FEEL THE BERNSTEIN

Now in the multiplexes; opening December 20 on Netflix:

Maestro--Bradley Cooper's imitation of Leonard Bernstein conducting is uncanny. Cooper captures Bernstein's histrionic, self-dramatizing, ecstatic style perfectly, and gets across how he used his gestures and facial expressions and body language not just to lead his musicians through a score but to tease the interpretation and intensity he wanted out of them.

The conducting scenes in this film, directed by Cooper from a script he wrote with Josh Singer, also suggest that the podium gave Bernstein a sense of liberation which he may have known in few other areas of his life. Cooper's performance, in general but particularly in these passages--especially a lengthy recreation of a celebrated performance of Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony"--is luminous.

I'll admit that it's taken me a while to come around where Bradley Cooper is concerned. But after A Star is Born and Nightmare Alley it was impossible to deny both his talent and the intelligence and heart with which he deploys it. Aided here by Kazu Hiro's amazing (and laughably controversial) prosthetic makeup, he gets across the conductor's mix of authority, of self-conscious, performative sophistication and of boyish wonder, and makes you see what made him beloved, both publicly and by his friends and family. You see what made him difficult, too.

Very wisely, Cooper chooses not to direct in the same florid manner that Bernstein conducted. Despite some flashy transitions, most of Maestro unfolds in long, sustained takes, beautifully shot by Matthew Libatique from a discreet distance; we're made almost into eavesdroppers at times. This directorial reserve balances the extravagant acting superbly.

The movie isn't a conventional biopic; there are no explanatory dates or places onscreen, no follow-up summary at the end, and only incidentally does it trace Bernstein's career highlights. The focus is on the relationship between Bernstein and the Costa Rican-born stage actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), who married him in 1951. The other characters, though well-drawn and convincingly played--Sarah Silverman is a good fit as Bernstein's sister Shirley--are decidedly subordinate to the leads.

According to the film, Montealegre was well aware, going in, that Bernstein was a gay man (though his affairs were not exclusively same-sex even before she came along). "Let's give it a whirl," she says breezily to him toward the beginning, and you think, uh-oh.

On the whole, they don't seem to have done too badly; they had three lovely kids, sensational careers, countless friends, and they seem to have profoundly loved each other. But entering into a marriage with somebody of uncongenial sexuality cannot come without turbulence, and this can only be compounded when they're a titanic cultural legend.

It's possible that even the movie itself succumbs to this, a little. With her brittle yet mirthful, keenly observant, wholeheartedly engaged line readings, Mulligan is marvelous; the spine and centering force of the movie (she's top-billed in the credits, even over Cooper). But we learn far less of Montealegre's remarkable career or her activism than we do about Bernstein. The movie sees her in relation to him, and doesn't always make clear how formidable she was in her own right, not just within the marriage but in the world at large.  Even when part of the point of the movie is the perils of putting yourself in the shadow of a legend, the person at the podium tends to get the attention.

ALLEY WHOOP

Opening this weekend...

Nightmare Alley--"Geek" has now become roughly analogous to "nerd" or "extreme enthusiast." But the term once had horrific connotations; it was carny slang for a sideshow performer who would do ghastly acts--bite the heads off of live chickens, for instance--usually to feed an alcohol or drug habit. The bottom rung of show business (I almost wrote "the bottom rung of humanity" but then I remembered the 45th President and his cronies), this revolting occupation was the jumping-off point for William Lindsay Gresham's classic lower-depths novel Nightmare Alley (1946).

An atmospheric if softened-up movie of it was made in 1947 with Tyrone Power as Stan, the newbie carny who looks at the geek and knows he could never fall to such a degraded level. Bradley Cooper plays Stan in this gorgeously stylized new version from the great Guillermo del Toro, working from an adaptation he co-wrote with Sunset Gun maven Kim Morgan.

Stan, a drifter running away from something awful, makes himself useful as a laborer to a desolate midwestern carny. Soon he's learning the tricks of fortune-telling and mind-reading acts, which here are so talmudical that earning an honest living seems like it would be far easier. He learns how to calm down an angry cop, and how to dispose of a geek who's outlived his usefulness, and where to find a new one. 

And the work brings out Stan's creative side; soon he's designed a spectacular new "electric chair" act for the lovely Molly (Rooney Mara). He's also taught a weird sort of hustler ethic; the veteran fortune-teller Zeena (Toni Collette, magnificent as ever) warns him against doing a "spookshow," that is, actually faking a manifestation of a departed loved one.

