Reeling Backward: "Atlantic City" (1980)

 

Lou Pascal is a liar. Because he is an older, courtly gentleman played by Burt Lancaster, we do not hold this against him as much as we ought. But a liar he is.

Everyone lies to some extent, and of course the art of film has contrivances, misdirection and outright fabrication at the core of its essence. Every movie lover fell in love with their beautiful lies, including me.

In Louis Malle's "Atlantic City," Lou lies to make himself seem more important than what he is, which is an elderly numbers runner subsisting on the lowest rung of the local underworld. But over time he begins to thrive on the rewards of those lies, most notably money and the attentions of Sally Matthews, the much-younger woman who lives in the apartment next door.

Eventually, Lou falls victim to the worst fate of inveterate liars: he begins to believe his own fibs. Only at the very end of the story, screenplay by John Guare, does Lou finally recognize the depth of his lies and learn to cast them aside.

"Atlantic City" pulled off one of the rarest feats in film notoriety: it was nominated for all of the "Big Five" Academy Awards: best picture, actor, actress, director and screenplay. It also failed to win any of them, becoming one of just eight movies (out of 43 total) to earn all five nominations and take home none of the statuettes.

It's a gorgeous movie whose luster has not waned these past four decades. A beautiful new 40th anniversary Blu-ray edition is out from Paramount this week.

Richard Ciupka's gauzy, sepia-toned cinematography made it seem like a very old movie even when it came out. The eponymous city is a gaudy mix of flashy new casinos and crumbling old beach hotels and tourist traps being gradually torn down to make way for more gambling palaces. It reminds me of the south Florida backdrop of "Harry & Son."

This is a story of love and loss on the boardwalk, as various characters strive and scheme for something better than what they have. Which is ironic, since many of them left their homes to move on up in the seedy seaside gambling town, Las Vegas' crummier East Coast cousin, and got stuck.

Sally is one of them, marrying the first guy who came along to take her out of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Turns out that her husband, Dave (Matthews!), played by Robert Joy, was a petty criminal who soon got them run out of Vegas. Then he ran off with her simple-minded kid sister, Chrissie (Hollis McLaren) and got her pregnant to boot.

Now Sally works the oyster bar at the casino but is studying to become a blackjack dealer, which can earn $20,000 or even $30,000 a year ($60K and $90K in today's dollars). She even harbors dreams of making her way to Monte Carlo to work in the grand casinos there, and is learning French and high-class manners from her gambling teacher (Michel Piccoli), a lecherous older man whose lust stands as counterpoint to Lou's own.

Every night, Sally stands at her kitchen sink limned in soft light, rubbing lemons over her arms and breasts to get rid of the fishy stink of her quotidian trials. And every night, Lou watches her through their opposite windows. He's never actually spoken to her, and in fact she's surprised to later discover he lives next door.  

To Lou, Sally represents not just a beautiful woman to desire but a representation of everything he never had or has since lost: youth, romance, wealth, status, reputation, importance. When against all odds he later succeeds in winning her affections, Lou's first thought is to run away with Sally to Miami, where he has lots of friends from the old days.

"I'll buy you new clothes, I'll show you off... just let the boys see how well I turned out," Lou proposes.

Lou passes himself off as an old-school gangster who reveled in Atlantic City's outlaw days, telling a story about taking a swim whenever he'd had a belly full of killing so he  could come out feeling fresh to start all over. He brags that he was Bugsy Siegel's cellmate, and people from Vegas are given his name as the man to know out east.

He counts the late mob leader, Cookie Pinza, as his best friend and himself the trusted guardian of his wife, Grace. Now he stays in the flea-bitten building so he can watch over Grace, who's ensconced in the apartment below as a well-kept invalid. Occasionally, he brags, he throws the old lady a bone by bestowing his affections on her to break up the loneliness, sort of a beneficent silver-haired gigolo.

All these things are not exactly lies, but stand sideways from the truth. 

He never killed anybody, but rubbed shoulders with men who did. He only bumped into Bugsy for 10 minutes while in the drunk tank. He was Cookie's lackey, not his friend, and was and still is Grace's servant -- she even has a bell rope strung between their windows so she can fetch Lou to walk her poodle or rub her feet. The real toughguys referred to Lou as "Numbnuts," and his actual name has never meant much.

Lou carefully tends to this ersatz version of himself. Though he lives in a cramped one-room apartment, he meticulously irons his suits and ties, and keeps himself coiffed and "in trim." He makes his daily rounds collecting numbers in the poor section of town for the illegal lottery, where nobody ever wins because, as Fred the bookie (John McCurry) says, "I can't afford winners." 

This is enough to keep Lou in cheap whiskey and cigarettes, barely.

Things start to change when Sally's husband shows up in town decked out in hippie garb with Chrissie very pregnant. He has made off with a large stash of cocaine he stole from a dealer drop in Philadelphia, and needs a place to stay until he can turn it into cash. 

Falling for Lou's anecdotes about being an old-school player, Dave recruits him to sell the drugs in stages to a man (Al Waxman) running a high-stakes private poker game in a smoky hotel room. Unfortunately, the Philadelphia guys track Dave down and kill him.

Now sitting with $4,000 in cash, Lou gets a head full of ideas. He trades in the numbers game for dealing the rest of the drugs. He buys a ridiculous (even in 1980) peacock white suit and hat, and offers to help Sally with the funeral arrangements, which segues into dates at fancy restaurants (Wallace Shawn is a waiter) and eventually confessing his desiring her and their (offscreen) coupling.

Lou's newfound confidence is shattered when the two drug dealers accost them, slapping Sally around while he is dismissed as a useless old man, not even worth their blows. This is compounded by Grace revealing Lou's true lowly status to Sally.

