Star Trek (The Reboot)

I promised myself I wouldn't review blockbuster sequels or films that haven't yet made it to DVD, but I feel some obligation to let Middlebrowsers know that Star Trek the Do-Over meets most middlebrow standards. It is lively, it is reasonably intelligent, it is well acted, and doggone it, it's just fun! The actors they've found to play the main characters do a great job, though I've got some reservations about Kid Kirk (Chris Pine); searching for the adjective to express my reservations, my son Phillip suggested "smarmy," and I think that's pretty close. I gave up on trying to follow the plot (something to do with blackholes and alternate realities which means that none of the previous Star Trek incarnations have anything to do with current reality), but, as my son adroitly put it, the purpose of the story was merely to assemble the crew. I would also carp a little about the villain, Nero; his motives are pretty obscure and he's just not scary. I also could have done without dredging up the decrepit Leonard Nimoy as a Spock from an alternate future (where there apparently had been a short-lived TV series and a long-lived movie franchise for himself, Kirk, and company). If you see the movie, watch for Winona Ryder as Spock's mother; I just discovered who she was tonight, more than a week after seeing the movie. Also, can someone confirm exactly how many literal cliffhangers Kirk engages in the film--one dangling over a literal cliff in Iowa (cliff in Iowa?) as a deliquent teenager and another hanging for dear life from a floating drilling platform. Are there any more? Anyway, go pay your $6 to $8, buy yourself a big tub of high fat popcorn, and enjoy yourself.

Man Push Cart

Man Push Cart is Ramin Bahrani’s attention-grabbing 2005 feature film, preceding Chop Shop by just a a couple of years. Once again it deals with an immigrant experience in America, but this time the protagonist is newly arrived from Pakistan. Ahmad is sort of an unlikely character. He was a literal rock star at home (a character describes him as “the Bono of Pakistan”) who, under circumstances that we aren’t told about , followed a woman who became his wife to the US, where they were married and she died, again under unknown circumstances, leaving a child behind. The child is with the in-laws, who are not inclined to let Ahmad see his son. Ahmad stays in New York at least partly to maintain the hope that he and his son can one day be a family. It is revealed in a flashback that the wife had a push cart coffee and donut business, which he seems to have taken over after her death. Why “the Bono of Pakistan” finds himself in this utterly impoverished situation, living surreptitiously in an empty apartment, and selling pornographic videos on the side to make ends meet, is a little hard to fathom. One day a Pakistani yuppie befriends him, takes him back to his apartment to finish painting it, and finally recognizes him as a singer. He promises to help Ahmad establish himself in the US. In the meantime Ahmad has started s relationship with a newsstand girl, but his “friend” takes over with her, and he is unable to pursue it further.

We see scene after scene of Ahmad pulling his cart through the early morning traffic of Manhattan; it is sad and frightening. He doesn’t own and cannot afford a car to pull it, as some of his colleagues have. It adds considerable pathos to his situation, but he also seems to take some pride in the cart (it having been his wife’s) and he does the job well. We don’t know what exactly we are to make of Ahmad’s situation, because it seems to be a largely personal rather than ordained by larger social forces. He comes to the US because of a romantic attachment, not because he is forced to. He struggles to make ends meet, but we see many Pakistanis in the film who have been successful, and there is little indication of systemic anti-Pakistani prejudice holding Ahmad or others down. So Ahmad’s situation seems more personal than social, and his fate (whatever it turns out to be) is based more on personal decisions than on larger forces.

Things go badly for Ahmad in the film’s last half-hour. Unlike young Ale of Chop Shop, he has no dream nor does he do much to help himself other than maintain his push cart. He’s an enigmatic and frustratingly passive character. The film leaves him at what appears to be a low point. Whether the film’s last scene, like the final one in Chop Shop, is intended to imply a hopeful future is unclear, but it certainly lacks the uplift effect. Man Push Cart provides an interesting look at a subculture of New York and a challenging character study, but lacks the power and energy of Chop Shop. Roger Ebert declared "Ramin Bahrani is the new great American director," but I’d advise in favor of Chop Shop and whatever follows it (Goodbye Solo).

