If this weekend’s most touted opener is a Noah Baumbach movie, then I guess we can close the books on the summer movie season. I’m not using this space to assess the grosses and trends. Better you should read this guy, who’s so much smarter about these things than I am.
Also be warned this makes no claims of being comprehensive: I’m saving my remarks on Straight Outta Compton for a separate occasion. There are a few movies from this summer that I wanted to get around to, but couldn’t. (Shaun the Sheep, come baaaack!!) There also are those I may still get around to before long (Trainwreck) and others (Jurassic World) that are on my prohibitive life-is-short list. So here, in no particular order, is most of what I saw in the dark since Memorial Day.
Mad Max: Fury Road – As with almost everybody else, I admired its eccentric (yet austere) design, the proto-feminist tweaking of heroic prototypes and its masterly narrative drive. George Miller may be the best in the world right now at such tension-release dynamism. And yet…as was the case with just about every action film I saw this season, even a movie as accomplished and engrossing as this, Fury Road seemed to have its way with me as I was watching it and then, as soon as it ended, was all done with me.
Tomorrowland – Was this summer’s prototype of Big Fat Bust until Not-So-Fantastic-Four (see below). I liked it better than most others and totally bought what it was selling despite its flaws because I, too, was a credulous, New Frontier-besotted 12-year-old in 1965 who thought a visit to the New York World’s Fair was the Best Day of His Whole Life up to that point. Maybe it would have been at least a more interesting movie if its focus had been on the Hugh Laurie character that questioned (as I often do) whether we truly deserve to have a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.
Dope – As of now, I no longer care how much it resembles Risky Business. But I still care, after so many other movies over so many weeks, about the cool jerks at this story’s core along with the bullies, thugs and airheads who make trouble for them. Say it with me: It’s not the concept. It’s the characters (stupid)!
Inside Out — So great that even kids loved it. But I’m betting they loved Minions more.
Ant-Man – Or, “What Would Have Happened If Leo McCarey directed The Incredible Shrinking Man With a Bigger Budget.” And does the hero really have to become an Avenger? Speaking of which…
The Avengers: Age of Ultron – I still snicker over Captain America saying how even he can’t afford to move back to Brooklyn, where he’d last lived in the 1940s. I can’t remember anything else that happened. Speaking of which…
(Not So) Fantastic Four –.We could ourselves be heroes if we found something to like about it, so let’s see…Kate Mara’s teeny little segue into a fake Balkan accent was adorable and Michael B. Jordan’s brash side deserves a movie all to itself. But paraphrasing the great Theodore Sturgeon’s observation about science fiction in general, ninety percent of everything is shit, especially this. And when the even the movie’s director agrees, what’s the point of being “contrary to received wisdom” at all?
Mr. Holmes – Fragment of a conversation, somewhere in London, 1893.
CONSULTING DETECTIVE: You know, James, my good friend Watson seems to believe you and I have much in common.
HENRY JAMES: Indeed! And how might that be?
CONSULTING DETECTIVE: He is of the opinion, and I respect his instincts on such matters better than those of any man, that you and I are of a rare species of humankind that takes absolutely nothing for granted. Naturally, despite my disinclination towards reading fiction, I had to see if he was right and as I evaluate the available evidence, it’s quite clear you possess gifts for observing comparable to mine and for using such observations to assess the full range of human temperament with depth and felicity that exist nowhere else in our shared language.
HENRY JAMES: (staring at his interlocutor, smiling) I am greatly honored, even mildly flabbergasted, by your remarks, sir. But…with respect to your Mister….
CONSULTING DETECTIVE: Doctor…
HENRY JAMES: Yes, of course. My apologies…Doctor Watson…I fear he labors under a misperception about our respective capacities.
CONSULTING DETECTIVE: But, my dear fellow, I have become quite familiar with your work…
HENRY JAMES: …And I with yours, Mister Holmes, for you are now quite possibly the most famous man in Britain. But…if I may speak frankly….
CONSULTING DETECTIVE: Please.
HENRY JAMES: There is, in fact, quite a lot that you take for granted…Not much is lost on you, I will concede, but…
CONSULTING DETECTIVE: (Back stiffened, peevish) And what precisely would these…omissions comprise?
HENRY JAMES: (beginning to speak, then stops, pauses) Precision is difficult, even evasive, on such matters. I think it best that you find out for yourself…And eventually, I suspect that you will.
Love and Mercy – You see Paul Dano in the lead role and you think, “He’s Brain Wilson!” You see John Cusack in the lead role and you think, “What an astute and sensitively observed commentary John Cusack is making on Brian Wilson’s life!” This distinction in no way impairs your appreciation of either the movie or, most especially, Elizabeth Banks. But you’re aware of the distinction nonetheless.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation – Forget that set piece with the plane. That’s over and done before the opening credits, which will always be the best part of these movies because Lalo Schifrin is, if not God, at least the god of theme songs. (I’d see any movie version of Mannix as long as its theme comes along.) The best stunts in this movie are performed by its star’s vanity, which will outlast this franchise the way roaches will survive Nuclear Armageddon .
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – It didn’t try as hard the one directly above to achieve its effects and that’s why it probably doesn’t matter whether you remember the original series or not. Still wondering if it’ll get the chance to do a sequel because it deserves one. Henry Cavill, judging from the Dawn of Justice trailers, could use something else to do with his time and so, for different reasons, could Hugh Grant.
Phoenix – Nina Hoss could have been a superstar in the Silent Era, which is the supreme compliment you could make towards any living motion picture actor. I saw this on the day of TCM’s daylong tribute to Garbo and Hoss has the same magnetism, especially in stillness. If she were embedded in ice, she would continue to emit vibrations
Listen to Me, Marlon – Suppose, just suppose, that back in the early 1960s, instead of wasting everybody’s time and money with a remake of Mutiny on the Bounty that nobody wanted or needed, somebody had managed to secure the rights to Henderson the Rain King and convinced Brando to play the title role. We’d have had a better movie – or at least, a more interesting failure – and Brando’s slide off the rails, however inevitable, may not have been as precipitous. Or…maybe nothing would have helped. In any case, what he says towards the end about his a-hole father applies to him as well: He did the best he could.
Amy – Thomas Pynchon said it best: “A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before but there is nothing to compare it to now…It is too late…”
The Best of Enemies – Preening, pompous, patrician peacocks peck, poke, prod and prick pretentiously without profundity or pertinence.
The End of the Tour – Maybe the only movie on this list that doesn’t leave you tossed aside at the end as you begin forgetting what you just saw. It’s a little movie that keeps your head (and heart) toying with very big questions long after it’s over. Also it makes you curious to read a difficult book that it’s not based on – which is so much cooler than another metal object exploding in mid-air