Completely unmanned, Lou's first instinct is to run away. But something inside pulls him to try and make real the life he's always fancied for himself. He pockets his old .38 snubnose and hits the casino, possibly with the idea of turning his goodly sized stash into a fortune.

When Sally chases him onto a bus out of town, Lou is further embarrassed when she poses as his daughter to get the driver to throw him off, under the ruse he's an addled old man who needs his meds.

"I made love to this woman earlier today! I held her in my arms!" he bellows to everyone, and no one, but mostly to himself, needing that confirmation of his newfound status as a lover and protector.

Things get better for a time, as Lou stands up to the two toughs when they confront them again, gunning them down, stealing their Cadillac and driving off with Sally for Miami. Lou positively revels in the media coverage of the slayings -- even going so far as to brag to the hotel manager that he did the deed.

In the end, Lou's lies finally catch up with him and the reality of a 70-ish man running away with a 30-ish woman asserts its inherent absurdity. He spies Sally stealing most of the money from his wallet, and rather than become angry he lets her go, offering the keys to the car and advice on how to get away. 

Lou returns to Atlantic City and his partnership with Grace, who has bonded with Chrissie in a marathon session of foot massages and philosophical musings that feels like it should've taken place 30 minutes earlier in the movie. Things end on a happy note for both Lou and Sally, with her finally having the freedom and wherewithal to do as she pleases, and Lou having found more appropriate companionship, now on a more equal footing.

It's a strangely giddy ending for a film so infused with tragedy and regret. 

Sally's redemption is more straightforward, though Lou's needs some proper vantage angles to see all the facets. In Lou's mind, his lies all finally came true -- he's now a killer, a lover of a pretty young thing, with a wad of cash in his pocket and a reputation. Early on Grace goaded him with taunts of being on the law's most-wanted list, and now he really is.

And yet, he knows it won't last. Sally will leave him, sooner or later, so he speeds along that process, for both her and his sake. He is satisfied to return to Grace and his crumbling hometown, passing into history as the city is perpetually torn down and rebuilt -- just like the reputation he so craved.

"Atlantic City" remains a great movie because it's not just the story of a liar, but one who confronts his own lies and finds them unworthy. Lou would rather end as an anonymous old man who is content with what he has than a scrabbler who needs to concoct an ersatz version of himself. 

The truth can be hard, but it is always beautiful.

 

Reeling Backward: "Elizabethtown" (2005)

 

It's not often you can lay low a bunch of careers with one movie. But "Elizabethtown" managed to do just that.

Consider that Cameron Crowe was one of the hottest, most original voices of the 1980s through early 2000s -- with the box office, industry clout and Oscar recognition that entails. Stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst were riding high off their recent participation in the Lord of the Rings/Pirates of the Caribbean and Spider-Man series, respectively, and would continue to do so awhile longer, being carried by those franchises rather than carrying them, their brief heydays as A-listers over.

"Elizabethtown," a tragicomedy/romance in the vein of "Harold and Maude," was panned by critics though it didn't do as badly at the box office as everyone thinks, eking out a mild profit with $52 million in ticket sales against a middling budget of $45 million. (Not accounting for distribution costs and  theaters' cuts.) And yet it sideswiped Crowe almost completely.

Other than a couple of musical documentaries, Crowe wouldn't make another feature film until 2011's ill-conceived "We Bought a Zoo" -- "I'd rather not go," audiences said just based on that title -- and seemed to reach his nadir with 2015's "Aloha," which had the dubious distinction of casting Emma Stone as an Asian-American. Other than a short-lived Showtime series, his IMDb profile is blank the last five years.

Usually for a big-name director (especially a white dude), it takes at least three bombs in a row to knock the off their privileged perch, though "Elizabethtown" managed to do that in one fell swoop. It's a quirky, offbeat film about a morose shoe designer who returns to his dad's Kentucky hometown for his funeral and finds unexpected romance with a inimitable flight attendant.

Here's the big twist: it ain't terrible.

Is this a good movie? It is not. The script is equal parts memorable and forgettable, with plenty of terrific dialogue that sticks with you and a lot of scenes that just sort of piss themselves away into nothingness. 

And yet, I couldn't bring myself to dislike it, even at times when I wish'd the movie would stop what it's doing and do something else. 

It's a mess, but it's an authentic one. 

With so many films, especially the romances, that are slick and facile, steering us right to every quick and easy emotional high or low, here is a movie that is more like life as it really is: inconsistent, not always making sense, sometimes filled with weirdness for weirdness' sake. It's not chasing a single story thread, but having a nice wander.

Its enduring charm is Dunst as Claire, a self-declared one-of-a-kind girl who sees herself as one of the "substitute people." These are the people other folks hang around with until they're ready to move on to the real thing. But she sees something in Drew (Bloom), a morose shoe designer who has just cost his company $1 billion on a horrific sneaker that looks like the creature from "Alien" swallowed an Air Jordan.

It's called the Späsmotica, which sounds less like something Hollywood is parodying than showbiz types being out of touch with an industry they don't understand. 

Drew has, not surprisingly, been fired by his boss (Alec Baldwin) and the news of his spectacular failure is set to hit the business world next week. His girlfriend, Ellen (Jessica Biel), the boss' right-hand woman, doesn't even bother to say she's breaking up with him since it's so self-evident that's what someone like her would do in that circumstance.

"I have recently become a secret connoisseur of 'last looks.' You know the way people look at you when they believe it's for the last time? I've started collecting these looks," Drew narrates. 

He resolves to kill himself, rigging up his expensive exercise bike to stab him in the chest with a butcher's knife, when he gets a call from his sister, Heather (Judy Greer): their father, Mitch, has just died of a heart attack while visiting his hometown, Elizabethtown, just south of Louisville. 