This first half, set in the carny amongst its disreputable but mostly warm and likable denizens, is darkly delightful, visually sumptuous and full of terrific, potent acting and pungent dialogue. As with both the novel and the earlier film version, the second half, in which Stan leaves the carny to start a higher-end mentalist scam--and foolishly ignores Zeena's advice--is less engaging. His scenes as the hapless fly in the parlor of a lacquered, satanic psychoanalyst (Cate Blanchett), though entertaining enough, border on camp, and are a little oppressive after the buoyant, motley first act.

Still, this is a rich and absorbing melodrama. Actors seem to thrive in front of del Toro's camera, and alongside the leads and the wondrous Collette, scene-stealers here include Willem Dafoe as the candidly heartless boss, Ron Perlman as an avuncular carny and, perhaps best of all, David Strathairn as Pete, Stan's washed-up, gently rueful mentor. Even in the second half, there's a splendid quick turn by Mary Steenburgen, and Richard Jenkins is scary, and briefly piteous, as the cold-hearted tycoon for whom Stan puts on his spookshow.

Finally, a word should be said for Paul Anderson, as the geek. He plays the part to the hilt, yet without hamming, and with a dreadful glimpse of the human being he was.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARDIANS

Opening this weekend:

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2—Back in 2014, I was delighted by Guardians of the Galaxy, a Marvel movie based on a comic I had never read. I don't think I had ever even heard of it prior to the movie version, and this comparative obscurity has been a sign of success, for me, among Marvel productions. Some of their most charming efforts have been adaptations of their less prominent titles, like Ant-Man or Dr. Strange. Possibly the less-familiar characters afford the filmmakers more creative latitude then icons like Spider-Man or the Hulk.

In any case, Guardians of the Galaxy the First was driven along by a sensational soundtrack of '60s and '70s pop hits, sourced from the "Awesome Mix Tape" in the Walkman of goofball Earthling hero Peter Quill. More importantly—though only a little more importantly—the movie had a droll sense of incongruity between epic space action and the petty bickering of the title heroes, a motley crew of thrown-together interstellar mercenaries.

They're all back for Vol. 2: In addition to Peter (Chris Pratt), there's the sensible, green-skinned Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the burly, inappropriately mirthful Drax (Dave Bautista), the talking racoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), an endearing juvenile cutting of the talking tree from Part One, jointly parented by the other Guardians. Michael Rooker is also back from Part One, as Peter's scurvy space-marauder stepdad. 

The story this time has Peter, whose late mother was an Earth woman, at last meeting his alien father, Ego, the humanoid incarnation of a protean planet. Ego is played with effortless geniality by Kurt Russell, under a godlike mane and beard. Sylvester Stallone turns up in a small role as well, but those hoping for a Tango & Cash reunion (are there any?) will be disappointed; Stallone and Russell have no scenes together.

There's a lot to like about this sequel, directed, again, by James Gunn. It retains the strong acting of Part One, and it's maybe even more visually imaginative and lush—I especially liked the shiny, Plasticine look of Ego's planet. The plot, which suggests elements of Lem's Solaris blended with one of David Mitchell's fevered fantasies of narcissistic, predatory immortality, had promise as well.

On the whole, Vol. 2 is reasonably entertaining, but it suffers from sequel-itis. It's too long and too grandiose, the pacing is slack, and gags which worked beautifully in Part One because they were silly throwaways are played self-consciously here, and too many of them go thud. This extends, alas, to Peter's second "Awesome Mix Tape," which, though another superb collection, is unwisely brought center stage in its psychological importance to our hero.

That said, it's hard to disapprove too much of any movie paying such heartfelt tribute to the 1972 Looking Glass hit "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)." After the two Guardians soundtracks and the use of "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys in last year's Star Trek: Beyond, someone may get an interesting term paper out of the symbiotic affinity between space opera action and nostalgic radio standards.

BY DE FAULT

Opening this weekend:

San Andreas—A good disaster movie can be great fun. So, for that matter, can a bad disaster movie. Indeed, the line between a good and a bad disaster movie is tough to define, and depending on your criteria, either adjective can be applied to this California earthquake melodrama. It couldn’t be more preposterous, and it’s fun.

After trashing Hoover Dam as an appetizer, the movie gives us the long-dreaded Big One. The title fault finally splits wide, L.A. buckles like a house of cards, then the crack spreads north toward San Fran. But The Quake hasn’t counted on The Rock: our hero Dwayne Johnson, an L.A.-based rescue-helicopter pilot, heads for the Bay Area with his estranged wife (gorgeous Carla Gugino), because his college-age daughter (Alexandra Daddario) is trapped there.

