describes as the Amazon of its day. Under Rosenwald’s watch, Sears became one the country’s most successful companies.
After becoming one of the country’s richest men, Rosenwald began to fund schools for rural African American children in the South during a time when Jim Crow laws were in full effect and lynchings common. “Rosenwald schools,” as they were known, were designed to provide a first-rate education in a well-built building, as good as white children attended. That is amazing enough but the philanthropist did more, by using an innovative challenged grant method. Rosenwald donated one third of the money, then required the white community to provide another third, generally through educational budgets, and asked the black community to provide the last third. Often, this meant in-kind donations, supplying the labor to build the school, organizing fundraisers to fill them with supplies and staff, and volunteers to help out through the whole process. As a result, the community truly felt it was their school, and the building often became a community center as well as a place to educate children.
Kempner tells her story with a combination of archival photos and footage, and interviews with historians, family members, and descendants of those helped by Rosenwald’s generosity, even a few of the now-aged children who attended Rosenwald schools. To add a little touch of humor, and to help paint the picture of the Old West/pioneer world Julius grew up in, Kempner throws in a few Western movie/TV clips, including one from a 1950s TV Western with a young Clint Eastwood trying to pronounce a Yiddish word.
The result is an entertaining, fascinating documentary about a forgotten millionaire philanthropist who deserves to be remembered.
ROSENWALD is now playing at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema.
With Danny Boyle’s STEVE JOBS, there will now be three films on the late founder of Apple Computers, the man who put portable computers in eveyone’s hand, as this film notes at one point. A few years back, there was the biopic JOBS starring Ashton Kutcher, who has a striking resemblance to Jobs and this year, an excellent documentary by the Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, called “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” Steve Jobs is a man whose fans admire him with almost cult-like adoration (and just to be clear, this writer is not among them), yet none of these films have presented him in a very flattering light- least of all Boyle’s film.
Director Boyle’s STEVE JOBS is not a biography, and Aaron Sorkin’s script does not even focus on Job’s two most significant contributions to the world, making computers personal and then putting computer-based devices like the iPod and iPhone in everyone’s pocket. Instead, STEVE JOBS focuses is on his treatment of people, particularly his young daughter Lisa, during a kind of low point in Jobs’ career. Unlike THE SOCIAL NETWORK, Boyle’s film seems to assume that viewers already know a great deal about Jobs and his contributions to the world. If you are interested in getting a fuller picture of who Steve Jobs was, as a public figure, tech game-changer or as a person, Gibney’s documentary is a better choice.
STEVE JOBS covers the years from Apple’s famous 1984 Superbowl ad, which won awards but left viewers unsure what was being advertised, through his firing as the head of the company he founded, his faltering launch of a new company Next, and then his return to Apple and the launch of the iMac. The film ends before the introduction of Apple’s most iconic innovations – the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. The film covers the least productive part of Job’s career but that it is not the film’s point anyway. The major focus of the film is Job’s treatment – mistreatment, really – of people around him, particularly his daughter Lisa, whose parentage he denied despite a court-ordered blood test, in the years from when she was five until age 19. The film also deals with Job’s treatment of all the people working for him around him generally, particularly Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the real programming genius behind the company, and whose products Jobs, a marketing and image-making genius, promoted and seemed to take credit for. Jobs’ magical, brilliant marketing captured the public imagination, and made them both wealthy, but Jobs also gave the impression he was the tech genius behind them as well when he was not.
Michael Fassbender plays Jobs, with a bristling energy that radiates off the screen. The film begins at the production launch of the Mac computer, one of three product launches in the film. As Jobs prepares for the debut, the team is frantic because the computer is not actually ready and is balking at doing the one thing Jobs deems critical to his presentation – saying “hello” on cue. Backstage, Jobs’ ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) is there with their five-year-old daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss), asking for the financial support that the court ordered following a paternity test and also informing him they are now on welfare. Jobs berates her and screams like a madman when she refers to Lisa as his daughter. His treatment of Chrisann is appalling but his treatment of the little girl is worse. When Lisa asks the man she is not allowed to call father if the precursor of the Mac, named Lisa, was named for her, Jobs coldly denies it. Jobs’ nastiness is not just limited to his ex-girlfriend but extends to his confrontation with his longtime friend and co-founder of their company, Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) who very modestly asks Jobs to publicly acknowledge the tech team that worked on the Apple II, the computer that had been paying the company bills for years. Jobs stubbornly refuses.