(Of course, he pronounces it loo-ee-vil, as is the way of Yankees, not the proper loo-ah-vul.)

Their mom, Hollie (Susan Sarandon), is so distraught she refuses to attend the services in Kentucky, not to mention she knows she's still seen by the people there as the harridan who stole Mitch away to California (nevermind they've lived in Oregon the past 27 years). So Drew is conscripted to go represent the family.

On the redeye flight there, Drew is the only passenger. Claire is the personable, overly familiar flight attendant who insists he be upgraded to first class, just because she doesn't want to have to keep walking to the back of the plane. She invades his personal space and asks all sorts of uncomfortable questions about his trip and pretty much violates every rule I'm guessing they have in the flight attendant training manual.

Claire believes many strange things, not unlike Sarandon's delightfully batty Annie Savoy. "I don't know a lot about everything, but I do know a lot about the part of everything that I know, which is people," she says, more truth than boast. Her signature "thing" is to make a rectangle of her fingers in front of her eyes, miming a camera, which she then depresses an imaginary button to take a picture of this moment. 

(This movie taking place in the day of flip phones, I wonder if anyone of Generation Z or under would even recognize this gesture.)

In Kentucky Drew is surprised to find himself the local celebrity, even though he hasn't been there since he was a kid. Mitch (Tim Devitt in the flashbacks) was the local favorite son who bragged all over about Drew and his incredible shoe. 

There's too many background players to name, but they collectively act as a sort of Greek chorus of energetic Southern hospitality. There is constantly food everywhere. Paula Deen, per-canceling, is Aunt Dora, always in or just coming out of the kitchen, and Loudon Wainwright III plays his Uncle Dale. Paul Shneider plays their kid, Jesse, a never-was rock star still adjusting to the role of father, as his kid is the local terror.

The great Bruce McGill turns up as Bill Banyon, a former business associate of Mitch's who... well, we're not really sure why he belongs in the movie, but we sure are glad having him around, per se. Gailard Sartain is Charles, the local mortician who regards people from California as puzzling curiosities, and thinks the word "cremation" is a foreign language.

Drew stays in the famous Brown Hotel, where a days-long wedding celebration between Chuck and Cindy results in a never-ending party all around. His head ready to explode, Drew gives Claire a call and they end up having an all-nighter conversation, finally deciding to drive for a sunrise meetup.

It's a classic movie magical moment, except real life usually isn't so magical, and neither is their meeting. "I think we peaked on the phone," Claire quips. But she ducks out of a flight to Hawaii and she and Drew give it another crack.

Things just sort of happen in "Elizabethtown," whether you expect them or not, or even if they make sense being in the movie or not. It can be dizzying but occasionally delightful, like stumbling onto an entire city block of street performers. It may not all go together, but you enjoy stopping here and there for a listen or a look.

For instance, Holly, having been absent for almost the entire movie, suddenly turns up at the end to give a big speech at Mitch's service, complete with a randy story about a neighbor giving her a comforting hug and getting an erection. She even breaks into a tap dance to the tune of "Moon River," which you'd not have thought was tap-able. 

There's a lot of music in the film, of course, and I admit sometimes it feels like Crowe constructs his screenplays around the songs he would like to play in certain spots rather than the other way around. But his ability to pluck the emotional heartstrings with a few seconds of a well-placed pop song is pretty magical. 

I'll admit that just a few bars, the refrain of Tom Petty's "Square One," got me welling up. How we miss him so.

Claire goes away again at the start of the last act, and I couldn't help thinking the movie would be better if she doesn't turn up for the inevitable reunion in a crowd at the end. Bloom's Drew is rather a sad drip whenever she's not around, and the movie tends to deflate without her presence.

Really, what would make the most sense is to have this be Claire's movie, and Drew is just a guy who wanders in toward the end. I'd love to see what made her turn into such a brilliant, self-confident, self-sware creature. 

Dunst, whose looks have been cruelly commented upon, is dazzlingly winsome here, and even a little bit unhinged and threatening. With her adorably imperfect teeth and piercing blue eyes, Claire seems just off-kilter enough to be distinctive but not merely some cool-girl concoction of Hollywood.

"I'm impossible to forget but I'm hard to remember," she says, which is a great line in a not-so-great movie.

If "Elizabethtown" were a recipe, it would be the kind where the list of ingredients is a page long and reading them you're not quite sure how it all goes together together. The best dishes, and I think the best movies, only have a handful of flavors at most. Crowe tries to include three-fourths of the spice rack and whatever's in the pantry, too.

Even when this soufflé deflates, though, there's some surprisingly good lickings around the edges.

Review: "Blackbird"

"You didn't raise us to be strong. You just raised us not to bother you with weakness!"

                                                                                    --Anna

"Blackbird" is one of those rare movies that held few surprises for me, but I still embraced every moment I spent with it. 

It's very much an "actors' film," without any real plot other than a bunch of characters getting together, interacting and reacting. It's remade from a Danish film by Billie August (unseen by me), directed by Roger Michell ("Notting Hill") from a script by Christian Torpe. 

The cast is terrific, and it's a movie that's warmhearted but not without considerable tension and pain.

It stars Susan Sarandon, still luminous at 73, as a woman named Lily who is dying. She has some sort of degenerative disease that will eventually leave her unable to walk, talk or even breathe on her own, so she has decided to hurry things along by undertaking physician-assisted suicide, which in her case the doctor also being her husband, Paul (Sam Neill). 

Lily and Paul have let everyone know their plans and have gathered their extended family to their beach house for one last weekend of togetherness and goodbyes. After they leave Sunday evening, she will drink something Paul has prepared for her and let go. It's her (fiercely defended) choice.

