At the movies: Eddington.

 

I did not care for Eddington. And it's complicated.

At the movies: Napoleon.

 

Ridley Scott is at it again, and the results are messy but reliable, and Vanessa Kirby is EVERYTHING.

At the movies: C'Mon C'Mon.

 

Here's the truth about C'Mon C'Mon. It's a lovely film, subtle and sweet. It's such a relief to have Joaquin Phoenix back from Jokerville, and this is a good mesh of many feelings.

At the movies: Her.

So, I got to talk about what I widely consider to be the best film of 2013 for The Scene. There's some stuff I couldn't find a way to fit in completely (like the queerness of Chris Pratt's character, the economics behind the OS One launch, and how rather than children, the creative-minded reproduce through ideas which are exploited by higher-ups) which I will happily go into if asked. But give a read, and then see the film.

Lost Review! At the Movies: I'm Still Here

I wrote it and got paid for it. But it never made it into the digital archive at Metromix Nashville. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice... So I saw this before it premiered at Toronto, but it opened in Nashville after the involved parties had revealed the whole thing to be a hoax. So that's annoying. Here's my genuine response. You're soaking in it.

In 2009, just after completing the film Two Lovers, Joaquin Phoenix announced his retirement from acting in order to pursue a career as a rapper. Befuddlement ensued, from fans who’d followed Phoenix’s career as an acclaimed actor as well as a celebrity-obsessed media that couldn’t help but wonder at the sheer randomness of the whole thing. So from that, Phoenix began to document his transition into hip-hop with the help of his brother-in-law Casey Affleck. This film is the result of that, following Phoenix’s downward spiral into what very well could be a self-created career annihilation.

Everyone is wondering whether or not I’m Still Here is real or fake, or ‘real.’ When you’re talking about film or fame, there is no real, at least not in the way that suits an easy dualist perspective. My guess is that the germ of this film started out as invented and planned, and that during the course of this ‘documentary,’ the outside world decided to play along and everything got too real for everyone, and Phoenix ended up in showbusiness limbo.

Filth abounds, as well as a good deal of drug use, pimpcraft, exploitation, nudity, and empty Hollywood debauchery. In its defense, I’m Still Here does have a staggeringly effective and beautiful final shot, a miraculously tranquil and haunting moment. But the slog of it is just brutal.

I give Casey Affleck a good deal of credit as an actor.

As a director/documentarian, he’s coming from some place very different. At its best, this film is like evidence for an intervention, or a cautionary tale for anyone trying to get too metatextual with their career. You feel a corrosive sense of pity for Phoenix at first, one that eventually gets used up by the ceaseless, whiny grind of watching a goof on the idea of celebrity that acquired its own malignant inertia and ended up fulfilling its fake crisis with a real one. Let’s hope this mess scares Phoenix into rediscovering a passion for acting.

At the movies: Two Lovers.

Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is adrift in life, occasionally suicidal, and trying to find his own path in life in a very uncertain time. His family’s Brighton Beach cleaners is always a possibility, especially now that his father has a prospective buyer for it who has a beautiful daughter (Vinessa Shaw, from Eyes Wide Shut) who finds him and his quirky ways adorable. Which would be perfect if it weren’t for Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow, here a shiksa shakti with some great moments and the first real role she’s had since The Royal Tenenbaums), the ‘beautiful, messed-up woman who doesn’t really know what she wants’ whose married lover has just set her up with the apartment across the courtyard from Leonard’s.

Before you know it, we’ve got our man Leonard torn between two women in the romantic equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru scenario: the magnetic, earthily graceful Sandra (Shaw), and Paltrow’s exciting, chaotic, passive aggressive waif Michelle. And if inordinate amounts of ink and pixels have been spilled over Phoenix’ antics on the David Letterman show and in his ‘career move’ to become a rapper, it’s shameful that nowhere near as much attention has been given how transcendently good he is in this film. He’s like a Lars von Trier lead in this film, and he even does his own breakdancing.

The film matches him every step of the way, with an expressive and moody use of the cinemascope frame to highlight both Leonard’s alienation from everyone around him and to demonstrate, without saying a word, how valuable private space is in New York City; it’s good to have a drama that understands the importance of its physical space without being show-offy about it. The whole concept of the family apartment may be lost on audiences with no familiarity with New York housing, but the history and detail put into that home is just beautiful. Also beautiful, as always, is Isabella Rossellini as Leonard’s mother. Rosselini remains one of the most remarkable women alive right now, taking her place alongside Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, and Catherine Deneuve as a timeless icon of beauty- the natural woman at her most radiant and true.

Two Lovers is a treatise, of sorts, on the sadness of stasis. Viewing Sandra and Michelle as Scylla and Charybdis, we can empathize with Leonard and his own uncertainties. We understand the little tyrannies of others’ expectations just looking at the lines in Leonard’s face, and if this truly is Phoenix’ last performance as an actor, then it sets the bar incredibly high. The last scene says it all; a moment of tremendous beauty and joy, tied to an aching and pummeling sadness, where you see it all: joy built on a lie, hurt flinging itself desperately, needily toward hope.