Cheer Up, Guys. This is Not Goodbye. It's Just I Won't Ever See You Again

When I started this blog in spring 2008, I thought it would be a good way to express my thoughts on movies and, to be honest, keep busy writing. My freelance career was limp--it would get worse when the Great Recession hit over the summer--and I needed a distraction.

Even if I never got a book deal, or even an assignment, this blog filled that need. It kept me sane during failed job interviews and unreturned phone calls and awful freelance assignments. It provided a forum for people to read my stuff. I didn't feel like I was writing for an audience of none.

Nearly six years have passed and things have changed so much. It's time to say goodbye to What Pete's Watching.

I'm now at a point in my career--knock on anything within walking distance that is wood, including trees and neighboring houses--where my freelance career is actually a career. I'm writing about things that keep me interested and happy, and that's where my efforts need to go. The musings that I would generally put on this page should put money in my pocket. I have a wife now. We'd like to buy a house and fill it with little people and big stuff.

But, Pete, where will I read your thoughts on movies? Facebook and Twitter (@PeteCroatto, by the way)--combined with the fact that every publication I write for has a digital component--makes my blog obsolete as a halfway house for reviews. To be honest, copying and pasting the reviews was driving me nuts. I'd post something from ICON, find a mistake, and spend 30 minutes climbing out of a shame spiral. As someone who considers himself a perfectionist, the blog was not allowing me to let things go, keeping the tinkering spirit alive so it could rise up and kill me while I took a shower or had breakfast.

This was never just a movie blog. The signs were obvious early on: the book column, the ETC. Movies were just one part of the material. As I write more stories about sports--a lovely, unanticipated development, by the way--maintaining a straight-up movie blog seems, well, a bit silly. I will start another blog, but one that features more variety and gives me more joy. When will that happen? I don't know. Could things change and I'm back to ranting about movies? I don't know.

What I do know is that I appreciate each and every one of you who read my posts, left a comment, or told me they liked something. Thank you. It was fun.

The Big Review: "Gravity"

When the beat goes on, and you can't go on...

Forget about the IMAX and 3D nonsense, it would be a classic in any era. (Just like 2001.) This review previously appeared in ICON and appears with permission.

With Gravity, director Alfonso Cuarón has made a masterpiece via a simple, frequently forgotten fact: the best movies in any genre are built on emotions. Stars come and go. Budgets increase. The technology gets better and faster. But the need for audiences to feel something is an unquenchable desire, and Gravity satisfies it better than any movie I’ve seen in years.

Far above the earth, a five-person crew repairs a satellite, which slowly drifts into view from right to left. We pick up snippets of conversation between the crew and mission control. That’s the extent of the set-up. It’s a humdrum stretch during another workday where the routine lulls everyone into a complacent efficiency.

The announcement of oncoming debris doesn’t come with much urgency. What’s supposed to be nothing turns into a catastrophe; the satellite and ship are destroyed, leaving astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) tumbling through the vast blackness, their chances of survival evaporating with each second. No one can hear them. Help is not coming. They are truly alone. 

Doom creeps in, slowly and assuredly. I saw the 3-D version of Gravity in the newly renovated Prince Music Theater, which is now equipped with all the digital trimmings that will make movies better and cure cancer or whatever. Cuarón uses the technology afforded him for what is: a complement. Gravity grabs you through traditional mastery: the reflection of the earth spinning in Stone’s helmet as she goes topsy-turvy; the shot of a family photo next to the poor bastard whose head looks like a hollowed out pumpkin. A Marvin the Martian figurine floats into the frame, and then—oh my God! Wait, was that a piece of debris? Move your ass, Stone!

You can count the number of cuts on two hands in the film’s first 45 minutes. Frequently, all we hear is the whirring of machines or a heartbeat as the soundtrack. Cuarón establishes an intolerable and never-ending loneliness. Stone keeps talking to mission control, almost out of habit.

