Author Archives: Jay

Moulin Rouge!

Happy love day, everyone! Whether single or otherwise engaged, Valentine’s day is a great day to curl up under a fuzzy, warm blanket and have a cozy day (or night) watching movies that make you believe in love. Today I’m writing about Moulin Rouge!, not just because it’s a great love story, but because Sean and I are in Paris and to celebrate our own VD, we’re taking in a show at the actual Moulin Rouge! Located in the Pigalle section of Montmartre, it was the birth place of the can-can, a seductive dance done by courtesans with split knickers. It was a place where the rich could “slum it” in a safe and fashionable district. And yes, they really had a huge elephant statue right in the middle of the garden, just like in the movie. This past October it celebrated its 125th anniversary. Even the movie is aging – can you believe it’s already 14 years old?

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Filming was halted for two weeks in November 1999 after Nicole Kidman fractured two ribs and hurt her knee while rehearsing a dance routine for the movie. If she’s being filmed from the chest up, it’s probably because she’s sitting in a wheelchair.

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The necklace worn by Satine was made of real diamonds and platinum and was the most expensive piece of jewelery ever specifically made for a film – wowza! The Stefano Canturi necklace was made with 1,308 diamonds (!), weighing a total of 134 carats and was worth an estimated cool million.

source: thewickettwitch.tumblr.com

Originally, the green fairy was going to be a long-haired muscly guy , which Ozzy Osbourne was tapped to voice. Obviously it was changed along the way to the current “Tinker Bell” incarnation, played by the fabulous Kylie Minogue, but Osbourne still gives voice to the fairy’s guttural scream when it turns evil. How cool is that?

source: blindlyfromyidols.tumblr.com

The movie was shot largely at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, with no location filming at all, which means the Paris landscape was digitally produced and the two longest visual effects shots (as of 2001) appear in this film. So while famously Parisian, it’s also famously fake.

However you’re celebrating today, and even if you’re not celebrating at all, I wish you love, happiness, popcorn, and movies. I’m off to the Moulin Rouge with my sweetie, and I’ll let you know if they still wear the split knickers 😉

Last Tango in Paris

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If you notice a theme here over the next 10 days, you’re both perceptive and right. I’m off to Paris and to celebrate, I’ll be posting – guess what? – reviews of movies set in Paris! Mais oui!

I must be in a weird mood, and I’m trying not to read into the fact that the first Paris movie I thought was none other than the craziest of crazies: Last Tango in Paris. If you’ve seen it, you can’t forget it. Marlon Brando plays Paul, a man mourning his wife’s suicide. He meets a young woman, Jeanne (Maria Schneider), when they both view the same apartment with intention to rent. They begin fucking. It was a “no strings attached” relationship before those words really existed. So stringless in fact that Paul insists they share absolutely no personal information, not even first names. The affair continues, graphically, for quite some time, until one day Jeanne shows up to find the apartment empty and Paul gone, without a word of goodbye.

But the story doesn’t end there! They meet again, on the street, and this time Paul, in his grief, spills his story, but Jeanne finds that this loss of anonymity is not exactly to her liking, disillusioning in fact.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci was inspired by his own sexual fantasies to make this film. He opens it with two paintings by Francis Bacon, which he visited frequently in real life at the Grand Palais Royal. The film’s palette draws heavily from the colours in these paintings, which reminded Bertolucci of Paris in the winter. He had lofty ambitions for the film, inspired by great art, but what he turned out was instead akin more to pornography?

Why? Because both stars felt “violated and raped” by the process. Maria Schneider, young and naive at the time of filming, felt manipulated into filming some of the more graphic scenes, including one in which Jeanne is sodomized (butter being the infamous lubricant of choice) but the “real tears” are Maria’s, who felt humiliated. Her shock and revulsion make it impossible not to feel guilty by association. Brando was so incensed that he refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after filming wrapped.

Opening in 1972, of course there was great controversy. People in Paris faced weeks of lineups since foreigners from neighbouring countries with greater censorship laws flocked to see it where they could. In New Jersey, protestors called “Pervert!” to those who dared to see it, and the viewing prompted housewives to apparently “vomit in disgust.”

Nevertheless, the film was undeniably ground-breaking and free, and 40 years later, we’re still talking about it.