Of course, the weekend will not proceed with utter tranquility. There are built-up tensions with their two daughters, well-played by Kate Winslet and Mia Wasikowska, and within their own family units, that will come out and spark arguments and recriminations. 

You can feel the slow-burn buildup to these outbreaks coming a long way off. And yet, strangely, the moments never felt artificial or hurried. They seemed more like the revolutions of the tide, which comes rolling in whether you want it to or not.

Lily is the clear alpha in the family, a woman who doesn't necessarily like to be the center of attention but absolutely insists on being the center of power. Paul seems content to adore her, support her and take a back seat to the interpersonal dynamics. 

Lily has a good heart but often doesn't see how her desire for things to be a certain way can cause them to go astray. She has a tendency to delude herself, insisting things are as she wants them to be rather than the way they really turned out.

Michell starts off shooting mostly from medium distance, slowly bringing the camera closer to the actors' faces as the story goes on. I knew that Winslet was in this movie and kept waiting for her to show up, and I think was 30 minutes in before I realized older daughter Jennifer was her. Somehow her ponytail, owlish glasses and hard, flat American accent had me completely fooled. 

Jennifer has a lot to be thankful for in her life, but instead obsesses with "straightening the picture frames," as someone aptly puts it. She's very critical of everyone, including herself, and can't seem to just sit back and let the sun shine in.

Her husband, Michael (Rainn Wilson), is likeable but diffident, the kind of guy who tends to have his nose buried in a newspaper or book, and most of his conversations with other people have a "did you know?" hook to them. He's not showing off, but this is how he gets around his awkwardness.

Their son, Jonathan (Anson Boon), is about 16 and just starting to spread his wings. He wants to be an actor, but has never even told his parents about it. He often acts as the audience's eyes and ears.

The other daughter, Anna (Wasikowska), is the black sheep of the family. She's had trouble keeping a job or a relationship, and often drops out of communication for long stretches. Anna shows up with her girlfriend, Chris (Bex Taylor-Klaus), in tow, which causes consternation because Jennifer asked that she not be brought. 

Apparently they've broken up and gotten back together several times, and Chris is seen as a destabilizing force on Anna's life. Though we'll see how true that is.

Finally there's Liz (Lindsay Duncan), Lily's lifelong best friend who has been riding along with the family on vacations, get-togethers, and so on for decades. She doesn't have a lot to say or do, but we suspect she will factor into matters more deeply as things go on.

As I say, there isn't really a whole lot of storytelling here. There's the Friday arrivals, Saturday activities followed by a big dinner, and the Sunday dénouement. At first the main conflict is between the sisters, but it migrates around so that virtually every relationships is revealed and tested in some way.

I'll say I pretty much knew everything that was going to occur before it did. (Watch hundreds of movies a year, and you will, too.) But again, the strength of a film like this is not "what happens" but the how and the why.

Sarandon is such a treasure, always interesting to watch even in movies that don't hold much appeal on their own. I liked seeing Winslet in such an emotionally pinched role; we're used to seeing her as women throwing around big emotions. I really took pleasure in Wilson, so identified with his iconic character from "The Office," getting a chance to show his dramatic chops.

Movies like "Blackbird" are not about big surprises, but how the patterns of life that become stable and familiar are vulnerable to disruption and being upended -- and that's not a bad thing. At the every end of her life, Lily knows who she is and what her life has been about, and wants to say goodbye on her own terms. So do we all.

Video review: "The Meddler"

“The Meddler” is one of those little indie movies that are perfect for video. They tend not to get released in smaller cities, and even then it can be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run at the one art cinema in town. A delightful comedy with some hefty messages underneath the laughs, it treats its characters as realistic people who might exist in the world with their own peculiar virtues and faults.

The foibles of Marnie (Susan Sarandon) are pretty evident. A wealthy widow from Jersey without a lot to do, she moves out to Los Angeles to be near her daughter (Rose Byrne), a successful television writer who’s unlucky in love. Marnie is a born smotherer who repeatedly crosses boundaries -- dropping hints about grandchildren, etc. Soon enough the kid has (gently) elbowed Marnie out of the picture.

But, in her own passive-aggressive way, Marnie is unstoppable. Soon she’s co-opted her daughter’s circle of friends into becoming her own, lavishing one with an expensive wedding party. She keeps dropping by the Apple store to buy more overpriced junk she doesn’t need, and soon she’s driving a young worker there to college classes she encouraged him to take.

Marnie is a true giver -- even when the recipient can’t take anymore.

She strikes up a halting romance with Zipper, a twangy cop/farmer played with a twinkle by J.K. Simmons. He spots her on the set of a movie where he’s working security -- Marnie just walked by one day and became an extra -- and pitches some woo. Marnie, long used to being the interloper in other people’s lives instead of the one who gets loped, isn’t quite sure what to make of the creased Casanova at first.

Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, “The Meddler” is a movie that doesn’t have a lot of story to it. It’s just people intersecting, rubbing off each other, finding connections that weren’t there before. The movie takes a woman who at first seems ridiculous and even a little pathetic and lets us see her intricate humanity. It’s funny, and enlightening.

Bonus features are good, and are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions.

There is a gag reel and two featurettes: “The ‘Real’ Marnie” and “The Making of The Meddler.” The centerpiece is a feature-length commentary track with both Scafaria and Sarandon. I really enjoy it when the filmmakers and stars participate in these together, so it’s more of a dialogue than one person droning on.

Movie:



Extras:

Review: "The Meddler"

"The Meddler" is a movie without a lot of big moves, but it spins joyfully in its own little circle.

Susan Sarandon plays Marnie, a Jersey widow who moves out to Los Angeles so she can smother her daughter with kindness. The daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne), pushes her away at every turn, so Marnie continually seeks out other venues in which to insert herself in other people's lives.

