Almost a Virtuoso

The Virtuoso (Nick Stagliano) (opening Friday at Emagine Canton 18 EMAX, MJR Southgate 20 EPIC, MJR Marketplace 20, MJR Westland Grand 16 as well as steaming on Digital on Demand with Blu-ray and DVD release May 4) is a slick absorbing story about an assassin for hire, played by Anson Mount. The film opens with our man spying a couple having sex in an apartment across the street. His job: assassinate the male target. Two shots and he’s done. After all, our man is a professional, a "virtuoso." So much so he thinks of all the ramifications and permutations that could occur on a particular job - the time it will take for the terrorized woman to grab a phone and call police, the seconds waiting for 411 to answer, the number of minutes for police to arrive “in that part of town.” Nothing, apparently, is left to chance. “You’re a professional, an expert, devoted to timing and precision,” the voice over narrator says. Except on his next assignment, he doesn’t see a couple of people coming out of nowhere with one collaterally killed when his target, as planned, crashes his shot-out car. Back at his “off the grid” wilderness cabin our man obsesses over this inadvertent murder. But he’s a professional, of course, so he’s up for the next assignment. That comes from his boss, aka The Mentor, played by Anthony Hopkins, avec sunglasses and leather jacket, of course. The new target is the cryptic White Rivers. Our man drives to a remote area, all the while trying to decipher who could be the plausible target. He winds up in a café with a rogue’s gallery of possibilities. From here the plot devolves into a series of blind alleys among various targets, their assassin worthiness questionable. But it’s here also that we find the narrative totally upended. And the reversal calls into question the previous underlying plot assumptions. This 110-minute film is good for an easy night out (or in, as the case may be).  Despite some unexpected turns towards the end the story is pretty straightforward; it won’t tax your whodunnit synapses. The score also creates tension even in calmer non-consequential scenes, and that's a good thing. The problems with the film are that our man assumes a too serious demeanor; he barely cracks a smile. There are other cliches: like wearing a white shirt and tie on assignment; I’m not in the biz but who does that anymore?  The darkened office of the mysterious Mentor is a staple from, oh, way back. And the plot is thin. But, hell, does it really matter? The Virtuoso is not deep but it’s entertaining enough. You probably won’t have thrown your Friday night entertainment money away.

Oscars. What Oscars?

I am usually not into the Oscars, or other award shows. But this year I’m REALLY not into them. In fact, I had to look up exactly when they’re scheduled. Whaddayaknow – it’s Sunday! It has been a desultory year for film thanks to the pandemic. And of those nominated I can’t believe I’ve seen as many as three – Mank (David Fiuncher), Pieces of a Woman (Kornél Mundruczó) and Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard). But I found Hillbilly so sickeningly disagreeable, about rural lower class family dysfunction - and disagreement and violence in almost every scene - I clicked it off (Netflix) two-thirds of the way through. Pieces of a Woman was the best, with a searing performance by Vanessa Kirby (nominated best actress). But this is not a light movie and hardly appeals to a wider audience. Mank’s best points were its devotion to period accuracy and sepia toned cinematography (Erik Messerschmidt nominated). Gary Oldman (nominated best actor) was convincing. But it’s a film of interest only to cinephiles about famed screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. Even at that it was too long and stilted. (The director nominated.) I had no desire to see Nomadland (Chloé Zhao nominated) starring Frances McDormand (photo) (best actress). Nomadland, awash in publicity and having such a big star, and its alienation theme so appropriate for a wasteland Covid year, will no doubt take best picture. New York Post columnist Cindy Adams’s comments (below) were so delicious I just could't not reprint.

Are the Oscars over yet?

TODAY’S Tuesday. Five days left to not care about Sunday’s Oscars. Up for awards are downers. Anthony Hopkins is always great but, in a pandemic with death all around, watching an aged man dying of dementia is no knee-slapper. And for an uplift, although Frances McDormand is also always A-1, her “Nomadland” is the darkest dreariest dimmest dismal-est dung ever made. Its high spot is starvation, degradation, poverty and homelessness. “Mank,” about someone mostly nobody knows, mostly nobody saw. Wrote one reviewer: “‘Mank’ stank.” The review was better than the film. Michelle Pfeiffer in “French Exit”? I mean, please. The exit should’ve been in the theater. Hot on the awards list is “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Under 50 percent saw the thing. Forget “How the West Was Won.” The Hollywood West has now lost it. Last year’s Best Picture “Parasite” wasn’t even in English. And the director — not Spielberg, not Scorsese not Soderbergh. The industry favorite whose name is on everyone’s lips — Bong Joon Ho. Also — the show’s length covers three hours. Lucky us get to see best makeup person, best tweezer, best hairpiece maker. Few bladders make it to the finale. We not only got that Godzilla thrilla, we also got SAG Awards, Golden Globes, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, BAFTAs, Country Music Awards, offBroadway Awards, People’s Choice Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Billboard Awards — and almost everything’s been on TV. So who cares? Nobody asked me, but I think “The Trial of the Chicago 7” was the best. It maybe ran longer than the original trial, but it was great.