Kowalski, essentially Clooney’s Danny Ocean in a spacesuit, is smooth-talking calm. He guides her. Through their clipped conversation, we learn a bit about Stone. She’s a workaholic. Her child died unexpectedly. She listens to anything on the radio when she drives home from the hospital. Bullock, to her credit, holsters the charisma and sports a borderline mom haircut that dampens the glamour. That she and Clooney don’t always take roles equipped with halos helps immeasurably. If Julia Roberts or Will Smith were the stars, their agents would have demanded that they ride back to Earth on a comet. With Clooney and Bullock on board, not trying to triumph over the material, we honestly don’t know if Stone and Kowalsky are going to make it.

Especially Stone. Space is where she can stay comfortably numb. Now that her paradise is lost, how badly does she want to live? How many obstacles can she summon the strength to overcome? Cuarón uses Stone as his social commentary. We’ve grown so reliant on things—technology, religion, outside forces—to guide our lives that we’ve stopped believing in the abilities of the human race. Stone represents a different kind of change, which is why we believe in her even when she’s stopped doing that herself. We need her to survive.

Gravity folds its allegory into the horror of Stone and Kowalski’s predicament. The excitement never dims the message and vice versa. One of the great thrills is watching Cuarón keep this balance throughout—catching us off-guard with the special effects, letting Stone battle to find her resolve, knowing when to whisper and when to shout. Everything about Gravity is seamless and assured yet brimming with the soul of an optimist. Cuarón has captured and amplified the human experience without isolating us from it. We lose and find ourselves all at once. [PG-13]

Film Round-Up for October 2013: Don Jon, Inequality for All, Blue Caprice, Salinger

Joseph Gordon-Levitt overexerts himself in his directorial debut.

Kind of a mixed bag this month. A review of Gravity will be up Thursday night, so that should be fun, no? But the review is in the print version of ICON, which you can pick up right now.

These reviews previously appeared in ICON and are reprinted with permission.  

Don Jon (Dir: Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Glenne Headley, Brie Larson, Rob Brown, Jeremy Luc. What matters to twentysomething Jersey bartender Jon (Gordon-Levitt) can fit on a postage stamp. Topping the list is online porn, a pursuit he prefers to the sex he regularly gets. Jon’s priorities shift when his desire to hook up with a “dime” (Johansson) turns into an actual relationship. Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut starts with lots of energy and smarts—Jon doesn’t realize that his dream girl is playing him like a fiddle—before running out of ideas. A working-class cartoon, complete with dem-dese-dose accents and greasy leering, then emerges. The worst part of this quest for “authenticity” is whenever Jon and his father (Danza) meet for Sunday dinner. Donning wife-beaters, they compete in a Stanley Kowalski-off while the TV blares football and Jon’s mom (Headley) wails about not having grandkids. By the time Moore’s pointless character arrives, Gordon-Levitt is so consumed with establishing his blue-collar bona fides—and spoon-feeding us emotions a la David O. Russell—that he obscures his main character’s soul. We can’t root for a caricature. Don Jon is not only hopelessly disconnected to anything resembling real life, writer-director Gordon-Levitt embraces the Hollywood nonsense his main character openly disdains. ** [R] 

Inequality for All (Dir: Jacob Kornbluth). With this and last year’s pandering Bully, The Weinstein Company must stop being part of releasing documentaries that urge us to change at gunpoint (or at least via Website) and support movies where the content alone inspires viewers to act. Fortunately, Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under Clinton, is eloquent and intelligent in explaining why we have constant class warfare. Very simply put, America’s wealth is hoarded by a small number of people who don’t pay enough in taxes. That burden falls to the members of the vast middle class, a faulty plan considering those people spend the most money. Spending, of course, helps revive a sagging economy. Investing in the middle class—for example, higher education—is one way to straighten things out. The movie veers from Reich’s graphics-assisted rhetoric to his life story to profiles of real people. The last part is when the movie breaks the bonds of ideology and marketing slickness to become something audiences can appreciate. **1/2 [PG]

