Category: Eleanor Ringel Cater

Bruce Dern never was much of an actor, and all the critics’ accolades for “Nebraska” don’t make him one.

With “Nebraska,” director Alexander Payne wanders into Coen Brothers territory. That is, a foray into black-comedy Hicksville — in this case, the titular state, where Payne was born, and for which, Payne insists, he still has much affection.

Well, if this is a movie about some place he likes, I’d be interested in seeing what he does to a place he doesn’t.

Actually, “Nebraska” is less about a state than a state of mind. Woody Grant (Dern) is a grumpy old man who long ago crossed the line into cantankerous old coot. Apparently, he was a cantankerous young coot as well. Now an elderly alcoholic with a sharp-tongued wife (June Squibb), Woody is convinced he’s won a million dollars. He just needs to get from Billings (Montana) to Lincoln (Nebraska) to claim it.

The passing of Nelson Mandela has touched us all. For once, media overkill doesn’t seem to say enough about this extraordinary man. I’ve heard or read so many pronouncements over the past few days, I can’t keep them all straight. But  here’s a quote I especially like: “In Mandela we saw what we seek to see in ourselves.”

There is a powerful Mandela movie that’s already in limited release and will open in Atlanta before the end of the year.  Called “Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom,” the film initially seems pedestrian. However, the power of Mandela’s story is such that, by the end, you’re grateful to the director, Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn Girl”), for not getting in the way. Plus, the picture offers expert performances by  Idris Elba in the title role and Naomie Harris as his wife Winnie.

As someone who never had much use for Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac — the persona as well as the work — I wasn’t all tied up in literary raptures at the prospect of finding more (finding anything) about them.

Thus, “Kill Your Darlings” which is about an obscure but apparently true incident in their young lives, held little interest for me.

The title, is derived (perhaps) from a Faulkner quote — and frankly, I can’t think of anyone farther away from the Beat sensibility — in which he advised would-be writers — “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

Or perhaps the reference is to Stephen King who wrote.  “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

This “Hunger Games” sequel takes a while to, well, catch fire.

But as Shakespeare said, the past is prologue, and director Francis Lawrence, to his credit, is concerned that no one feels left out, even if they didn’t see the first movie.

So there is a lot of early exposition artfully woven into events that lead up to a kind of Survivors All-Star, by which President Snow (Donald Sutherland) hopes to rid himself of the troublesome Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence, now a bonafide Oscar winner).

She and co-winner Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) are forced to fake their way through a tour as the games newest winners (and adorable romantic couple…not). But Katniss just won’t get with the program and her presence in the different Districts of Panem portends what the government fears most: revolution.

Probably the most important movie about JFK ever made was also the most tragic.

It’s the Zapruder film, shot by Abraham Zapruder on that historic fatal day in Dallas—Nov. 22, 1963.   Zapruder, the man who accidentally filmed the actual assassination, was just another on-looker who’d come to Dealy Plaza to see the Kennedy motorcade as it sped through downtown. Instead, he recorded one of the key moments in our nation’s loss of innocence.

I’m sure you’ll see plenty of it this week since about a zillion and one 50th Anniversary specials are planned.

Every so often, a movie comes along that, if someone brings it up, you know they’re going to say how much they liked it. A good example? “Love Actually.” People who dislike it never bring it up.

“Love Actually” apparently never achieved Pet Peeve status — though a number of critics, smelling a crowd-pleaser, went out of their way to heap scorn on what I’ve always looked at as a friendly, eager-to-please, reasonably unpretentious picture.

So, when the ads for the new film “About Time” go out of their way to remind audiences that it’s from Richard Curtis, the same guy who wrote and directed, well, “Love Actually,” you can see they are counting on 10 years worth of good will (Yep, it came out that long ago).

Nothing wrong with that. The marketing department could also point out Curtis wrote “Notting Hill” (one of Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers’ favorites) and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (one of mine).

But “Love Actually” is the magic word (well, words). And “About Time” is not in the same ballpark. It’s not even in the same game.

As rigorous as it is remarkable, “All Is Lost” could easily be characterized as “Gravity at Sea.” You’ll understand me better after you see it.