That's pretty much the entire story. It may not sound like enough for an entire movie, but writer/director Lorene Scafaria ("Seeking a Friend for the End of the World") and Sarandon give us a wonderful character study with a lot of heart and a little wisdom, too.

This is one of those deals where you just enjoy spending time with these characters, and that's enough.

Sarandon tries on an agreeable Brooklyn honk (though it has a tendency to fade a bit from time to time) as she narrates Marnie's story, told largely through a series of long -- and unreturned -- voice messages she leaves for Lori. It's mostly rote checking-in kinda stuff, here's what I'm up to, hope things are going well with you, etc.

But Marnie unwittingly slips in constant little digs that tear at Lori's fragile psyche. She's a successful writer who's got a new TV show lined up, but recently broke up with her boyfriend (Jason Ritter) who's also a big action movie star. She's getting on in years, cherishes her independence but also quietly pines for children, and Marnie is there to pick-pick-pick at all her insecurities.

A mother's love is boundless -- which is another way of saying it's ceaseless.

Marnie is an interesting gal. She's not exactly dim, but she's not very self-reflective and instinctively crosses over borders. Years of being told she's doing so by Lori only enables her to acknowledge that she's crosses boundaries while she's doing it.

Her husband, Joe, left her a big pile of money so she doesn't have to work. There are a lot of hours in the day, and Marnie tries a bunch of things to fill them up. She starts volunteering at the hospital (without actually signing up to do so), walks into a movie set and becomes a regular extra, befriends the young Genius at the Apple store (Jerrod Carmichael) and soon is driving him around to the college classes she encouraged him to take.

That doesn't begin to mention how she inserts herself into Lori's circle of girlfriends -- Lucy Punch, Cecily Strong, Sarah Baker, Casey Wilson -- showing up at a baby shower as a +1, without the 1. Soon she's planning an extravagant post-wedding party for one of them costing tens of thousands of dollars, out of her own pocket. Marnie basks in this attention, even if it is a faux substitute for the mother/daughter relationship she craves.

Heck, Marnie even signs up for sessions with Lori's therapist (Amy Landecker) just so she can talk about her daughter, since the real thing doesn't want to.

The funny thing is, for all her brazen feats of meddling, Marnie can be quite shy and retiring when others pull the same move on her. She's clearly intimidated by her late husband's family back East, a gregarious clan of Italians. And when a nicely creased older cop shows her some romantic attention, she demurs at first.

Zipper -- his real name, btw -- is played by J.K. Simmons, who just oozes rustic charm and magnetism. He's a lonely divorced guy who lives in the rural outskirts of L.A., playing Dolly Parton music for his chickens and lamenting his distant relations with his daughters. Marnie's drawn to him, but she's so used to being the interloper, she's a bit confused when someone intrudes into her sphere.

I really enjoyed this movie. It doesn't feel like it's trying to push any big revelations on you or impress you with an intricate storyline. It's just people, bumping into each other and interacting. Sometimes their flaws rub each other the wrong way, and sometimes a weakness is beheld as a strength by others.

Mostly "The Meddler" is a showcase for Susan Sarandon, who's usually known for playing such strong women. Marnie is too, but in a different way. Her yearning never really goes away, but starts out as desperation and turns into something more positive. It's like watching someone drowning, and then their frantic flailing becomes a calm, sustaining stroke.

Review: "The Last of Robin Hood"

More than 20 years ago Kevin Kline had a lovely performance in “Chaplin” as an aging movie star playing out his last hand as a wastrel playboy. He was so good as Douglas Fairbanks that when it came time to cast someone as Errol Flynn in his declining years for “The Last of Robin Hood,” Kline seemed an obvious choice.

He terrifically captures Flynn’s fizzy, rakish persona, which showed little difference between his on-screen swashbuckling and his off-screen adventures. (Flynn chronicled them himself in his posthumous autobiography, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.”) He spent so much time carousing, drinking and drugging, seducing young girls, sailing on his yacht and otherwise dribbling out his days, it’s hard to believe he found time to make movies.

Done up with Flynn’s signature pencil mustache and cravat-and-evening-jacket outfit, tumbler of booze perpetually in hand, Kevin makes for a pretty spot-on physical impersonation, too.

(Normally I would feel compelled to point out that, at nearly age 67, Kline is rather too old to play Flynn, who died at 50. But Flynn’s hard-charging lifestyle aged him prematurely. And Kline, in several shirtless outings, flaunts a surprisingly athletic figure that helps the age concerns vanish.)

“Robin Hood” takes its title from perhaps Flynn’s most famous role, but focuses on the last two years of life when his star had fallen and he worked only itinerantly. He notices a young starlet, Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning), and in the classic Hollywood seduction method, sends a flunky to fetch her.

Their initial coupling is, to say the least, brief. Not surprising, considering this is a man who was charged with statutory rape in 1942 (and acquitted) and bedded so many ladies they coined the phrase, “In like Flynn.”

But a couple of factors work to sustain the relationship beyond a one-night stand. First is Flynn’s profound self-awareness, including the thought that that his ability to attract women is rapidly waning, and he’d rather not be left alone at the end of the party. The other is a certain Machiavellian aspect to Beverly: the sense that she’s using him as much as he is her.

This is honed and encouraged by her mother, Florence (Susan Sarandon), a showbiz mom who pushes her daughter to sing, dance and act her way to easy street. In Beverly’s case, the talent is not an even match with the ambition, so when Flynn turns up offering to “help” the girl’s career, Florence offers a few perfunctory objections before signing on.

Of course, there’s more revelry than actual opportunity. At one point Errol and Beverly disappear for five months to Africa, and in the finished film she only has one line of dialogue. But the pair seem to be a genuinely affectionate couple, with Florence often tagging along as chaperone.