Blue Caprice (Dir: Alexandre Moors). Starring: Isaiah Washington, Tequan Richmond, Tim Blake Nelson, Joey Lauren Adams, Cassandra Freeman. Quiet, unsettling debut feature from Moors examines the relationship between John Allen Muhammad (Washington) and Lee Boyd Malvo (Richmond), the man and teenager behind the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002. They first meet in Antigua, where an abandoned Malvo, flocks to the charismatic Muhammad, who gives him work and food. Later, the pair heads to Muhammad’s old home in Tacoma, Washington. In America, Muhammad is just another disaffected, unemployable loser. Desperate for any adult influence, Malvo latches onto Muhammad and his anger at the world. Muhammad, finally, has someone who takes him seriously who is also in his debt. Moors and screenwriter Ronnie Porto show how easy it was for this tragedy to come together without offering much insight into how the killers’ minds operated. “You’re not going to figure it out, even if I tell you,” Malvo says to an investigator after he’s caught. The willingness to embrace vagueness gives Blue Caprice a coiled, cold menace--even if you wish it would boil over instead of simmer. *** [R]

Salinger (Dir: Shane Salerno). From our friends at TWC comes A Current Affair meets American Masters. Highly anticipated documentary of author J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) contains a stunning announcement that fans of The Catcher in the Rye scribe’s catalogue will relish. Other than that, things bottom out after Salinger reaches the crest of his literary success and morphs into a shut-in with a fondness for young women. Information gives way to distractions—whether it’s pundits offering theories or journalists recalling brusque encounters with Salinger. And, Lord help us, there are breathless, almost laughable reenactments such as Salinger feverishly typing on a stage bathed in atmospheric lighting, like he’s opening for Jethro Tull. The first half is solid because we actually learn something about Salinger the person and the writer. (The insights of his former paramour, Jean Miller, are particularly revealing.)  Salinger was so good at being inscrutable—tightening his inner circle, isolating his family and friends—that his mysteriousness is practically impregnable. For all of Salerno’s urgency and energy, not unexpected from someone who helped write Armageddon, we leave not understanding Salinger. I almost expect the late author would be pleased with this film. He’d be in a slim minority. Note: This does not refer to the newer version with exclusive footage. ** [PG-13]

Film Round-Up for September: "Morning," "Una Noche," "Short Term 12," "I Give It a Year"

Brie Larson (left), future Oscar nominee.

Reprinted with permission from ICON, here's an eclectic collection of reviews. The reason? Well, August and early September is a time when the new releases go on. Next month should be more promising.

"Short Term 12" was excellent. I'm rooting super-hard for Brie Larson.

********* 

Morning (Dir: Leland Orser). Starring: Jeanne Tripplehorn, Leland Orser, Laura Linney, Elliott Gould, Kyle Chandler, Jason Ritter, Gina Morelli. A married couple (real-life husband and wife Orser and Tripplehorn) can’t cope with the death of their young son. Over the course of several days away from each other their lives unravel. He reverts to the behavior of a child, playing with toy trains and eating Spaghetti-Os. She walks around like an anesthetized soul in a Swedish film, alternately zoning out or lashing out at those who try to comfort her. Orser, who also wrote and directed, has a good story and a knack for telling it through images. (The opening shots of the house—eerily quiet and unsettling—set the tone.) It’s a shame that Morning doesn’t have a narrative base to support its two main characters, so Orser and Tripplehorn (who is, to put it nicely, over her head here) come across as wailing theatrically instead of expressing their characters’ anguish. The way Morning is constructed we care more about the supporting characters than the leading one. Another crippling issue: a crucial plot point will make you wish Orser had used that as the script’s thrust. [R] **