San Andreas feels like a pure throwback to ‘70s-style mayhem. Starting with Charlton Heston for Johnson, it’s easy to recast every role with a familiar character actor from four decades ago, and even Andrew Lockington’s music sounds like something that John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith might have written back then.

Mostly San Andreas is good for laughs, but it does have a potent demonstration of the power of acting. Paul Giamatti plays a Cal Tech seismologist who looks directly into a TV camera and tells San Franciscans that they must get out right away, and that whiny, strangled, almost apologetic voice of his gives more of a chill than all the apocalyptic special effects the movie has to offer.

The special-effects spectacle isn’t really anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s geographically expansive—we get to see both the Hollywood sign and the Golden Gate Bridge brought low. Thus the movie may have some extra appeal for Tea Partiers and other reflexive Cali-haters.

Oh, and over the end titles we hear a spooky version of “California Dreamin’” performed by Sia. Nice touch.

Aloha—In Cameron Crowe’s peculiar new romantic comedy, Bradley Cooper plays Brian, a defense contractor fallen on hard times after being wounded in Afghanistan. Brian gets a minor, foot-back-in-the-door job in Hawaii, facilitating a diplomatic formality with the indigenous people on behalf of a creepy billionaire (Bill Murray) who’s about to launch a satellite with the collaboration of the U.S. Air Force.

The gig throws Brian back in touch with his old girlfriend Tracey (Rachel McAdams), now married to a taciturn pilot (John Krasinski) and raising two kids with him at Hickam Field, but unable to conceal her love for her old flame. It also introduces him to Captain Ng (Emma Stone), his exuberantly forward aide during the proceedings. He’s put off by Ng’s overenthusiastic manner at first, but over time…

Well, you can guess. On the one hand, Aloha is a meet-cute romance set against the paradisiacal backdrop of Hawaii; on another it’s a satire about rich guys buying their way into national (and global) political and military power, and about the vaguely guilt-ridden Faustian flunkies like Brian that help them do it.

We don’t seem intended to take this strand, about Murray and his satellite, very seriously, however. At times the movie feels almost like the contemporary equivalent of an early sixties comedy, with Stone in the Doris Day part and Cooper standing in for James Garner. You expect Arthur Godfrey and Paul Lynde to turn up in the supporting cast.

This movie was at a disadvantage with me from the start—Bradley Cooper’s charm continues to elude me, I’m afraid. He’s been undeniably proficient in several films I’ve seen, and on TV interview shows he comes across like a nice guy, but something about his onscreen manner, some unseemly petulance or neediness, makes me reluctant to see movies in which he stars. His work here is professional, but just about every other member of the cast—like Danny McBride, amusing as a put-upon Colonel, or even Alec Baldwin at his most shamelessly hammy as a splenetic General—has so much more presence that Cooper begins to seem like a dead spot at the movie’s center.

I also resisted Aloha for a long time from a desire not to be played by Cameron Crowe. His cute, preciously hip, knowingly indirect dialogue can work my nerves, and for a while it did here, until…

Well, until it didn’t anymore. By the end of Aloha, despite the silly implausibility of its plot, I had succumbed to it, as I almost always do to Crowe’s films. I wanted to be these people—these attractive, flawed yet decent folks with their charming, flirty, oblique-angled way of conversing.  With the exception of the miserable Vanilla Sky, Aloha may be Crowe’s least successful film, but it won me over in the end.

SNUBSTANDARD

Somebody gets snubbed by the Academy Awards almost every year, but this year might just go down in Oscar history as The Year of the Snub. At this writing, Ben Affleck has won a BAFTA award, a Golden Globe and a Director’s Guild Award, among others, for directing his splendidly entertaining political thriller Argo.

The film itself has also been widely honored—indeed, it received seven Oscar nominations. But even if his movie won all seven on February 24, Affleck can’t be honored with an Oscar for Best Director, because he wasn’t nominated.

Argo indulges in a bit of hairbreadth-escape melodrama in its final stretch, and one could argue about whether the movie might have been equally tense and satisfying with a more realistic resolution, instead of this sort of corny Hollywood action. But this is a question of artistic taste, not of execution—corny or not, the picture, these scenes included, is rousingly suspenseful, and must be considered one of the best-directed movies of the year. It would be disappointing but perhaps legitimate if Affleck didn’t win, if the award went to Spielberg or Tarantino or Ang Lee or even to the visionary young Benh Zeitlin of Beasts of the Southern Wild. But for him simply to be ignored is arguably the most egregious Oscar snub in decades.

It seems to have happened for two reasons. First, Affleck has been a fashionable figure of ridicule for years, for reasons I don’t understand. I’ve never been a particular fan of him as an actor; though I think he’s given some fine performances—notably in Hollywoodland—he’s also been a bland lightweight at times. He’s impressively low-key and haunted in the lead in Argo, however, suggesting that he may, on top of everything else, be his own best director.