At some point I should mention that Beverly is only 15 when she and Flynn start dating, and just 17 when he dies. This comes as a shock to him when he finally learns it, though not so much to quit the affair. Obviously, this information puts the entire dynamic of the relationship in a different, disturbing light.

Writing/direction duo Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland tell the story from a flashback perspective, with Florence narrating her side of events to a book author after Flynn has passed and a media firestorm erupts over his teenage damsel. Sarandon paints a picture of a profoundly deluded woman, who gave up her own dreams of stardom to push her kid to unwholesome lengths.

If the movie has a weakness, it’s that Flynn and Florence are vivid, engaging characters and Beverly remains something of a cypher. Fanning does what she can with the material, but the script doesn’t lend her a lot of opportunities to reveal the character’s interior architecture.

But “The Last of Robin Hood” is worthwhile, if for no other reason to see Kline scamp and strut as the iconic bad boy. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” goes the classic Hollywood line -- one that could’ve been written about Errol Flynn.

Film review: "Tammy"

McCarthy Does Mumblecore.

That's my three-word review of Melissa McCarthy's new comedy "Tammy," an oft-turgid wallow in sentiment and icky embarrassing humor. It's still got some genuine laughs, and is buoyed by McCarthy's winning screen presence. It's not a long movie at 96 minutes, yet you could easily chop a half-hour out of it and have a winner.

Mumblecore, for those not into zero-budget indie films, is epitomized by rambling dialogue that has the appearance of being ad-libbed. Its influence on mainstream comedy is clear to see, though usually it's punky young guys -- think Jonah Hill or Michael Cera -- with the verbal diarrhea.

After an impressive string of hits including "The Heat" and "Identity Thief," McCarthy is currently sitting in the unlikely catbird's seat as Hollywood's most consistently bankable star over the last few years. She's running the show on her projects, and has decided to team up with her husband Ben Falcone, who co-wrote the screenplay with her and makes his directing debut.

He frequently turns up in her movies as her beau, though here he just has a bit part as the jerk boss at the Topper Jack's burger joint where she works.

The result of their collaboration is a raunchy road trip comedy starring McCarthy and Susan Sarandon as her grandmother. They have some fairly predictable misadventures, some romantic hook-ups, binge drinking and petty larceny.

In the end, we all Learn Something -- in this case, that McCarthy had better find some new material if she wants to keep her streak alive.

The story starts off with an epic bad day for Tammy. Living in tiny Murphysboro, Ill., she crashes her ancient Corolla into a deer on the way to work, then gets fired for being late. Arriving home unexpectedly early, she's surprised to find her husband (Nat Faxon) serving an elegant dinner to his mistress (Toni Collette). Tammy promptly packs her stuff and decamps to her parents' place, two doors down.

"You never cooked me dinner!" she shrieks. "And it smells good, too!"

But her mom, played by Allison Janney, is something of a pill. Tammy's grandmother Pearl (Sarandon) lives with her but has had enough, so the pair take off for an impromptu jaunt for parts unknown with $6,700 of grandma's cash as their stake.

It's sort of a Thelma & Louise thing, with a cross-generational twist.

The ages of the actresses don't exactly sync up, with less than a quarter-century dividing them all -- McCarthy is only 11 years younger than Janney, who in turn is only 13 years Sarandon's junior. It is rather strange to see Sarandon, whose potent sexual presence has lit up screens for four decades, doing the cranky oldster routine complete with puffy feet from diabetes.

The running joke is that Tammy is the hard-partying cutup of the family, but Granny Pearl is at least her equal despite her prim outward appearance. She's a nasty drunk, supplies teenagers with beer and boasts of having been an Allman Brothers groupie.

Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh turn up late in the game as wealthy lesbian friends of Pearl's, who help them out when they're on the lam from the law. Bates lights up her scenes, feisty yet down-to-earth, and has one emotional crescendo that feels like it belongs in another movie.

Actually, most of "Tammy" feels like it belongs in another flick. McCarthy may be all that as a screen comedienne, but she and her hubby needed to run their screenplay through the spin cycle a few more times.

Review: "Snitch"

"I just wanna see The Rock be The Rock."

Thus spaketh my neighbor a couple of seats over at the screening of "Snitch," where she and her companion commented -- loudly and frequently -- upon their views of the new movie starring Dwayne Johnson, formerly known as professional wrestler The Rock.

I don't know where these amateur Eberts came from or how they came to be sitting in the press row, but I think she was actually speaking for a lot of people who won't like this movie. Specifically, those who think Johnson and people who look like him should only make big, dumb action movies in which they deliver a quip after blowing some guy away.

You see, "Snitch" is not that sort of the film. It stars Dwayne Johnson, not The Rock, and features Johnson straining to reach for something higher and more honest as an actor ... and succeeding.

It's a gritty drama, not an action movie, and Johnson is playing a regular guy instead of a Superman. When somebody points a gun in his face, he's frozen with terror. While the villains strut and sneer, he cowers and quakes.

Johnson never takes off his shirt, intimidates anyone with his size, and about the only thing he says in anger is to holler at his wife, "Are the sprinklers on?!?"

The film, ably directed by Ric Roman Waugh from a screenplay he co-wrote with Justin Haythe, is based on a true story that was featured on a PBS documentary. It's about a father who will go to any ends to help his son, including breaking the law and putting the rest of his family at risk.

John Matthews is a successful Missouri businessman in the construction/trucking industry. He lives in a big house, has a beautiful wife and daughter, and seems to have few worries. But then his teenage son from a previous marriage, Jason (Rafi Gavron), gets busted for distribution of Ecstasy.