The Maze Runner

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This movie isn’t terribly sophisticated but it’s also not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I suppose coming from me, and my skeptical expectations, that’s actually a bit of a compliment. But don’t get too excited: I’m not telling you to watch it. But maybe rent it for your kids, ahem, “young adults.” You know, if they’re not already sick to death of the genre, having been bombarded with The Hunger Games and Divergent and their like. The kids are well-cast and it’s surprisingly well-acted. The first half of the movie is actually pretty interesting, and then it starts to fall apart. The ending is weak and confusing (guess I should have read the book!) and though it’s clear that this is just another trilogy in the making this particular movie actually feels more like a second of three than a first. You can safely move this to the bottom of your pile.

Belle

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First off, thank you to all my fellow film-lovers who brought this movie to my attention. It seems to have slipped under the radar over here but I’m infinitely glad I had the chance to watch it.

Belle recounts the true story (in broad strokes – little is known of her life) of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the half-black, bastard child of a Royal Navy Captain in 18th century (slave-trading) England. Her father loves her deeply (as he did her deceased mother) and when he ships out to India, he appeals to his uncle to care for her in his absence. A Lord and Chief Justice, the uncle tries to raise her, along with another (white) niece, with the privileges she is due while teaching her the important barriers of her skin colour. “Too high in rank to dine with the servants, too low in rank” to dine with her family. She has enough to feel a sense of belonging, and just enough to feel left out. At court, her uncle must decide an important case about slaves as he resists acknowledging their similarity to his beloved niece.

I just watched Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond The Lights and thought she was a stand-out, but this film makes clear that her career will be one to be reckoned with. She’s very subtle and deliberate and saves Belle from being merely a curiosity. Instead she is painted as a woman conflicted, a woman carrying the weight of her race for everyone to see. And this movie is also about class, and (perhaps even foremost) about gender. It would seem that her skin colour can be compensated for with enough money, but her gender leaves her with few options. She must either find a good husband or be invisible like her aunt (Penelope Wilton, tragic and invisible). In the film, Belle’s uncle (Tom Wilkinson, formidable) is challenged to draw a parallel between his niece (who is constantly referred to by the ugly word “mulatto”), and slaves insured as human cargo. Are they not worth the same? Is she not worth the same as any other debutante? The film asks the same question of us but poses it too lightly. I can only imagine the controversy her presence in the family home must have caused, and yet I must imagine it because the script glosses right over the indecencies that certainly occurred. The story focuses on romance, or lack thereof, as befits their station and the time, and covers social implications inadequately. Belle lacks the self-starting spark that would make her the pioneer the script so badly wants her to be.

The script has been controversially attributed to Misan Sagay, despite director Amma Asante

The artwork that inspired the movie

having written 18 drafts over 3 long years. Sagay is an American member of the writer’s guild and took it to her union, which decided in her favour against non-member Asante (who is based in Great Britain). Wilkinson and Wilton have expressed ‘incredulity’ at the decision, because they had “only seen and worked from a script written by Amma”, With or without accreditation, this is an imperfect but impressive first full-length feature and Asante is sure to give voice to more great stories over time.

The Boy Next Door

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This is not a good movie. If you want to see a good movie, go to any other movie and there’s a chance it might be good. There’s not a hope in heaven of this one being decent but if you’ve simply come to worship at the altar of Jennifer Lopez, buy your ticket and prepare to feast your eyes.

Ms. Lopez plays a high school teacher with a teenage son and a cheating ex-husband. So right off the bat, you don’t buy it. There’s no school board in the world who’d think it a good idea to let her smoulder in spike heels and a clingy pencil skirt in front of hormonal teenage boys on a daily basis. She inspires lust with every bat of her long lashes and apparently routinely wears sexy lingerie under her clothes, yet her husband’s going to wander? Okay, yeah, it happens. Men cheat for all kinds of stupid reasons. It’s just a weird casting decision to go with an iconic sex goddess as the scorned, middle-aged wife. And it’s nearly as baffling to cast John Corbett as the philandering husband since he’s basically America’s puppy dog. He exudes charm and loyalty and together-foreverness.

So, their marriage is on the rocks. They’re living separately but not quite at the letting-go stage, which is a fine time for a hunky, strapping young man to move in next door (Ryan Guzman). The camera pays close-up attention to his slick muscles to the exclusion of unimportant details like his face. This guy is just a body for hire. A body, meet The Body.