Five Easy Pieces reconsidered

 I’m not sure if I’ve seen Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970) since the time it originally came out. But it was quite the film in its day and is still considered one of the seminal films of the era, and in American movies generally. Why it was one of the seminal films of the era had to do with what that era was all about – disillusionment with American consumer culture, the anti-establishment counterculture and the rise of social alienation in an IBM world where individuals no longer counted. Well, in Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson as Bobby Dupea is Mister Alienation Plus. The film (screened recently on TCM) opens with him on a drill rig. He’s a good ol boy, or acting like one, and pals around with his jocular friend Elton (Billy "Green" Bush) whose life on and off the job is One Big Party. Bobby also has a girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black), whom he at turns can’t stand and is embarrassed by. Rayette, a waitress, aspires to be a country and western singer. And she’s a bit of a ditz. Bobby is perpetually brooding. He doesn’t like his job, is sick of life with Rayette (who gets pregnant), and obviously wants something else - but what? One day the phone rings and he's told his father has had a stroke. This offers Bobby a chance to escape. And he almost does, but conscience tugs and he asks Rayette to go along. They pick up a couple of hippie hitchhikers, one of them a bizarre early eco type who incessantly complains about the “filth” in the world. "Alaska,” where she's headed, “is very clean.” They head north to Washington State where Bobby’s family lives. Along the way there is the iconic restaurant scene – epitomizing America’s so called unwavering consumer culture, where Bobby confronts a waitress who won’t give him the breakfast he wants. Later, Bobby dumps Rayette at a motel and drives to a bucolic island where his family’s grand house is. Turns out everyone in his family is cultured, including him, who once had the makings of a great pianist. There he meets Catherine (Susan Anspach), with whom he has sex, despite her being engaged to his brother. But Catherine soon wants no part of someone “who has no respect for himself.” The moody, angry Bobby continues in his meandering ways at this sour family reunion of sorts, and later, as the film goes on. Okay, I get the alienation part. But the film never explains why Bobby is as he is. And the problem with the film’s plot is that most of it sinks into a cul-de-sac of a soap opera at the family house. I didn’t really care. Nicholson was heralded for his performance. After having done another seminal film, Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) the year before, with a similar theme, the accolades kept rolling in. But, for me, the best acting of the film was Black as Rayette, playing the unsophisticated rural gal to a T. And I was also pleasantly surprised to discover Lois Smith as Bobby’s sister Partita – a rather cute and endearing character. The last time I saw Smith was almost 50 years later as an octogenarian white haired mother in Michael Almereyda's 2017 Marjorie Prime!

The film which epitomizes London's 'Swinging Sixties'

To me, the film which most epitomizes Britain’s “Swinging Sixties” is John Schlesinger’s 1965 Darling (Criterion Channel) starring Julie Christie. And Christie, in turn, most personifies the archetypical “It Girl” of the period (both on screen and off). This movie has it all as a testament to its time – mid-Sixties pop fashion, social commentary in the age of Ban the Bomb, and an oh-so-bored rising sophisticate encircled by the height of self-satisfied post-war pop culture and its subsets in the London modelling, arts and media worlds. The movie opens with a billboard of an emaciated African child being postered over by the newly glamorous model-du-jour Diana Scott (Christie). Not long after Robert (Dirk Bogarde), host of a TV arts show, accidentally meets Scott doing a “streeter” and they fall in love, jettisoning their married households. From there it’s a tour of London’s elite art and fashion sets with parties and charity balls, one in particular descending into obscene farce by the hypocrisy of the over-the-top fat cats attending it. Robert, however, is bookish. Diana is not and becomes restless. She meets Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey), an advertising exec (Brand, get it?), and they begin a relationship. Miles exploits and backhandedly disparages her by starring her in a trashy B movie. Miles, a jet setter par excellence, takes her to Paris and a party filled by the avantgarde where bizarre dance rituals and cross-dressing take place. As the face of a chocolate company’s advertising campaign Scott is dubbed The Happiness Girl, ironic given her increasing descent into depression and loneliness. While on an Italian commercial shoot she meets a prince (José Luis de Vilallonga, perhaps best known for his role opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards 1961)) who proposes marriage. She rejects it and heads back to England, where she realizes the emptiness of her high-flying set and decides to seek stability. She marries Prince Cesare after all, and, like Grace Kelly who married the prince of Monaco, becomes an Italian princess and stepmother of the prince’s brood. But even the opulence in a Medici villa proves, well, unsatisfying. The princess dines all alone (her husband presumably with a mistress) in evening dress surrounded by impassive servants. In the end, modelling, glamour, elitism – it’s all a crushing bore and crashing nosedive into personal oblivion. Christie won the Oscar for best actress for the role and it’s obvious why – personifying a rebellious vacuous character who doesn’t know what she wants. And, oh yes, the louche score by John Dankworth beautifully underlines the theme.