ARTS EXPRESS RED EYE MOVIE REVIEWS - Red Hot And Saucy
Served Up Here
**Karma Express: [That 'refurbished' Lionel train above was the company owned by Roy Cohn...]
THREE CHRISTS REVIEW
THREE CHRISTS - OR POSSIBLY FOUR
Based
on a true story and adapted from the autobiography The Three Christs of
Ypsilanti, by Dr. Milton Rokeach, the dramatic feature set in the
sprawling Michigan mental hospital of the book's title stars Richard
Gere as the shrink in question, here named Alan Stone. It's the late
1950s when warehousing, and shock therapy and lobotomies were the mostly
cruel and ineffective psychiatric treatments of choice, and Dr. Stone
is determined to oppose the resistant institutional bureaucracy in that
regard, taking up the challenges of introducing group therapy as an
innovative alternative.
Facing the hospital's 'unfeeling, conformist' determined backlash, Dr. Stone proceeds defiantly by scoping out two diagnosed paranoid schizophrenics claiming to be Jesus Christ. And in search of a third Christ to complete his planned assemblage, Stone sends his assistant on a quest through the institution to find one - which turns into a complicated affair as she comes up with 'three Cinderellas, two Eisenhowers, and one Duke Ellington' in the process.
Eventually the trio materializes (Peter Dinklage, Walton Goggins, Bradley Whitford), but what ensues is more erratic behavior and unorthodox therapy such as staff role playing as fictitious patients themselves, than any noted cure. Which tends to focus mostly on Gere and his complex state of mind, than the patients in question - who as actors give off vibes here as somewhat dramatically uncomfortable with portraying mental illness.
And Gere is to be commended for his principled choices on and off screen - including Avnet's Three Christs along with his compelling portrayal of a homeless man in Time Out Of Mind - and personally delivering water, food and other supplies this past summer to African migrants stranded on an Open Arms vessel off the coast of Italy.
But missing from this championing of psychiatrc therapy over prior methods, even as a postscript confesses 'Though I had failed to cure the Three Christs of their God-like delusions, they had cured me of mine' - is what should have been a crucial second postscript about the current terrible state of affairs regarding psychiatric care that followed this doctor's efforts. Namely in the present, replacing warehousing and the rest with simply tossing mental patients on the streets into burgeoning homelessness, and budget cuts that have denied them treatment.
Though that particular issue rears its head in another current frightening movie touching on that horrifying present reality - Joker.
The First Worst Film Of 2020
Citizen K: Don't Believe The Hype
Who is Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and what is he doing as a dubious hero in this Alex Gibney documentary? And what does all this have to do with the Black October coup not collapse back in 1993, and Russia election meddling - no not that one. Rather, the Bill Clinton/CIA bromance with Boris Yeltsin that brought the counter-revolutionary candidate to power back then.
The ex-con turned Gibney martyr celebrated here as the once richest man in Russia after grabbing the wealth out of the people's coffers in that post-Soviet scam known as state vouchers, turns up in the film promoting his human rights organization out of London, Open Russia - an outfit created and funded by war criminal Henry Kissinger and UK robber baron banker Jacob Rothschild.
Say It Ain't So, Gibney...
Richard Jewell: Truth Stranger Than Hollywood
"Don't become an asshole - a little power can turn a person into a monster."
"A little power can turn a person into a monster." That key observation by Sam 'Make My Day' Rockwell in Clint Eastwood's biopic Richard Jewell, sets the highly unusual tone for the conservative minded director, whether incidentally or accidentally, of the US moving progressively into police state mode.
The film is based on the true story of Jewell, an eccentric security guard underachiever aspiring unsuccessfully to be a cop, who is deemed a public hero helping save lives during the 1996 deadly Centennial Park Olympics bombing in Atlanta. But with a joint FBI/press obsession to rapidly collar a bombing suspect however inconclusive, Jewell finds himself abruptly morphed from an object of celebration into condemnation - simply because he appears to fit a vague psychological profile of frustrated, reclusive white male. And a trend on screen as well this season in movies, with the immense audience interest in Joker and The Irishman.
Actor Paul Walter Hauser has been praised for his clueless and impassive stifled portrayal of Jewell, which tends to border until an emotionally charged conclusive breakthrough finale, on the exclusively public persona of southern hillbilly bordering on caricature. While the powerfully conveyed resistance and rage against the authoritarian and repressive political drift in the country, is a burden placed heavily on the shoulders of Sam Rockwell as unheralded real life low rent Atlanta lawyer - who bravely rises to the formidable occasion rigorously denouncing the FBI and tabloid tendency press, with kickass fury and then some.
A tacit, cautionary wakeup call to what's going down ever since then in the drift towards a police state in collusion with the press, the film has resounding implications but could have weighed in on the surrounding political reality continuing to this day. Namely, a reversal reaction against the liberating Anti-War and Civil Rights Movements earlier in the last century, proceeding into the '80s Greed Decade and accompanying repressive political tendencies - the 1994 Mass Incarceration Crime Bill and privatized prisons cashing in.
Along with historically, the upcoming 1999 US/NATO bombing of Serbia and entire obliteration of that former country known as Yugoslavia. While their leader Slobodan Milošević was hauled off to the International Criminal Court, accused of 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes - only to have the charges dropped long after years of incarceration, following his death in prison due to chronic health conditions.
Cold Brook Review: Are You Ready To Be Different
Part ghost tale and part Bartleby The Scrivener while at the same time a captivating slavery reparations fable, Cold Brook flirts with the supernatural even as its heart is planted firmly in the social reality of the hear and now. And a story so delicately woven with a tender human core, yet grounded in sobering class and race issues reverberating today.