But guess what! Affairs be complicated, especially the May-December ones. Except it’s Jennifer Lopez, and this guy is the same age as most of the guys she dates in real life. But let’s face it, if you were a high schooler who got to bag J-Lo, wouldn’t you do everything you could to keep it going? At least long enough to invite her to prom, right?

Supposedly this film turns into a “thriller” but there aren’t a lot of thrills. But did the screenwriter maybe pick up a big box of clichés for a dime a piece at a garage sale? Yes, those are abundant. In fact, I think she may have just cut up a lot of second-tier scripts, and pasted them back together haphazardly to make something the writers’ room at Days of Our Lives wouldn’t see fit to air. Every time someone opens their mouth, gouda falls out. Oh who am I kidding? It’s more like spray cheez and Guzman just about drenches us with it during his so-called seduction scene. The dialogue is so cheesy I wished I could have just turned the volume off. Because let’s face it. Jenny from the block is down to her black lace panties and we didn’t come here for the talking. Unfortunately, Lopez is trying to turn us on by mewling. I’m certain that in real life she has sex like the bombshell she is, but her “acting” sounds more like a little girl sneezing than a grown woman coming.

The best part about this movie is that I saw it during a weekday matinée in South Keys, just about the only cinema in Ottawa showing daytime movies anymore. Such a shame, because you’ve never seen such a diverse group of characters than those pointed at the screen. A woman seated a few rows behind me tsk’ed the whole way through. You know that clucking sound old women make when they’re disapproving? It’s usually a series of tsks – this particular woman did 5 in a row, and did them at everything. She seemed to be more disapproving of reckless driving than murder so I don’t know what her deal was or why she felt the need to CONSTANTLY share it with the theatre (probably 3-4 dozen times during a 90 minute movie) but boy do I love non-verbal editorializing from strangers. Love! Almost as much as I loved hearing from the woman sitting two seats away from me, who came in late and respected the buffer my coat draped across an empty seat implied but just talked louder to compensate. During a scene involving a very large epi pen I cringed and looked away. She practically fell out of her seat to comfort me. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, arms flapping, no thought to anyone trying to actually watch the movie. “I’ve seen it before” she says “and it turns out okay.” Colour me relieved. Wait- what? You know how bad this movie is and you paid to see it again? Exactly how many times has she seen this? Enough that she now has a rapport with Lopez – she yells to her “It’s your own fault!” and when this fails to elicit a response she turns to me and yells “It’s her own fault!” and when this also fails to elicit a response (other than my shrinking down further in my seat) she turns back to the screen and tries again “It’s your own fault!” Oh that Jennifer Lopez. She never learns.

Tammy

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Melissa McCarthy plays Tammy, an unhappy woman in the middle of the worst day ever when we meet her. On her way to her crappy fast food job, she hits a deer and nearly totals her car. Late to work and bloodied from her accident, her manager fires her on the spot aaaaaand she doesn’t take it well. She makes less than a gracious exit; “burning bridges” comes to mind. She heads home only to find her husband engaged in some very bad behaviour. So naturally she decides to run away with grandmother (Susan Sarandon).

This movie is fun, and sometimes funny, but it’s never as funny as you’d hope. After all this is Melissa McCarthy. Her star shines pretty bright. She and her husband Ben Falcone wrote the script; she stars, he directs. But if they were given carte blanche, they wasted it. For two crazy funny people, they’ve hatched a pretty mediocre comedy here. McCarthy does her loudmouth thing. Sarandon is just not believable as an old granny despite the wig and bifocals meant to blunt her sensuality. It’s still Susan Sarandon, who is effing hot. The two make for an odd pair, and sometimes the relationship hits the right notes but other times it just feels sour. Kathy Bates almost steals the show as the kind of cousin who’s good to have around in a pinch.

I saw this movie and laughed. Lots of people must have – the critics didn’t care for it, but audiences turned it into a 100 million dollar hit. But I’m still not happy about it. First, because I think McCarthy is very smart and this kind of comedy demeans her. Second, because we keep seeing her do this “schtick” over and over: obnoxious fat girl with a dirty mouth. And the thing is, this is not the Melissa McCarthy I know and love. Lots of people came to know and appreciate her with the movie Bridesmaids, where she played another belching, awkward bull. But I know McCarthy from her Gilmore Girls days where she played an adorable chef and businesswoman named Sookie. She was sweet and charming and weird and FUNNY. Funny without it being crass, or referencing her weight, which, to the best of my knowledge, was a non-issue on the show. She was just a funny woman who looked like a lot of women do.