But no one really disputes the excellence of his work as a director. By any other name, the guy who directed Gone Baby Gone and The Town and then Argo would be hailed as, quite simply, a new Hitchcock. Because it’s Ben Affleck, however, much of the praise has seemed either grudging or insultingly astonished. Enough already—it’s time to declare him paid up for Gigli (sad to say, I’m part of that small cult of outcasts who thinks that Gigli, while certainly flawed, is overall a worthwhile movie).

In the long run, the snub will likely work to Affleck’s benefit—the standing ovations he’s been getting while he wins all those other directing awards suggest that it may have caused the filmmaking community to look at him with new eyes. And his oh-so-gracious-and-humble acceptance speeches, though probably sincere, are also flawlessly played.

The other reason for his omission seems to have been the need to find a place among the nominees for director David O. Russell, for Silver Linings Playbook. Russell is a superb director, rightly nominated for 2010’s The Fighter; snubbed himself for his terrific 1999 Three Kings. But while Silver Linings Playbook is a watchable, generally touching comedy-drama, I don’t think it represents anything near Russell’s best work, and it doesn’t come within a mile of Argo. I’m not sure why it’s been so rapturously received.

Silver Linings Playbook also seems to have figured into this year’s worst acting snub, that of John Hawkes for his star turn in The Sessions. I admit that I’ve had a hard time warming up to Bradley Cooper, but I thought his performance in Silver Linings was quite creditable and poignant. But it isn’t in the same galaxy as the luminous work of Hawkes—in any year in which Daniel Day-Lewis didn’t play Lincoln, Hawkes would deserve to win.

I was delighted, however, that Helen Hunt received a Supporting Actress nomination for her lovely turn in The Sessions. It’s a pleasant surprise, as Hunt—an authentically great actress—has long been fashionably sneered at in the same perplexing way as Affleck.

One other note: I was also delighted that the Best Animated Short nominees included The Longest Daycare, a riotous Simpsons cartoon that played before Ice Age: Continental Drift. Nice to know that Maggie Simpson wasn’t snubbed.

PLAGIARIZE ON THE PRIZE

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal,” or so T. S. Eliot famously quipped. Maybe, but some writers have a hard time being so flippant on the subject of artistic theft (Eliot, it should be noted, was talking about inspiration and innovation, not true plagiarism). Even those of us who would never think of trying to pass off another’s work as our own on purpose—even if you didn’t get caught, there would be no pleasure in whatever success you attained—still live in terror of unconsciously appropriating a sentence, or a joke, or simply a turn of phrase from something we’ve read.

Thus the theme of The Words—the theft, by a writer, of someone else’s words—is troubling. It’s also potentially compelling, and while I’m still unable to tune into the star appeal that leading man Bradley Cooper clearly holds for many people, the movie, by the writing-directing team of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, has a terrific supporting cast, and I went into it intrigued. The result, alas, is a good-looking movie that’s so banal and artificial, so enthralled by musty clichés about what an author’s life is supposed to look like, that the cautionary horror in the idea never takes hold.

Cooper plays Rory, an aspiring young writer living in Brooklyn who’s told by agents that his work is too subtle and “interior” to be published (really? I didn’t think there was any other kind of “literary” fiction). While they’re honeymooning in Paris—just like all struggling young writers get to do—Rory’s beautiful new wife (Zoe Saldana) buys him a beat-up leather portfolio in an antique shop.

One day while rummaging through it, he finds an old, yellowed typewritten manuscript of a novel tucked away in a hidden pocket—the novel, it turns out, he’d always wanted to write. He feels compelled to retype it, his wife reads it on his computer while he’s out and looks at him with new wonder, and before he knows it he’s handed it to an agent. It’s a smash, of course, wows the critics, wins awards, gets the book he actually did write sold. But pretty soon he’s confronted by an old man (Jeremy Irons) who lost a manuscript decades ago in Paris…

Though his lines aren’t any less forgettable and uninspired than anyone else’s, Irons gives them a muttering, ironic bite, like the sound of a damaged cello, that brings The Words whatever fun it has. The movie could have used a lot more of him. What really hurts, however, is the frame story through which it’s told: Yet another writer (Dennis Quaid) reading from his new novel The Words, and later telling the end to a sultry grad student (Olivia Wilde). This outer layer feels precious and evasive, and it leads the movie to an unsatisfying, anticlimactic finish—The Words ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

Um, I mean, not with a loud noise but with a soft, plaintive cry.