One curious feature of the film is that Ahmad and the other successful Pakistanis speak American English that is entirely unaccented, using even such slang as “Yo.”

The Secret of the Grain

The Secret of the Grain is about Arabic people living in France, specifically Tunisians living in the seaport town of Sete. Slimani is a sixty-year-old man who is about to lose his job as a shipyard worker. He lives in a small room in a hotel where he is having an affair with the hotel’s owner. Divorced, he is estranged from his wife, though she always sends a plate of whatever she cooks. She is best known for her couscous and mullet, and we see a long sequence of a dinner featuring that dish at the wife’s house, with all the children, their spouses and their children--everyone but Slimani. It is a lively affair (though like much in the movie, we see too much of it). Slimani has an idea for a career change. He wants to buy an old boat that is about to be scrapped and turn it into a restaurant that will feature his wife’s couscous. He enlists the help of his mistress’s daughter, Rym; a beautiful 20-year-old who proves to be his greatest ally. His project gets caught in the local bureaucracy, so he has the idea of hosting a dinner for all the local officials who must approve the project on the newly remodeled boat. Things go well until one of Slimani’s sons flees the boat in his car to avoid a confrontation with a former mistress. Unfortunately, the couscous is in the trunk of his car. Slimani goes in search of him while his guests, unaware of the problem, cool their heels. In the meantime, Slimani’s mistress goes to make a massive pot of couscous and her daughter entertains the guests with some stunning belly dancing, the sensuality of which keeps everyone happily occupied for a good while. Things do not end well Slimani, but the film ends with the crowd enthralled with Rym’s dancing. (Like almost everything in the film, even this goes on too long.)

There is much to admire about this film—the richness of the familial relationships and the Arabic culture, the wonderful relationship of Slimani with Rym, the performances of all the actors, but most especially Hafsia Herzi as Rym. She is absolutely magnetic. But the writer/director, Abdel Kechiche, is so enamored of his characters that he can’t seem to tear away from them and lingers far too long on conversations. The film is two and half hours and feels it; it would have been fine at just less than two hours.

The characters speak of the difficulty of being outsiders in France, but it is difficult for us to sort out what is prejudice. Does Slimani’s loss of his job have to do with this ethnicity? Are local authorities making it difficult for him to start his restaurant bcause he’s Arabic?

A word about the title. The “grain” is couscous. There is no secret that I can discern. The French title was “la graine et le mullet,” which is simply the name of the dish that was to be served at the dinner. Why English distributors would come up with such a misleading title is beyond me.

This is an interesting film from a cultural perspective, highly regarded by critics, and it features a fine performance by Herzi, but I think it will be too slow for most folks.

Subtitle Alert: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.

Chop Shop

First off, Chop Shop is not a slasher flick. The chop shop of the title is a somewhat disreputable auto body shop in New York; some of the parts used there may (or may not) come from dismantled stolen cars. You might want to think of Chop Shop as an American Slum Dog Millionaire: two orphans left to their own devices in a rather amoral environment that threatens extreme poverty. Only the conditions are altered because it is set in America; the setting is literally in the shadow of Shea Stadium where the Mets play. Besides the setting, the other big difference from Slum Dog is that it is essentially a Hollywood movie dressed up as realism; here the reality is, well, real. The impoverished protagonist does not find himself on a nationally broadcast quiz show to be united with his long-lost love and to become rich in the process.