And now Hollywood has turned her into the female Chris Farley. She isn’t just a comic who happens to be fat, she’s a fat comedian. Her characters are fat, the kind of fat that is “gross” and should be laughed at. Do it once and it might be inspired, but make a career out of it and it starts to feel like exploitation. America loves to laugh at fat people. And fat women? Laughing at them is all they’re good for. And it looks like McCarthy is afraid of just that – that if she tried to just be Sandra Bullock’s sweet best friend, audiences wouldn’t buy it. How many times have you seen a fat woman in a movie who is not meant as the comic relief?

Often referred to as “America’s plus-size sweetheart,” Melissa McCarthy responds “It’s like I’m managing to achieve all this success in spite of my affliction.” And the thing is, I feel confident that she’s worth so much salt than she’s showing. We saw a tiny glimpse of her playing straight in St Vincent but that’s exactly the problem: unless they’re prepared to be raunchy cannon balls, a fat woman must be relegated to fat best friend, the one who never has a boyfriend of her own. A sad sack, unless she’s black, and then she’s sassy. But still alone and negligible.

Dear Melissa McCarthy: you are beautiful and talented and mega successful. You are so much better than this. Please stop playing a caricature! Your audience patiently awaits you,

Jay

(add your name in the comments if you agree!)

Beyond The Lights

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I confess I hadn’t heard of this movie, nor would I have likely given it a chance had it not been nominated for an Oscar this year. It’s been nominated for Best Original Song for “Grateful” (music and lyrics by the estimable Diane Warren, who has 7 other deserved nominations under her belt).

It’s not always a delight sitting through a whole movie just to hear a song, and for judging purposes, it’s not usually even necessary since tonnes of the songs only appear over the credits and thus don’t have the benefit of a lot of context. But for once, I’m not even feeling resentful.

The movie opens as Minnie Driver brings her little daughter Noni into a hair salon, hoping the woman can help her do her (black) daughter’s hair before a big talent show. The little girl sings beautifully but mother is furious when she only takes second place. Cut to: present day. Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is on the verge of pop star success with a purple weave and a crotch-grabbing music video. But everything she’s always wanted is not quite what it’s cracked up to be. Why else does she feel like throwing herself off her glamorous hotel balcony? Along comes knight in shining armour (also known as celebrity bodyguard) Kaz (Nate Parker) with a dose of reality and some ambitions of his own.

Is this supposed to be The Bodyguard of 2015? Or just a guard with a damn fine body? It’s not exactly an original story. I bet you can guess right now how it goes! But that didn’t make it unwatchable. I mean, Nate Parker taking his shift off makes it watchable. Gina Prince-Bythewood, the writer-director (Love and Basketball), has all the elements of a classic backstage story, but is just shy of having it feel genuine. Minnie Driver, who easily could have turned out to be a one-dimensional “momager” villain, is credibly handled into a multi-dimensional one. Mbatha-Raw is a shining star, and this movie is just a twinkle in her rising star; I’ve heard she’s just divine in Belle, which I haven’t seen yet but has been is securely at the top of my list.

This is not exactly a great movie, and it does rely on at least one corny montage on the beach that the world could have have done without. But there’s also a gentle exploration of race and gender, so it’s cheesy, but it’s a nice cheese rather than generic.

Love Is Strange

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Ben & George have been together forever but are newly married. Their wedding is small and joyous, and also the catalyst for George’s dismissal from the catholic school where he teaches music. They can’t afford their home on Ben’s pension alone, and the two suddenly find themselves homeless. Friends and family scramble to take them in but this being New York City, where no apartment is bigger than a breadbox, Ben and George are separated. This is a love story that shows us how patient and enduring love must be. With no prospects in sight, people who were happy to toast them at their wedding are less happy to share their homes. There’s chafing on both ends (Ben clashes with his nephew’s wife, played by Marisa Tomei, when they’re both trying to work from a cramped home every day). They feel displaced and disoriented; their hosts feel increasingly put-upon. It’s sad and sweet and melodic – the soundtrack is divinely full of Chopin.