The kid's not a drug dealer, just a sap who got rolled by his friend. But the federal prosecutor (Susan Sarandon) says she's bound by minimum-sentence laws that could put John's son away until AARP age. She'll only reduce his prison term if Jason snitches on another drug pusher, which he refuses to do.

So John takes it upon himself to bring down a big-time dealer on his own. His first effort ends in disaster, but he gets craftier. He recruits one of his employees, Daniel (Jon Bernthal), who did time for drugs, offering $10,000 to make an introduction to some of his old contacts.

This leads to an increasingly dangerous climb up the ladder of the narcotics chain of command, from local kingpin Malik (a sly, charismatic Michael Kenneth Williams) to Mexican cartel boss (Benjamin Bratt).

Intending it to be a one-and-down deal, John finds himself cornered between the drug lords on the one hand and the politically ambitious prosecutor on the other. Meanwhile, Daniel suspects his motives, Malik starts dropping by John's house to terrorize his family, and even the undercover cop (Barry Pepper) handling the case drops hints that maybe he's in too deep.

Johnson does eventually get to do some Rock-ish things toward the end, but he does so in duress rather than out of any sense of righteous rage. These perilous scenes are all the more convincing because his character is ordinary and exposed.

In her own way and without really intending to do so, my loudmouthed, erstwhile fellow critic has delivered a much more brilliant review of "Snitch" than I ever could. For someone like her, this movie could only a letdown, which should be a hint for the rest of us.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" starts out as a big-stakes film attempting a grand statement about the rift lines in the machine of American capitalism. It ends up going small-time, as a miserly story about people we do not understand behaving in ways we don't believe.

It has been 23 years since Oliver Stone solidified the image of the Decade of Greed in the pop culture zeitgeist, and the sequel wants to be an update of how things have changed -- for the worse. It's set in 2008, when our entire financial system nearly sputtered to a standstill, and instead of being the merchant of inside information, this time Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has positioned himself as the oracle of fiscal sanity.

Or is he?

After spending eight years in prison for insider trading and other crimes, Gekko is out hocking his book, "Is Greed Good?" He gives speeches to rapt audiences talking about how the leveraged debt and other shady dealings carried on now put anything he did to shame.

"While I was away it seems greed got greedier, with a little bit of envy mixed in," he says.

His would-be protege this time is Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a hungry young trader with a passion for green technology. He's also engaged to one Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan), the estranged daughter of Gordon. She won't speak to her dad, and runs an anti-Wall Street web site called Frozen Truth.

Now, think about that for a minute. Here's a principled young woman who despises her father, despises the abuses of the financial markets, and has centered her career around denigrating them both. And yet she would fall for a young shark like Jake who relishes making deals and cutting the throats of the competition? The sort of guy who buys her an engagement ring worth a house in the suburbs?

Winnie remains an unbelievable figure throughout. She's supposed to be smart, but a few words from Jake and she's ready to turn over the keys to her family legacy (amortizing in a Swiss bank) to him. A few words from Gordon and she's ready to forgive him, too.

Stone was never very good with centered, plausible female characters, and Winnie is just another in a long line of women who exist merely to further the plot.

The heavy is Bretton James (Josh Brolin), head of the powerful firm of Churchill-Schwartz. There's bad blood between him and Gekko, and Gordon's looking to use Jake to exact a little revenge -- some for himself, and some for sending Jake's company down the tubes, and his beloved mentor (Frank Langella) along with it.

But Bretton throws them a surprise, by offering Jake a job instead of crushing him. Soon the idealistic young Jake is inside the enemy's camp, carrying water for Gekko and keeping secrets from Winnie. At this point, a little more than halfway through, the movie has no more secrets that we haven't already guessed.

Stone displays his usual visual flair, sending his camera spinning around stock tickers and up and down the sleek walls of Wall Street, showing us the environment of steel dedicated to the hoarding of wealth for its own sake. "Money is a one-eyed bitch who lays in bed staring at you ... if you're not careful, in the morning she'll be gone," is how Gekko puts it.

The screenplay by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff is filled with zippy dialogue and crisp scenes. I especially liked one where Gekko, having dinner with Winnie and Jake at a swank Manhattan restaurant, greets one of the Wall Street titans and the guy blows him off, not even recognizing him. Douglas gives a terrific reaction that reveals his mortification -- not at the social faux pas, but at the fact it demonstrates he's not a player anymore.

I also loved when Gekko calls a bunch of college students the "Ninja generation": No income, no jobs or assets.

But despite these slick elements, the movie is a confused mix of personal story and indictment of the financial sector that never really tie together. The central dynamic seems to be whether Gekko has truly reformed or not, but he's really a secondary character who flits in and out of the background for most of the film, until he takes on a sudden importance close to the end.

The Bretton James angle holds no mystery -- the way Brolin snorts and glares, we know it's just a matter of time before he's buried under a mountain of his own arrogant missteps.

Fairly or not, "Wall Street" nailed the culture of avarice that undeniably existed in the 1980s ... but so it did in the '90s, '00s and every decade before (and will after). Stone's haphazard sequel reshuffles the deck, but relies on the same old cinematic card tricks.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "The Lovely Bones"

I'm not sure I can think of a film from last year whose prospects rose and fell as far as "The Lovely Bones."

Before it was released, this adaptation of the hugely popular book by Alice Sebold was hyped as a sure-fire Best Picture nominee. When I saw it, I judged it a seriously flawed but still worthy film. Here's part of what I wrote:

"At two-and-a-quarter hours, "The Lovely Bones" is either too long or too short. The dynamics of the family feel like they should be at the center of the story, but the movie never quite coalesces around them."

The story is about Susie Salmon (the incredibly blue-eyed Saorise Ronen), an average 14-year-old girl from the suburbs who is brutally raped and murdered and watches from Heaven -- or at least some pseudo after-life -- as events continue to transpire on Earth.