Alejandro (Ale for short) is about 12, of Hispanic descent; we never hear anything about his background and there is no mention of parents. He is living in a jerry-rigged room above the body repair shop where he works in the day as a car parker and apprentice body man. He has various moneymaking schemes, including peddling of porn videos and hawking candybars on subway cars (one of the film’s best scenes). Early in the film he persuades his sister, Isamer, who seems at loose ends, to come live with him at the body shop. She manages to land a job work in a lunch van that seems to cater mostly to the body shops of the so-called Iron Triangle. Like Ale, she has a sideline: turning tricks with truckers at night. The siblings have a touching relationship, full of rough affection. They sleep in the same bed in a perfectly innocent fashion. In one heartbreaking scene Ale has treated his sister to dinner at a Mexican restaurant; one of her friends comes by and she deserts Ale to go to a party with her; he is devastated. Ale is disappointed at her prostituting herself, but he works hard to keep their little family unit together. He sells her on his fantasy of purchasing an old luch van, fixing it up, and going into business on their own. When she buys into the dream, he kicks it into high gear, needing $4500 to buy the decrepit van. He even accepts her ill-gotten money for the kitty. This being, as I said, a realistic film, Ale’s dream of the van does not come true; he is so angered by that failure that, when he sees his sister in a car with a “client," he attacks the man and they both run off. Back at the body shop she is furious with him, but the next morning he devises a beautiful reconciliation with her, which I will refrain from revealing. The film simply ends at that point, with no grand resolution, except that they will continue to survive if not prevail.

I noted that Ale lives in what appears to be an amoral environment, but that only appears to the case. His relationship with his boss is exploitative, and the boss never shows any sign of affection for the boy, but he does provide him with a place to stay, lets him learn a trade that he may be able to live on with no education, and pays him regularly. Generally people in the Iron Triangle treat him pretty well, admit him into their rough social circle, and even do some favors for him. For his part, Ale does everything he can to save his sister from the life she appears to be headed for. And, if nothing else, we have to say that Ale, like most Americans, believes in working hard (not necessarily entirely above-board) to achieve what he wants.

The film is directed and written by Ramin Bahrani, born in Iran but a resident of North Carolina. He seems to have a very well-tuned sense of the immigrant experience in the US. He uses nonprofessional actors in his leads, which adds to the reality. This film moves very quickly and, in its dogged way, is more uplifting than the far-fetched Slum Dog Millionaire.

Doubt

One of the things that movies can do is to bring the stage to us provincials, living away from the centers of theater, and bring those plays to us with first-rate casts. Doubt is one of those cases. It is a fine play by the writer and director of the film, John Patrick Shanley; it is a play that will eventually come to college campuses and local theaters, but not for a while. In the meantime we’ll just have to settle for a film with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the lead roles. Critics will often complain that a play is too stagebound to become a good movie, and that movies’ attempts to “open up” plays are usually unsuccessful. But I can certainly handle a few scenes shot in alternate locales to get to see this play peformed by this cast.

Doubt touches upon a panoply of modern issues—racism, homosexuality, and sexual abuse of children by priests. If Meryl Streep’s character had revealed that she’s had an abortion in her youth, we’d have covered the entire waterfront. Most importantly, the play deals with the question of certainty and doubt, and how we calibrate our existence so that we have enough certainty to act when needed but enough doubt to act circumspectly. Hoffman’s character, Father Flynn, delivers a simple but moving homily to his congregation about the isolating quality of doubt, how we each must deal with it alone. (Hoffman shines in the three opportunities he has to deliver homilies in the film.) Later, after she has accused Father Flynn of child sexual abuse for which she has almost no evidence, Sister Aloysius declares that she has her certainty and concedes that there is nothing the Father could do or say that could sway her from it. In the last scene Sister Aloysius quite unexpectedly breaks down into tears to Sister James and confesses that she too is wracked by doubt regarding her charges against Father Flynn, which by then have caused him to resign his post. (I have some problems with this last turn of events because it seems to come from nowhere; to that point we have seen no chinks in her armor of certitude.)

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of doubt in the film is the doubt that the audience is left with. We certainly want to believe Father Flynn; he is presented to us in an entirely sympathetic manner. We don’t want to participate in Sister Aloysius’s certainty because she runs her school, as Sister James notes, like a prison, and much of her suspicion of Father Flynn stems from her personal distaste for him. She is clearly portrayed as a reactionary force (she won’t let students use ball point pens) fighting desperately against the open-minded liberal spirit represented by Father Flynn. And yet, much as we may be appalled by her motives and her methods, Sister Aloysius may be correct about Father Flynn; he does, after all, resign his position rather than have her pursue an investigation of his past. We are left hanging in a very precarious position of uncertainty.

One aspect of doubt that, somewhat surprisingly, never really enters the film is doubt in the tenets of religious faith. None of these characters troubled by doubt about truth as it is revealed through Mother Church.

