cliffgold-1 Reviews

Pavarotti (2019)

Bravo to "Pavarotti"

[8/10 · 13 June 2019]

This year's big doc may be Ron Howard's "Pavarotti," a love letter about the great tenor. More than any opera singer since Enrico Caruso a century before, Pavarotti made opera cool in the latter part of the 20th century. With his larger-than-life personality and crystal-clear voice, he became a worldwide sensation, performing everywhere from rural outposts to massive stadiums to outdoor parks.

Howard manages to piece together decades of film --- often grainy and amateurish - with deeply personal interviews with the Maestro's ex-wives, former mistress, daughters, peers (Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, and several sopranos), and admirers. He weaves biography with taped performances from the time Pavarotti was a promising young singer through his waning years.

In fact, Howard presents Pavarotti's life as opera. A man of great passion - for opera, for women, for food, for children - Pavarotti lived large. And he died painfully. Howard manages to make the audience feel the highs and the lows of Pavarotti's personal and professional lives.

But the film is long. It proves that even great directors can fall in love with their own films. Howard could have spent less time in the run-up to stardom to get us to the fantastic success of his middle years and the explosive teaming with Domingo and Carreras as The Three Tenors. His death is handled beautifully as is Pavarotti's heartfelt charitable endeavors in concert with Princess Diana, Bono and many others.

Even if you don't love opera, you will enjoy this stunning documentary.

The Debt (I) (2010)

Young actors and old make The Debt a taut thriller

[8/10 · 3 September 2011]

With a cast like this, how can this movie fail? Taut, tense, compelling, and a little bloody, The Debt tells the story of three Mossad agents who infiltrate East Germany in 1965 to capture an escaped Nazi doctor who experimented and killed hundreds at the Birkenau concentration camp during World War II. Their mission: snatch him and take him back to Israel for trial. The film opens in modern times as one the agents, Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren), is being honored for her work as chronicled by her daughter in a new book. Singer, we find out, shot and killed Doktor Bernhardt (Jesper Christensen in a sinister performance) as he tried to escape from his trio of captors. The other two, David (Ciaran Hinds) and Stephan (Tom Wilkinson), turn up, too. David has been absent for a long time, presumably sick as well. Stephan (not Steven but Steffan) is Singer's ex-husband and a major government official but now limited physically and confined to a wheelchair. Their relationship is not friendly but they share a daughter whose coming-out party as an author is a really big deal.

Flash back to 1965 and we meet them decades earlier as they carry out their dangerous assignment. Lethal killers, the three (played by exceptional actors Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Avatar's Sam Worthington) are all business (well, almost). Their plan is precise. They have to get into East Germany, confirm the identity of the war criminal, drug him, bag him, take him across the border into the West, and get him back to Israel. The doctor, now practicing as a gynecologist (ooo!), sees Rachel as a patient, where she undergoes an exam, takes surreptitious pictures of the doctor to confirm his identity and to set him up. Her cohorts plan the escape. It comes off almost flawlessly but the plan goes awry just as they are ready to escape. The protagonists and their prey are stranded in an apartment in East Germany with no way out.

While the film flashes forward and back, we find out more of the story, the secrets the trio have been keeping for all these years, and the back-story we missed. That leads us to Act III, the thrilling conclusion of this spy yarn. To tell you more would be giving the story away but, suffice it to say, this is where Helen Mirren shines as always. Now well into her 60s, Mirren remains at the top of her game and, arguably, gets the best parts for older women, including Meryl Streep. She has been in action films, comedies, and heavy dramas. Wilkinson's role is quite limited and Hinds has little more than a cameo but makes the most of it. The real stars are the younger actors, all of whom are truly fantastic here.

The accents these British, Kiwi, and American actors (of the principals, only Chastain is American) assume represent my only problem with the film. Presumably, they are playing Israelis, whose English accent is very distinctive. These six actors seem to have six different accents with Wilkinson having the least authentic. Of course, some of them have to speak German, too. And Mirren even has to speak Russian (which she did in White Nights). But this is quibbling. Filmed in Hungary and Israel, The Debt is the thriller of the year so far. I really liked it. Don't let the warnings of the few violent scenes keep you away. They weren't that bad but they kept my wife away from the film.

Solitary Man (2009)

Solitary Man shows Michael Douglas at his very (aging) best

[9/10 · 8 July 2010]

At 65 years old, Michael Douglas can still command the movie screen. In recent years, his choice of parts has looked somewhat desperate to me. Solitary Man got little publicity and is playing largely art houses around the country. And it is quite a film. It is very much Douglas at his aging best. His character is true to the Neil Diamond song by the same name, a version of which is sung (badly) over the opening credits.

Featuring an all-star ensemble cast, Solitary Man centers on Ben Kalmen (Douglas), a formerly rich, highly-successful "honest" New York car dealer who pulled off a Bernie Madoff-level scam, got caught, prosecuted, and lost all of his money and most of his respect in the ensuing years-long legal battle. He did avoid jail, however. The movie opens before the scandal and 6 ½ years before the current day, with the always-cocky Ben (think Tom Sanders in Disclosure) going in for his annual physical. His long-time doctor "doesn't like his EKG" and orders major diagnostic tests for him. Flash forward to now.