Una Noche (Dir: Lucy Mulloy). Starring: Dariel Arrechaga, Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre, Javier Núñez Florián. Best friends Raul (Arrechaga) and Elio (Florián) long to leave the sweltering despair of Havana, where, according to Raul, all you can do is “sweat and fuck.” Salvation lies in Miami, 90 miles across the ocean, and in a barge constructed from wooden planks, inner tubes, and a prayer. Mulloy paints modern-day Havana as a pitiless pit of poverty and decadence, so you know exactly why the boys want to leave. But that doesn’t mean they should. Elio is in love with unaware ladies’ man Raul, who believes his long-estranged father will be thrilled to reunite. And Elio’s clingy twin sister (de la Rúa de la Torre) wants in because she cannot bear to be away from her brother. So many movies tell immigration stories that serve as triumphs of the human spirit. Mulloy shows that the desire to leave can be fueled by delusions. Just because the mission is noble and right, there’s no guarantee the participants will succeed. You are invested in Una Noche because its characters never stop battling against their fate. Filmed on location in Havana on 35 mm film. Inspired by a true story. [NR] ***1/2

Short Term 12 (Dir: Destin Cretton). Starring: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Keith Stanfield. Quick-witted and no-nonsense, Grace (Larson) effectively supervises a halfway house for troubled youths. Her personal life is a different story. She’s in a serious relationship with her co-worker, Mason (The Newsroom’s Gallagher Jr.), who clearly loves her. That’s not enough. Grace’s unfortunate past prevents her from opening up, while a recent development forces her further inward. Throw in the arrival of a new charge (Dever), who reminds Grace too much of her own troubled childhood, and Grace’s carefully constructed equilibrium threatens to shatter. Larson (21 Jump Street, The Spectacular Now) is fantastic in a star-making turn—she is dramatically compelling while remaining fragile and human-sized—but she’s surrounded by fantastic performances, including Stanfield as an 18-year-old resident who is afraid to leave the only loving environment he’s ever known. Directed and written with assurance and heart by Cretton, this might be one of 2013’s best films when all is said and done. [R] ****

I Give It a Year (Dir: Dan Mazer). Starring: Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris, Simon Baker, Stephen Merchant, Minnie Driver, Jason Flemyng. Business executive Nat (Byrne) and novelist Josh (Spall) had a whirlwind courtship. Now closing in on a year of marriage, the two cannot stand each other. And more appealing options have emerged. Nat is enchanted with her client (Simon Baker), a rich American who is also handsome and intelligent. Josh, for reasons never made entirely clear, gravitates toward his ex-girlfriend (Faris). Everyone knows who should end up with whom, but director-writer Mazer’s idea of originality is to overstuff his frantic affair with “inappropriate” humor. So we have to endure Faris getting tangled in a threesome, stuffy parents viewing risqué honeymoon photos, and a marriage therapist shouting at her husband David Mamet style. This bombardment can’t hide a glaring omission: Mazer, a longtime collaborator with Sacha Baron Cohen, forgets that a romantic comedy—even a spoof of one—must feature people we actually have some affection for. Even the wonderful Byrne can’t help much this time around. [R] **

The Big Review: "Lee Daniels' The Butler"

Standing in the shadows of history.

Oh yeah, this will get a ton of Oscar nominations--though I won't care if that happens since it's quite good. Sorry for the tardiness of the review. It's been obnoxiously busy around these parts. 

This review previously appeared in ICON and is reprinted with permission.

##########

Making a crowd-pleasing historical film isn’t that hard. Making a good one is damn near impossible because it’s so tempting (and easy) to cater to the lowest common denominator. Just show stock footage that reminds us of more challenging times, making sure to reveal the sentimental spot in that historical briar patch. This is usually done by having a character comment about “how those days were so, so tough.” And highlight the fashion and music of the good old days, because nostalgia is the cement that holds the rickety structure together.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler, based on a 2008 Washington Post profile, never chokes us with its historical swoop—interactions with presidents, various social movements, and oh so many hairdos. Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong are more concerned with telling a good story about a father and son divided—and later reunited—by history.

Growing up on a Georgia cotton farm in the 1920s, Cecil Gaines saw his father shot to death by a white man. Young Cecil’s reward was that he was taught to be a “house nigger” or butler, a skill he took to a fancy hotel in Washington, D.C. and ultimately to the White House, where, according to the movie, he served presidents Eisenhower through Reagan.  