A couple of words about performances. Meryl Streep totally transforms herself into the insufferable Sister Aloysius; it’s a relief to see her as herself in the DVD featurettes. Phillip Seymour Hoffman shows a number of sides to his character—the buddy-style mentor of schools’ boys, the political operator, the assertive administrator, the angry man, etc. It is a rich role and he carries it off well in all its aspects. Amy Adams plays Sister James as an innocent who has the strength to stand up to Sister Aloyisius; it’s a diffcult balance, but she manages it impressively. And the brief time that Viola Davis is on screen as the mother of the African American boy Father Flynn has supposedly molested is the most moving of the film; the range of emotions she covers—anger, fear, outrage, frustration, despair—is remarkable, all while maintaining the dignity of her character.

The script is a little heavy on symbolism—Sister Aloysius caught outside in a storm, windows that keep being left open, light bulbs that go out at significant moments. But overall Doubt is a great evening of substantial theater that you can enjoy at home. Let there be no doubt about that.

Your Two-Cents' Worth

Now you can get your two-cents' worth on this blog in two different ways. You can comment on the Opinionator's opinions by leaving a comment. You can also suggest a movie for the Opinionator's attention; see the post at the top of the navigation bar on the right. So is that really four-cents' worth?

Last Chance Harvey

Last Chance Harvey provides us with an excuse (though a fairly lame one) to watch two of our very best actors, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, play off one another. The results while away a pleasant evening but don’t leave a great deal behind. Hoffman is Harvey Shine, a writer of commercial jingles (with long repressed musical aspirations) who is struggling to keep his job as he gets older. He leaves New York to attend his daughter’s wedding in London; on arrival he finds himself the odd man out, having estranged himself from his ex-wife and daughter. Emma Thompson is Kate Walker, whose chief occupation is answering phone calls from her neurotic mother. She works in customer service at Heath Row. Paralleling Harvey’s suffering at his daughter’s wedding, we see Kate on a blind date that is thoroughly humiliating to her. Obviously these two sad sacks must get together, and, amid London’s millions, they manage to at lunch at the airport after Harvey missed his flight and just learned he’s been fired over the phone. He conducts an awkward and slightly creepy conversation with Kate that somehow wins her over. They walk around London (several people have compared this to Before Sunrise but with London instead of Paris and geezers instead of kids). She says he should go to his daughter’s wedding reception which he had skipped out on to fly back to New York for a critical business meeting. He agrees to only if Kate will accompany him, to which she agrees. When the daughter’s stepfather starts to give the father’s toast, Harvey interrupts him and asserts his prerogative as her real father. He gives a very, very awkward toast that turns gracious at the end. Kate falls for it. Eventually she walks away from him because she fears disappointment and he must win her back. And—surprise—he does!

If this sounds like thin gruel, that’s because it is. Where a romance like Before Sunrise is built on crackling dialog between two intelligent and articulate people, this film merely sets up situations for its two stars to respond to with their actor’s toolkits. The words that are spoken aren’t worthy of their speakers. Even with such a trifling plot, a really strong script would have gone a long ways to making this a better film. In the “Making Of” featurette, Hoffman indicates that some of the scenes were improvised by the leads, so one wonders what impact that has on the quality of dialog.

The script was initially written for Thompson, who brought in Hoffman with whom she was paired in Stranger Than Fiction (unseen by me). With those leads set, the film was able to attract some really fine actors for supporting roles—Dame Eileen Atkins as Kate’s mother, James Brolin as the step father, Kathy Baker as Harvey’s ex-wife, and Richard Schiff (Toby from West Wing) as Harvey’s boss. These folks are real assets to this film and bring life to their minor parts. The only supporting player I didn’t like was the daughter, played by Liane Balaban, who seemed not to bring much to the role.

Dustin Hoffman is probably 20 years older than Emma Thompson. She is probably eight inches taller than he is and outweighs him by twenty pounds, I’d bet. He’s the ugly American, she the repressed Brit. Yet the two actors make the chemistry work, and--I'll say it-- it’s just good, clean middle-brow fun.