I hadn't read the book then, though I've corrected that since. I can now see the immense challenges that faced director Peter Jackson and his longtime screenwriting partners, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, in adapting this novel for the screen.

It covers more than a decade after her death, which is problematic for a movie for numerous reasons, the most obvious being that the young actors playing Susie's siblings can't believably be aged that much. The alternative of casting different actors for the adult roles only tends to remind us we're watching a movie.

The route Jackson et al take is a good one -- focusing on the plight of Susie's killer, Mr. Harvey, a secretive neighbor who hides in plain sight. Played by Stanley Tucci in a performance that brought a much-deserved (and overdue) Oscar nomination, Mr. Harvey's voracious appetite for pain renders him one of cinema's all-time great villains.

But the net effect of this focus on the antagonist is to transform "The Lovely Bones" from a meditation on the afterlife into something of a supernatural whodunit, with the audience rooting for Mr. Harvey's arrest and/or punishment. Having now read the book, I can see that the filmmakers clearly structured it this way -- for example, moving the incident where Harvey buries the steel safe containing Susie's bones into a sinkhole from the middle of the story to the end, where it's pumped for suspense.

Although, one way the movie has depreciated in my view as a result of having read the book is the depiction of Susie's actual demise.

Though Sebold was not overtly graphic in her rendering, she at least made it clear that Susie was brutally raped. The movie skims over her death so quickly (and with PG-13-rated kid gloves) that this is completely lost on the viewer. It undermines the theme of victimhood and its effects, a thread that runs strongly through Sebold's novel.

Prior to its release, much consternation was directed at how Jackson would handle the scenes of the "In-Between," where Susie's soul exists in an ever-shifting landscape of dreams and shadowy perceptions. I still think he handled it well, as these CGI sequences enhance rather than subtract from the experience.

But in the end, "The Lovely Bones" was just an example of a book that's impossible to properly translate to film. Let me put it this way: I seriously doubt another set of filmmakers could have done a better job than Jackson, Boyens and Walsh.

I still recommend the movie -- as I said at the time, Tucci's performance is simply not to be missed. If nothing else, "Bones" serves as an example of how the noblest creative intentions cannot always bridge the gulf that exists between literature and film.

Extras are somewhat disappointing -- especially if you buy the DVD version, which contains ... absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The Blu-ray comes with a 15-part video diary featuring Jackson and Boyens, which follows the production through shooting and the post-production work on visual effects.

I realize the studios are really pushing Blu-ray these days as the format of destination for cinephiles. And I actually happen to agree with it. It's like laserdisc 20 years ago -- its technical advantages simply make it the way to go for people with a serious approach to movies.

But to completely rob of any kind of enhancement those who haven't yet upgraded to Blu-ray -- or can't afford to -- is short-sighted.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "The Lovely Bones"

I haven't read "The Lovely Bones," Alice Sebold's much-praised novel about a 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon who is brutally murdered and watches from heaven as events transpire on Earth after her death. So I can't say how faithful an adaptation the team from "The Lord of the Rings" has given us.

As a movie, "Bones" has fits and starts. But the good ultimately outweighs the not-so-good.

Director Peter Jackson, who co-wrote the script with Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, adroitly handles the dream-like sequences of Susie's existence in the "in-between" of heaven and earth, a landscape that shifts and swirls with her imagination via computer-generated effects. This is dangerous material -- handled poorly, and you get "What Dreams May Come" -- and Jackson deftly keeps the fantasy from overwhelming the film.

But much of the earthbound action feels discombobulated. From what I've gathered, the movie shortens the time span of the book and dumps a lot of subplots (such as Susie's mother having an affair with the detective investigating her case).

So the way Jackson et al present it, "Bones" unspools as an otherworldly murder-mystery, with the audience knowing the killer's identity up front and waiting for the people in the movie to catch up.

That brings us to the one unqualified success of this film, Stanley Tucci as the Salmon's neighbor and secretive serial killer, Mr. Harvey. This is the one of the creepiest screen villains since Hannibal Lecter. Tucci's Mr. Harvey, in a floppy blonde comb-over and almost colorless contact lenses, is like a photo negative of normality.

Mr. Harvey's placid exterior hides a man with a hunger for inflicting pain, and a meticulous craftiness for carrying out his murders while hiding in plain sight. The way Tucci rolls his jaw and sighs while watching his victims-to-be, he suggests an odd, ancient bird of prey pretending not to notice the helpless critters scampering nearby.

Saorise Ronen, who received an Oscar nomination for her role in "Atonement" two years ago, gives an assured performance as Susie, a normal middle-class kid in 1973 Pennsylvania. She takes pictures and dreams of being a photographer, has minor conflicts with friends, and has a crush on a dreamy older boy named Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie).

But when Mr. Harvey lures her into an underground den he's built in a cornfield, she's caught and killed. Jackson depicts this obliquely, never showing the actual rape, throat-slitting and dismemberment.

Susie initially thinks she got away, but quickly discovers she's caught in a netherworld where she can watch the living, but cannot communicate with them. (Except for ... well, wait and see.)

Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz play Susie's parents, and Rose McIver is her younger sister. The father becomes obsessed with the search for the killer, investigating his neighbors and constantly badgering the police detective (Michael Imperioli) about her case.

Mrs. Salmon soon wigs out and leaves the family, while her boozy mother (Susan Sarandon) moves in to take up the slack.

At two-and-a-quarter hours, "The Lovely Bones" is either too long or too short. The dynamics of the family feel like they should be at the center of the story, but the movie never quite coalesces around them. I still recommend it for Tucci's performance if nothing else -- it's that strong.

3 stars