This rest of the film follows this pattern, with the egotistical Jobs ripping through various people around him. As one character points out, being a genius and being a human being are not mutually exclusive, although maybe not if you are Steve Jobs. The acting in this film is outstanding, with a cadre of battered people surrounding this massive ego. Fassbender’s performance is electric and likely to gain hims an Oscar nomination. Kate Winslet plays long-suffering Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’ assistant who has the thankless (literally) job of following him around and trying to keep him on track. Michael Stuhlbarg plays programmer Andy Hertzfeld, whom Jobs threatens in the minutes before the product launch. Lisa is played by different actresses at ages 5, 9 and 19, Moss (age 5), Ripley Sobo (age 9) and Perla Haney-Jardine (age 19), and all do well. Curiously, the only person that Jobs treats with any respect is John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), the CEO who took over Apple after Jobs, although Sculley comes in for some tongue-lashing too.
However, as a piece of cinema, the film is brilliantly made, with striking photography and impressive performances. Shots are beautifully framed and one sequence, where we move back and forth in time in recapping the events between Sculley and Jobs is inspired. Seth Rogen as Wozniak is amazing and delivers one particular speech directed at Jobs that should garner him an Oscar nod on its own. All the acting is strong, and is a major strength of the film. The structure of the film is masterful but throughout, the one question that most likely will pop into one’s head is why – why anyone would tolerate being around this monster. For an answer to that, audience’s can look to Alex Gibney’s insightful documentary – you won’t find the answer in this film.
STEVE JOBS is no SOCIAL NETWORK, despite its polished production and wonderful performances, and does not offer the same kind of insights on this culturally significant person and his work.
We have come a long way from the subtle noises and slight shifts of the bed sheets and loud creaks on the floorboards that echo through the house at night. As the title would suggest, THE GHOST DIMENSION adds a 3D element to the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY series. Although the 3D is not necessary to invoke the chills audiences have come to expect from the series, the added layer adds an element to the scares until it (unfortunately) wears out it’s welcome by the ending.
Bits of ghostly residue are seen hiding in the corners and permeating the frame at times. The added layer is presented in quite a unique and effervescent way and gives a real world element to the hauntings that are insinuated. But I guess too much of a good thing is indeed a bad thing. By the end of the film, hints of a face morph into hands reaching out through the screen and into the audience, creating a film that’s embracing the gimmick while tarnishing the legacy of what the series became known for.
In PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: GHOST DIMENSION, once again, a family is terrorized by loud noises in the night. Except this time, the noises come from a family who has moved into the same house as the third PARANORMAL ACTIVITY film that took place in 1988. As the dad and his stoner brother dig through the videotapes found in the house, the two realize that there might be a connection with the father’s young daughter, her imaginary friend Toby, and the videotapes found in an old box.
The mythology of the series is an interesting one. One ghost turned into a possessed woman, that turned into a group of witches, which then turned into… well, where we are now. The series evolved quickly from its humbled beginnings. It’s not entirely unsatisfying as a series of, now, six films. But watching it try to avoid the pitfalls of modern horror – which seems to require scares every five minutes – has been a struggle to say the least.
GHOST DIMENSION finally gives into the pressure. Scares are as prominent as the shaky camera-work, which is abundant to say the least. Some come in the form of dripping black CGI goo, that ultimately takes away from the real dread in an underwhelming way, while some come in the form of pure old-fashion creepiness thanks in part to the videos watched by the two main leads. Most of the video footage consists of scenes from the extremely creepy third film in the series, but some new footage is integrated showing the young girls from that film being instructed to worship the devil, or in this case Toby, causing your mind to wander in all the directions that the series could have gone. These scenes lead to some of the creepiest moments in the film, and, surprise, surprise… they don’t include CGI black goo.
GHOST DIMENSION is another satisfying entry in the series but won’t be satisfying enough as a “final chapter” as the trailers have presented. The 3D effects mix relatively well with the subtle scares that the series stems from. Though the GHOST DIMENSION delivers new heightened visuals for your nightmares, it doesn’t entirely give fans of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY series an expanded mythology. Needless to say, I’m still waiting for a more satisfying conclusion to all the activity.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: GHOST DIMENSION is now playing in theaters everywhere.
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