The movie stars Robert Redford. Co-stars him, too. And he plays all the supporting roles.

What I’m saying is “All Is Lost” is a one-man tour-de-force, a haunting meditation on old men — unbelievably, the Sundance Kid is now 77 — and the sea.

Director J.C. Chandor’s only other film couldn’t be more different. The verbally and financially acrobatic “Margin Call” is a minor classic of economy and ensemble acting, craftily capturing the survivor mentality that can happen when a Wall Street firm goes into freefall. Everywhere you look, there are A-plus actors: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Pinto, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany, just for a start.

Conversely, in “All Is Lost,” nobody and no thing keeps Redford company. Not a tiger named Richard Parker, nor a soccer ball named Wilson, or even a wisecracking George Clooney.

With apologies to Spike Lee (and the city of New Orleans), there’s Trouble in Water all over the movies recently. “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks, is based on the true story of an encounter between an American cargo ship and some Somali pirates.

Next week, “All is Lost,” possibly the best thing I’ve seen this year — certainly the most rigorous — opens at select theaters. Robert Redford stars in this one-man show about a man adrift in the Indian Ocean after his yacht hits a submerged cargo ship (not the same one Hanks pilots, in case you were wondering).

Gee, two movies with cargo ships opening in the same month. What are the odds?

Disasters at sea — natural or unnatural — have long been fodder for films. We all know about “Titanic” (there’ve been several versions beside the James Cameron behemoth, the best being “A Night to Remember” from 1958).

I still think of “The Poseidon Adventure” every time I see Shelly Winters near water. George Clooney, who usually survives his pictures, didn’t make it through “The Perfect Storm.” And there are always mutinous crews, hence several versions of the unfortunate encounter between Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian.

“Gravity” is that rare film that is so in the moment you feel you never need to see it ever again.

That’s meant to be a compliment, not a put-down.

“Alien” is like that. I’ll watch bits and pieces if it comes on TV, but I’ve never watched it again, from beginning to end since I first saw it decades ago, in a giant Manhattan movie theater. This was way before the Internet, so word wasn’t out everywhere you looked (or tried not to look) about what came aboard that space ship, how it got loose (yuuuuchiest scene in the history of movies) or who would survive (if anyone).

I’m the same way about “Thelma & Louise.” And “Blood Simple.”

The late Tom Clancy wrote a great number of best-sellers. Surprisingly, only a few of them were made into movies.

I was lucky enough to attend the press junket for “The Hunt for Red October,” Clancy’s first film to be made into a movie. It starred Alec Baldwin as Clancy’s celebrated fictional CIA operative, Jack Ryan. It was Baldwin’s only outing in the role.

Harrison Ford took over for the next two Ryan capers (“Patriot Games,” “A Clear and Present Danger”) and finally Ben Affleck lumbered through the part in “The Sum of All Fears.”

The sex buzz at the “October” press gathering, however, wasn’t Baldwin. It was Sean Connery, who played Ryan’s nemesis, a Soviet submarine captain. At 60, he had just been named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.

There are so many inconvenient truths in Robert Reich’s “Inequality for All,” it makes Al Gore’s Oscar winner look like a Tea Party screed.

His premise? The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. And poorer. And poorer. And….

Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and a professor at such tony places as Berkeley, Harvard and Brandeis, is as entertaining a guide as Gore was. Actually, he ‘s more personable since a lot of the Gore bump (personality-wise) could be traced to the former VP’s singular stiffness as a Presidential candidate. If he’d presented the Gore then that he did later in “An Inconvenient Truth,” he just may have been President.

No doubt enough will be said about this being James Gandalfini’s last leading role. But there’s more to “Enough Said” (you saw it coming, didn’t you?) than the late much-loved actor’s endearing warm-n-fuzzy-with-an-edge portrayal.

There’s also Julia-Louis Dreyfus’s delicate dance as a lovable yet credible neurotic who tellingly admits, “I’m tired of being funny.” It’s an observation that any woman over 30 who’s been tossed back into the red-wine (usually merlot) sea of the dating pool might say. It’s one way of mustering up that kind of youthful-seeming “brightness,” like you might have had at 20.