Director Ira Sachs is slow and meandering. It’s painful to watch the tenderness and the intimacy decline into homelessness and despondency. Just when they’ve vowed to share their lives with each other, they can no long afford to share so much as a bed. This is a pretty bittersweet movie, more universal than you may think. The husbands grapple with their emotional health, and aging, and navigating the strange and complicated NY housing market, which is what finally made me realize how mis-titled this movie is. Their love is a lot of things, but it is never strange.

Two Days, One Night

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The brilliant Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a woman who’s returning to work from sick leave only to find herself fired, apparently because her co-workers voted to receive their much-needed yearly bonuses and sacrifice her employment in return. She’s got one measly weekend before they vote again, so she makes the rounds and many humbling appeals.

This is a really interesting movie because while it presents a genuine hurdle, beautifully simple but so timely, it’s also a great hypothetical. Would you give up $1300 in your pocket to save someone else’s job? If she was a friend? If she was a stranger? If she’d do the same for you?

Solidarity: what the fuck does it mean to you? Are you a team player, or are you out for number one? Would you be more comfortable betraying her by secret ballot? Could you look her in the eye and tell the truth? Can you put your desire for a new patio above her need to feed her children?

We know that Sandra’s been away on medical leave. It’s hinted that it may have been mental-health related. And of course the work of convincing people, some she’d consider friends, to not ruin her life just to pad their own, is humiliating. She doesn’t want to beg. She’s riddled with doubt. But the fight also seems to strengthen her somehow; she seems invigorated.

The Dardenne brothers are known for sensitive, brooding work, but this is their first venture with an A-lister. Cotillard, for her part, doesn’t look like a star in this movie. She looks like a harried, anxious woman. Jean-Pierre said of her “Hiring such a famous actress was an additional challenge for us. Marion was able to find a new body and a new face for this film.” Although I’ve always found her to be stupidly talented, watching this movie back to back with Midnight in Paris, where she plays a woman infamously beautiful, it’s clear that part of her talent is in adhering chameleon-like to her characters.

I really liked this movie and am heart-broken to have watched it alone (I’m Oscar-cramming before vacation) because I need to discuss it. Have you seen it? How did you measure up?

Virunga

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I cried.

Virunga is a national conservation park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which houses the world’s last mountain gorillas. The rangers who work there risk their lives to protect the park and its primates from poachers, war, and Big Oil.

Director Orlando von Einsiedel first travelled to the Congo in order to document the park’s positive impact on development and tourism, but within 3 weeks of arriving, M23 rebels were pushing into the area.

Within the park is a “gorilla orphanage”, two words I’d never put together before in my life, and which struck a really emotional core in me. One of the orphaned gorillas has only one hand; his stump is a reminder of the conflict in the region of which he has been victim. Am I so inured by images of war-wounded children that it now takes a maimed gorilla to give me pause?

One of the rangers talks about “une grand tristesse” – a great tragedy – of finding a pack of gorillas slaughtered in the jungle. It was thought that if there were no more gorillas, there’d be no more need for the park. But with so many threats to the park, who was the culprit? Soco International, a British oil company, certainly seems like a guilty party. But the rangers and villagers put aside the investigation to mourn the majestic creatures. If you’ve ever wondered how many pallbearers it takes to carry the corpse of a slain gorilla, this film has the answer.

Meanwhile, it’s not just gorillas who are dying. 130 rangers have given their lives in the service of this park. To many, Virunga is a symbol of hope, a way to heal their “pays cassé”, their broken country, a positive contribution to a country’s questionable legacy. The four gorillas who live in the orphanage are given love, and a surrogate family. But when the rebel army moves closer and bombing can be heard, a gorilla curled up in the fetal position is such a pathetic sight, one that stands in for so many other images of tragedy, that you can’t help but be moved.

The film plays out urgently – the rebellion taking human lives as the Congolese army flees; Soco bribing rangers to exploit a protected World Heritage Site, stealing yet more resources from an area that has nothing to spare. There is drama and tenderness in equal measure. I guess what got to me is that it shows quite starkly the best and worst of human nature, and it leaves it in our hands as to which side will ultimately win.

You can stream this Oscar-nominated documentary on Netflix. If you’d like to learn more about what you can do to help the park, please visit www.virungamovie.com.