Along the way, Cecil achieved a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, complete with a wife (Oprah Winfrey) and kids, which was miles away from the cotton fields. In 1957, this is a dream life for most, especially African-Americans. Times are changing. Older son Louis (David Oyelowo) looks at the world differently. As a butler, Cecil is taught that “the room should feel empty when you’re in it.” Louis is tired of living life as an invisible man, forced to stay on one side of the line. He leaves for college in Tennessee fully intending to fight the power. 

Years pass. Cecil (played in his adult years by Forest Whitaker) continues to serve in the White House while Louis looks to forge a new identity, taking up the cause of the Freedom Riders, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Father and son grow further apart, even though each is making progress. Cecil is there for the Voting Rights Act; Louis holds vigil at Woolworth’s lunch counter and faces the unforgiving blast of fire hoses.

Louis thinks he knows everything, dismissing his father’s job—one that gives a black man dignity in a world where it’s hard to come by—as the career of an Uncle Tom. The young man expresses his views from a distance and without context, not realizing that Cecil’s hard work has allowed him the ability to protest. And Cecil, committed to a lifestyle of being neither seen nor heard, doesn’t realize that the acts of kids like Louis are why presidents are passing legislation to make things equal.

There is no Forrest Gump-like gimmickry. Remove the high-profile presidential cameos from Lee Daniels’ The Butler and you still have a searing family drama. I never thought I’d say this about Daniels, a director whose best-known work is either exploitative (The Paperboy) or an urban poor burlesque (Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire) but he’s finally learned to hold back. Instead of trafficking in schlock, he builds his scenes, taking the time to draw out characters in living rooms and front porches. The conversations feel real, not like historical footnotes. We always return to two men making their way in an unforgiving world: one by working twice as hard for half the pay, and the other by any means necessary.

The performances are lived-in, realistic, and keep you involved. Whitaker plays the lead role as a kind man navigating constant hurt, not as an observer to change. Terrence Howard is all oily charm as Cecil’s tomcatting neighbor, and it’s so nice to see Cuba Gooding Jr. find his swagger. Winfrey sheds her entitled air to play a woman whose increasing distance from her husband and her son cause her to drift into booze and questionable decisions. Her unraveling is treated as part of a family’s evolving history. Sometimes things are good, sometimes things turn bad. If we stick together, it’ll all be just fine.  

I think that’s why people have already flocked to see Lee Daniels’ The Butler. We need a reminder that we’re living our lives the right way, that what happened in the past led us to better times. People want their souls fed, and Daniels and Strong have offered a heaping plate of comfort food, a lovely, lyrical film that focuses on people, not pomp. 

Note (10/1/13)--It's come to my attention that Cecil Gaines is not the actual name of the butler profiled in The Washington Post story. It's Eugene Allen. My apologies for any confusion.

On Zander Hollander and the New York Times

This was an unbelievable experience. I grew up reading Zander's Complete Handbooks, so to shake hands with the man who defined a large part of my childhood was meaningful. It really was like shaking hands with my childhood. Also, the Times was a constant presence in my family's house, which makes this story even more bittersweet.

Click here to read the story.

Then to talk to such wonderful people: his wife, Phyllis (a woman of bottomless warmth), his daughter, Susan, and Eric Compton, a longtime collaborator. What a treat. Plus, the reaction over the last week has been, to use a rather ineloquent word, awesome. People have flooded Phyllis and Susan with phone calls and emails, shared memories in the comments section, and showed their appreciation for a sportswriting legend.

To be part of this is a reminder of why I love to tell stories: it's an opportunity to celebrate the past as we soullessly march toward the future. I'm looking forward to doing this again and again.

Rose Darling, My Friend

I had a nice chat with Rose Byrne a couple of weeks ago for Film Racket, which the peerless Matt Zoller Seitz was gracious enough to link on RogerEbert.com. 

And, yes, she was positively charming. Great, hearty laugh. It's easy to see why so many guys love her. When I told friends and acquaintances that I was interviewing the Bridesmaids star, they were really interested. Marriage proposals were bandied, wives were discarded. I felt like a geeky freshman interviewing the prom queen. 

So, yeah, sometimes this job is pretty fun.