Movies Archives - Page 63 of 84

Bernie (Short Review)

Bernie (2011), which is now in theaters, is hard to characterize. Is it a dark comedy, a dramatic take on a true-life crime, a southern set piece, a documentary, a mockumentary, or something else? Maybe it is a little of each.

In the film, Jack Black plays Bernie Tiede, an odd mortician who is beloved by many in the community of Carthage, Texas for his kindness to the bereaved and his respect for the recently departed. Eventually, he becomes close to an elderly millionaire widow played by Shirley MacLaine. When the widow is murdered, none of the local townspeople can believe when Bernie is accused of the murder.

The movie is based on a real-life story that appeared in Texas Monthly magazine. The film features interviews with real townspeople (mixed in with some interviews with actors playing people of the town). Some viewers may find the generous use of such interviews distracting, but Director Richard Linklater sees much of the story in the way that the townspeople reacted to Bernie. Linklater, who is from East Texas himself, has said that he tried to be respectful of the citizens of the town, noting that he sees something human in their desire to see Bernie acquitted simply because they liked him.

The movie is an odd gem, and it is not for everyone. What made the movie for me was the understated acting by actors who usually go over-the-top in other roles. Jack Black gives a subdued performance where you almost expect him to break character, much like watching Will Ferrell before he loses control. While I wish the film went a little deeper into Bernie’s character and his past, Black gives a three-dimensional performance of a character that could have easily drifted into a one-line joke. Similarly, Matthew McConaughey gives one of his most understated performances too, and Shirley MacLaine shows again how she can portray more emotion with her eyes and a few words than most actors can in a talky leading role.

If you see the film, make sure to stick around for the credits. You get to see the real Bernie along with some additional interviews. If you are interested in more information about the true story, check out this video (warning: If you have not seen the film, there are spoilers.)

Conclusion? Bernie is not for everyone, but a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised by the unusual little movie. If you are looking for something quirky and entertaining, even if it is not too deep and does not have many plot surprises, you should check out Bernie in theaters, or maybe just wait for it to come out on DVD.

Bonus Music Information: If while watching the movie you recognize the music playing in the background — during the murder and near the end of the film — and wonder what it is, you might know it from Bach. Or you might know it from Paul Simon. The music is the hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which ended up in the music of Paul Simon’s “American Tune.” Perhaps Linklater chose the tune in an attempt to subconsciously connect the story’s tragic elements to something unique about America. Check out our post on the history of the song.

Bonus Reviews Because Why Should You Believe Me? Bernie has a very respectable Rotten Tomatoes rating of 89% from critics and 87% from viewers. Jonathan Rossenbaum calls the movie a “masterpiece.” Tom Long of The Detroit News is a little more low key, calling the film “a pleasant little movie.” Saportareport says the film is the best of Jack Black’s career so far. The real Bernie Tiede seems satisfied with the movie, or at least with the fact that he got to meet Jack Black.

What did you think of Bernie? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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Les Misérables Trailer

The trailer for the upcoming movie, Les Misérables, has been released. As a fan of Victor Hugo’s book and of the musical who always wondered why it took so long to put the play on film, I am excited about the release, which stars Russell Crowe (Javert), Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean), Anne Hathaway (Fantine), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette). Also, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter play the Thénardiers.

The movie is directed by Tom Hooper, who directed the Oscar-winner The King’s Speech. In the upcoming musical, due to be released around Christmas, Hooper had the stars sing live for the filming instead of lip syncing the words to recorded tracks. That is Hathaway’s voice you hear in the trailer. I am guessing that Hooper’s attention to detail will pay off big in Les Misérables. Even if you do not like musicals usually, you might want to give this one a chance.

What do you think of the “Les Misérables” trailer? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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“First Reformed” Is a Movie For Our Time

The Modern Prometheus Published

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New “Man of Steel” Trailer

Full “Man of Steel” Trailer

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Marion Michael Morrison Born May 26, 1907

More than one-hundred years ago this May 26, Marion Michael Morrison was born in Winterset, Iowa. Marion’s family moved to Glendale California when he was six, and he grew up to get a football scholarship at the University of Southern California after he was rejected at the U.S. Naval Academy. But it was his work as an assistant prop man on a film directed by John Ford, who saw something in the man, that helped launch the career you know him for. You might know him by another name, “The Duke.” Or maybe you know him by his other name, John Wayne.

Few actors rise to such iconic status as John Wayne, who stands besides the likes of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean as film stars who became something more, for better or worse. Because of their fame, we often forget that they were great actors too. It is true that John Wayne usually played a certain kind of character and that he became associated with certain political beliefs in his time, but those factors should not distract from the legacy he left with his onscreen performances.

After Ford discovered Wayne as a prop man, Wayne went on to play in B movies for the next decade before he finally got his big break when Ford put him in Stagecoach (1939).

After Stagecoach, Wayne’s career took off and he starred in many classic films, ending with The Shootist in 1976, three years before Wayne died of cancer.

What is your favorite John Wayne movie? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie

A Dark Humorless Somewhat Revisionist Western: “Hostiles” (Short Review)

Gary Cooper’s Three Oscars

Anniversary of “The Grapes of Wrath”

Ira Hayes Won’t Answer Anymore

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Buy from Amazon

Love & Marriage: The Loving Story (Review)

In light of the recent news about President Obama and Vice-President Biden stating their support for gay marriage, the recent HBO documentary The Loving Story (2011) about a marriage law in the 1950s takes on an added significance.