When it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, “Adore” was named “Two Mothers.”

I’m not certain which title is worse, since neither conveys the powerful cultural statement implied by the name of the Doris Lessing book on which it is based.

Her book was “The Grandmothers,” and by calling it that, she clearly points the way to the true societal sin, which this film so fearlessly explores.

The central couple is Roz (Robin Wright) and Lil (Naomi Watts), who’ve been inseparable best friends since childhood. A rather idyllic childhood, I must say. Their houses sit atop a splendid Australian cliff overlooking an even more splendid bay. They are, in effect, isolated in paradise.

The biggest surprise — may I venture, the only surprise— in the wretched new movie, “Austenland” comes in the very first scene: yes, that’s Jane Seymour playing the Edwardian dowager-monstress who runs the fantasy getaway which gives the movie its title.

Based on a 2007 novel, “Austenland” has a premise not unlike “Westworld” or “Jurassic Park.”

Namely, beware the perfect-seeming theme-park vacation.

The usually unsinkable Kerri Russell plays Jane Hayes who is an out-and-out Jane Austen nut. Or perhaps nut case would be more accurate.

About as close to a good film version of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” as we’re ever likely to get, “Prince Avalanche” pairs Paul Rudd and Emil Hirsch as a couple of  road workers in Texas, circa 1988.  The time is important because it increases their isolation which is key to the film.

No cell phones or computers in a stretch of charred Texas in the late ‘80s.

No cell phones or computers pretty much anywhere, for that matter. Decked out in matching coveralls, the two look like the Super Mario Brothers rendered into flesh and blood.

Their mind-numbing job is to paint the yellow line down the middle of a road surrounded by charred trees— the result of a wildfire we’re told. These bare ruined choirs (as Shakespeare might have had it) make a fitting backdrop for a situation that grows increasingly surreal.

“Jobs” isn’t a chore.

Unfortunately, that’s hardly a recommendation. What’s lacking in this biography of the man who made Apple is that sense of having learned something about who he was or even a hint of why he did what he did.

“The Social Network,” which so adroitly picked through the entrails of the young Mark Zuckerberg, is the benchmark these days for this sort of movie.

“Jobs” feels more routine, less organic. We get an “and then this happened” chronicle instead of getting under the skin of an admittedly complex hero-bastard.

It’s possible I enjoyed “Jobs” more than others might because I knew so little of his story. I had heard of the fat guy (read: Steve Wozniak) who was the real genius behind Apple.

How scared is the Hollywood elite of the city outside their zillion-dollar conclaves?

Really scared. If you need proof, look no further than “Elysium,” some sci-fi hokum supposedly set in the 22nd century, but actually pretty redolent of a specific sort of Lala-Land paranoia.

That is, rampant paranoia about all those people who make their comfortable gated lives possible. All those people — the cook, the chauffeur, the gardener, the pool boy, whoever— who go away after dark. Where to? Their well-cushioned employers would rather not know.

Woody Allen never cared much about the kindness of strangers. But Tennessee Williams, a much frailer artist, certainly did. Hence Blanche Dubois’ famous line from “A Streetcar Named Desire:” “Whoever you are, I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

However, Allen has always known good material when he sees it, so perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise that he’s created his own Bernie Madoff parable by shrewdly borrowing from “Streetcar.”

If anyone had asked me, I would’ve voted Kristen Wiig the SNL alum most likely to break the movie curse that has afflicted every female former SNL-er from Gilda Radnor to, well, even Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

Granted Fey and Poehler have become small-screen queens, with long-running hit shows and an unforgettable stint as the double-hosts of this year’s. Golden Globes. And Radnor had a hit show on Broadway. But overall…

I had hoped to be more excited about “I’m So Excited.” A lot more excited.

A throwback to Pedro Almodovar’s earlier, sillier movies, this soap-opera farce — think, SNL tackles telemundo —takes place on a plane that is having difficulties.

On board is a typically Almodovar – a mix of manic passengers, plus a trio of flighty-to-the-extreme flight attendants and a pair of pilots who stop just short of asking about gladiator movies.

Almodovar does “Airplane!” Sounds like fun, right? But it isn’t.