The Bartleby in question is Gil Le Deux (Harold Perrineau) an African American dignified yet determined seeming apparition haunting an Upstate NY history museum. And when asked to leave at closing time, somehow 'prefers not to' - and refusing to do so while vanishing repeatedly on the premises. What comes to light progressively, is that Le Deux is fixated on a glass enclosed antique scroll on display, a deed that would confirm his right to land left to him in this area by the New Orleans slave owner who freed him. But due to tragic circumstances back then in the 1850s (actually around the same time that Melville wrote Bartleby) Le Deux died and never arrived to claim his land - until now.
Meanwhile, a pair of museum maintenance men, George and Ted (Kim Coates and William Fichtner respectively - the latter the director and co-writer of Cold Brook), following a frantic period of disbelief, fear and ambivalence, set out on a mission, despite the risk of arrest and losing their jobs, to help this tormented spirit claim justice and closure. While one of the most radiant lines in Cold Brook uttered by Coates - 'I don't know if I'm ready to be different' - speaks to the human and historical challenges of fearlessness, risk, and rebellion in acting on convictions - and taking a stand no matter what.
The film could have been shortened to pick up the somewhat sagging pace, when a brisk, suspenseful momentum was called for. And the narrative lost a key opportunity for socio-economic scrutiny, while skirting over the stark class differences within Ted's family - between the demeaned blue collar spouse and his bourgeois, educated college dean wife pretty much wearing the patrician pants in the family.
But remarkable in any case about Cold Brook, is a rare and commendable sighting of blue collar working class heroes like this duo, not the usual condescending proletarian screen buffoons, but instead graced with affectionate humor while treated with seriousness and dignity as principled, courageous protagonists. While the many metaphorical ghosts haunting the film historically within the darker recesses of this country, are bravely illuminated as well.
Official Secrets Review
"My motive was to stop a war and save lives - Yes, I'd do it again."
Yet another instance of filmmakers of courage and conviction stepping up where unfortunately and unlike Gun, politicians and the press (including critics) fear to tread. Which is the reason you likely never heard of this best female action hero this year.
While most attention when it comes to US invasions and wars, is paid to those who fight them, the truly courageous with unbroken resolve who battle for peace instead, are inevitably ignored or worse punished into silence. Such was the predicament of young British intelligence translator Katharine Gun. And venturing a guess you never heard of her.
Yet this fearless woman's lonely struggle nearly stopped the Iraq invasion and mass death and destruction - costing up to a million lives and many more injured - in its tracks. While her bold and plainly stated motivation was simply explained as caring about the world - and confessing her actions in order to protect her fellow workers around her from similar suspicion and persecution.
And sadly as well, too often investigative, truth telling filmmakers step up to the plate to bring such insidious government manufactured events like the WMD hoax in question here, to light, where more often than not politicians and the media fear to tread. Or as one persistent reporter is ordered by his boss in the docudrama Official Secrets - 'stop over-thinking it.'
And Official Secrets, directed and co-written by South African filmmaker Gavin Hood and based on the book The Spy Who Tried To Stop A War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, is both a politically inspiring and emotionally intense portrait. And of one woman's fiercely determined, solitary challenge in a faceoff against the illegally duplicitous UK government, that would already seem to have clearly earned Keira Knightley best female action hero acclaim this year - blockbuster babes move over.
That is not to say that movies reviewers - and that all too often dancing around controversy, elephant in the room film criticism - will be forthcoming regarding praise for this politically illuminating gem. Unfortunately as is already the case with Official Secrets.
Instead, reactions more likely avoid the kind of bravery demonstrated by the film's protagonist, however minimal in comparison, by diverting reader attention to unwarranted distractions like assessments of production values or dramatic pace over vision. And relegating the crucial importance of what matters in the real world to an inconsequential realm - instead a pressured meek press opting for feeling taking precedence over thought and ideas.
Prairie Miller
ENOUGH BOWLING - LET'S GO JOIN THE FARC
PARASITE: Deplorables, South Korea Style. Though billed as a kind of South Korean anti-capitalism satire - this eat the rich outing when not eating its own at the bottom of the economic food chain, comes off more as an empty plate...Parasite is screening at the NY Film Festival 2019 in progress.
A somewhat combo tale of two families and exceedingly twisted prince and the pauper dubious Seoul mates turned sour spree, Parasite plays out as the poverty stricken bottom feeder (literally basement dwellers) Kim clan conspires together to pull off an elaborate scheme posing as hired help at the home of the patrician Park family. All goes well until part of the ploy involving maneuvers to get rid of the existing household workers backfires into over the top mayhem, as a kind of chaotic both external and internal bloody class warfare ensues.
Director Bong Joon Ho (Snowpiercer, Okja) presents a condescending, pessimistic portrayal of human nature bereft of class consciousness or ideology - and a workingclass whose sole motivation is to go to extremes, or aspiring to do so, to replace when not feeding off the economic class exploiting them.and similar films exposing government deceit, intelligence manipulation, and mass murder in pursuit of avarice around the world - fear of denunciation from those in power for 'overthinking' what lies in plain sight, is marked it seems by press retreat from daring and truthful responses.
LARRY FESSENDEN TALKS DEPRAVED
** "I think horror has to address the current collapse of society, that is what it's always been good at. It's a cautionary genre that tries to shock people out of their complacency - and I really believe that it has a heroic purpose, horror films."
COMING DETRACTIONS!
Understanding The US Obsession To Make War In Venezuela
'...The answer to whether or not Venezuela will be intervened militarily may not have to be sought in the official statements of the head of the Southern Command, Craig Faller, but in the signals that come from the cultural wing of the American war apparatus, that is, from the film industry.'
"If you want to know what the next great war will be, just look at the marquee of the cinemas," exclaims a literary character - and may be right.
José Negrón Valera, Sputnik