In 1958, Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who was black, traveled from their home in Virginia to Washington, D.C. to get married. After their wedding, they returned home to Virginia where after five weeks police roused them from their bed in their home at 2 a.m. and arrested them for violating a law that banned interracial marriages. At the time, twenty-four states had laws banning interracial marriages. In January 1969, a judge accepted their guilty plea for the crime and sentenced them to one year in jail but suspended the sentence if the two left Virginia for 25 years. The Lovings, who wanted to go home, challenged the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard the case in Loving v. Virginia.

Although a unanimous Supreme Court eventually ruled for the Lovings in 1967 by finding that the Virginia law violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the Lovings spent roughly nine years as criminals between the time they were arrested and the time they won the case in the Supreme Court. The documentary tells their story during this time.

One of the great things about the documentary is the amount of video footage that was taken of the Lovings and others at the time the events were happening. Among the many images, the film includes never-before-seen footage taken by filmmaker Hope Ryden while the case was pending before the Supreme Court. It is interesting to see the couple meeting with lawyers and hear Mildred Loving explain why they decided not to attend the Supreme Court argument. The documentary is a fascinating portrait about another time period that was not that long ago, and it brings to life the two human beings at the center of one of the great Civil Rights cases of the 1960s.

Nancy Buirski, who made the film, first had the idea to make the documentary after reading Mildred Loving’s obituary in the New York Times in May 2008. In the February 2012 ABA Journal, she explained, “Not only was this an overlooked story but also. . . you read about them . . but you don’t know very much about the people involved.”

Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith had a similar reaction when she read Mildred Loving’s obituary in the newspaper. Her response was to sit down and write a song, “The Loving Kind,” which became the title track of an album she released in 2009.

They changed the heart of a nation,
With their wedding vows;
From the highest court in the land,
Their union would lawfully stand;
Simply Mildred and Richard,
That’s how they’d be remembered;
They proved that love is truly blind;
They were the loving kind.

Richard and Mildred Loving stayed together until Richard was killed in a car crash in 1975. They had three children and they will forever be linked together. On the fortieth anniversary of the Loving v. Viginia decision in 2007, Mildred released a statement saying that all people, including gay men and lesbians, should be allowed to marry because, “That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.” Decades earlier, Richard summed up the Loving case too. When lawyers explained the various legal theories to the Lovings, Richard simplified the point, “[T]ell the court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”

Conclusion? Check out the film, which is on DVD and on HBO and online for subscribers. While the movie goes at a leisurely pace to let the story unfold in the participants’ own words and you know how the story comes out, it is still an interesting time capsule that reveals the human side of two regular people who quietly stood up to an injustice.

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Long Live Max: RIP Maurice Sendak

Chidren’s author Maurice Sendak passed away this morning at the age of 83. Sendak wrote more than a dozen books and illustrated more than one hundred, but he is most remembered for his book, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which is published in many languages around the world.

Like many others, I discovered the book as a kid and fell in love with it instantly. I remember it as one of the first books I picked out myself when I was attracted to the fascinating illustration on the cover. I liked that the “monsters” were both scary and cuddly at the same time. I eventually figured out that there was something unusual in the 10-sentence story too. In its simplicity and sparse use of words, it raised questions for me that I could not articulate and left me with some questions I still do not know the answer to today. At the time, I remember asking my mom, “Why was his food still hot?” and receiving an unsatisfying answer. The book somehow captures a complex aspect of childhood that adults cannot quite interpret. So I won’t do that here (although Sendak once described how he had to fight with his publisher to keep the word “hot” because his publisher wanted to change it to “warm”).

Spike Jonze understood the complexity of the book when he made his 2009 film version of Where the Wild Things Are, which on Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% rating from critics and a disappointing 59% rating from audience members. Some noted that the movie was more for adults than children, and the movie did a good job of taking a book that takes a few minutes to read and turning it into a feature length film. It is not the same as the book, but for those who grew up with the book, it made a good effort at recapturing that initial bewilderment from encountering the book as a child. As Nick Deigman explains on Fan the Fire, the movie is “a beautiful and languid testament to the importance of remembering how powerful our childhoods really were.”

That complexity in the film came directly from Sendak’s work. Today, the Washington Post explains that Sendak “transformed children’s literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up.” The dark tones of reality appeared in Sendak’s children’s books because he saw that side of life as a sickly and home-bound child who had relatives die in the Holocaust. He grew up in Brooklyn where his family kept him indoors much of the time because he suffered from bouts of measles, pneumonia and scarlet fever. He became fascinated with things like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which he later used as an inspiration for his book Outside Over There. Sendak based the Where the Wild Things monsters on his immigrant relatives who would visit when he was a child. They spoke a different language while engaging the children affectionately in ways that were terrifying to the children.

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Maurice Sendak explained that he originally conceived of Where the Wild Things as “Where the Wild Horses Are” until he discovered he could not draw horses. When asked why he wrote children’s books, he responds, “I don’t know.” I don’t either, but I’m glad he did. I am also glad he could not draw horses. In this interview from Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, a documentary by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs, Sendak talks about death and looks back on his work. RIP.