Saturday, March 24, 2018

Travis Bickle for the clerical set

First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke (pictured left), is director Paul Schrader’s version of Taxi Driver for the clerical set. Schrader, after all, was the writer of the iconic 1976 film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert de Niro, about a deranged mass killer, Travis Bickle. In First Reformed, Hawke plays Rev. Toller, pastor of an historic little church. He’s an alcoholic, is showing symptoms of cancer, and had lost a son to the Iraq War. A parishioner, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), urges him to counsel her husband Michael, a radical environmentalist, who wants to abort their child from entering a world of increasing toxicity. Toller sympathizes with Michael while condemning his objective, saying “despair” has always existed. When he discovers an explosives-laden suicide vest, instead of disposing of it, he keeps it for himself. Influenced by Michael, he himself becomes increasingly radicalized, and is angered when he hears a local company and major polluter, whose name sounds like the real-life Koch Brothers - despised by the political Left - is underwriting his church’s 250th anniversary celebration. He descends into a psychological maelstrom only partly redeemed by the admiring love of Mary …... Love After Love (Russell Harbaugh) is an emotional dissection which explores the interrationships of a family of the artsy-intellectual set. Nicholas (Chris O’Dowd) pushes the limits of behavior (the kind of guy we’d call “a piece of work”), whether it’s making an over-the-top toast to mother Suzanne (Andie MacDowell) and her new beau, to cheating immediately after remarrying.  Suzanne herself isn’t shy from speaking out, denouncing fellow theatre company members during a rehearsal, to accusing Nicholas of trying “to weasel some opinion out of me.” Yes, it’s psychodrama, like you’d find in the old TV series Family or even in a Bergman film, and will make you think about some of life’s priorities. The film benefits from close-up shots and an excellent jazz score…...Back to Burgundy (Cédric Klapisch) is a feel-good family drama set in the vineyards of Burgundy, France. Jean (Pio Marmaï) returns home after years abroad, and helps his siblings take over the family winery. It’s a story as much about family bonding (the French title is What Binds Us Together) as a delightful education in the ways of winemaking. Small dramas occur when the siblings face selling the land to pay inheritance tax and whether Jean will return to Australia and his estranged Significant Other. But the movie at 113 minutes is a tad long …... Other films I've caught at the festival have been Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me (Sam Pollard), an excellent portrayal of the Rat Packer and so much more; Beirut (Brad Anderson) starring Jon Hamm (he’s everywhere these days) and Rosamund Pike, about corruption among the diplomatic class during the  1970s Lebanese civil war – more an action drama despite its pretenses; and Budapest Noir (Éva Gárdos), a Hungarian take on the post war Hollywood noir film, though a little too obvious a copy, with a hero,  Krisztián Kolovratnik, constantly unshaven, and scenes with a somewhat unrealistic jazz score and Hungarian modern art.

(The Gasparilla International Film Festival runs until March 25 in Florida's Tampa Bay area.)

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