Ben is divorced from his wife, Nancy (Susan Sarandon in a luscious cameo); living with a rich younger woman, Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) and her daughter, Allyson, (the very talented Imogen Poots); trying to get a new car dealership approved by the local city council; and chasing women successfully all over the Boroughs. This 60+-year-old has all the moves, and they still work on younger women. He hops from bed to bed while milking his live-in and trying to re-capture the success he exudes from every pore but without the money or the friends he once had. Ben is living a nightmare. He is trying to bury the images with meaningless sex and a carefree, live-for-the-moment attitude that is vaguely reminiscent of his roles in films like Wall Street, A Perfect Murder and Wonder Boys.

When Jordan gets ill, she commands Ben to take Allyson to her college interview at Ben's alma mater, where he has been a major donor with his name on the library and everything. Here, the film hits its stride. Ben doesn't want to be there but the memories flood back, including those of his first meeting with Nancy. He leaves Allyson to do what she wants while he befriends a young college student (played by Adventureland's Jesse Eisenberg), becoming a mentor in the process. He also gets reacquainted with his college buddy, Jimmy Merino (Danny DeVito with whom Douglas has done countless films and with whom he roomed as a young thespian), an underachieving good guy who never left the college town and who owns a small café near campus. The very best moments involve Ben and Allyson; don't miss them.

Let's just say the story evolves from here with Ben's life spiraling downhill, all of his own doing. Nothing has been the same since the day his doctor told him he might have a serious heart problem. Everything came up smelling like roses until then and it's been all smelly fertilizer since. Even his only good relationship - with his married daughter, Susan, who loves her dad, listens to his problems and helps where she can – begins to decay. Played by The Office's Jenna Fischer in a performance that was a revelation, Susan doesn't hold any grudge about the divorce or dad's highly publicized fall. But he even does her wrong.

There are several questions the audience wants answered. Can Ben be redeemed? When he hits rock bottom, will anyone be there? Will his heart give way before that? Will he commit suicide, die of natural causes, or be saved? Co-writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien direct their first major movie after having penned films like Rounders, Runaway Jury, and Ocean's Thirteen (all favorites of mine), and they do so with aplomb. This is an exceptional, if depressing, independent film that shows that Douglas can still act, entice, entertain, and engage.

The Karate Kid (2010)

No wax-on wax-off but this Karate Kid would make Mr. Miyagi proud

[9/10 · 13 June 2010]

Over the years, I have taken a lot of grief from friends for making The Karate Kid, the 1984 movie directed by Rocky Oscar winner John G. Avildsen, one of my five favorite movies of all time. So it was with apprehension and low expectations that I went to see the remake.

Wow, what a magnificent job of re-creating the first film while modernizing it, setting it in China, and bringing all the tension, man-love, and depth back to the big screen. This time, Dutch director Harald Zwart added wonderful scenic views of China and lost a bit of the sometimes-cheesy dialog. But to his credit, he kept a great deal of the original plot intact. Mom is transferred to Beijing and takes her son with her without much worrying about his feelings. Dre immediately finds trouble as the American outsider who befriends the beautiful Chinese girl. There is the evil sensei of the trained-to-maim thugs who rule the school that our hero, Dre Parker (Jaden Smith), has been thrown into. The bad kids target him, and he gets the heck beat out of him.

To the rescue comes the maintenance guy in the apartment building in which he lives. Played by Jackie Chan, Mr. Han isn't quite as sage as Mr. Miyagi but he uses almost the same technique (not exactly wax-on-wax-off, paint-the-fence, and sand-the-floor but close). His personal secret remains essentially intact, too, which when discovered by Dre, motivates him to work harder. The role of Dre's mom, played here by Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), is beefed up from the part that Randee Heller played in the original. The young girl, Meiying (Wanwan Han in her first role), looks vaguely like Tamlyn Tomita, who played the love interest in The Karate Kid: Part 2. The rest of the film plays close to the original as well but I won't tell you if he wins (as Daniel LaRusso did in the original) or loses (as Rocky did).

Jaden Smith proves that he may be a force in the business for a long time. His parents, of course, are Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and they have created a natural. That was evident in The Pursuit of Happiness. Hand it to the kid: he worked really hard to learn kung fu (it's not karate). And while I preferred Ralph Macchio because he was so raw and not talented as an actor, Jaden Smith knows the camera is always there, which I think he will grow out of over time. Jackie Chan is really quite good here, shedding the recent tongue-in-cheek comedy roles. This part fits him perfectly and Morita would have been proud had he lived to see it.

After my disappointments with so many other remakes, I was pleasantly surprised. The director and cast clearly found the balance.

Avatar (2009)

Cameron's latest really good but not 'Avatar'iffic

[8/10 · 31 December 2009]

For a quarter-of-a-billion dollars, the viewer (not to mention the studio) ought to get an amazing movie. Avatar is a really, really fine film with THE best special effects ever. In that sense, it's Avatariffic. The risks for uber-director James Cameron were incredibly high. He passed the test easily but didn't knock your socks off. The fact that Cameron invented a language for the Na'vi, the inhabitants of Pandora, is meaningless to me but only relevant to budding cultists just like Trekkers bask in Klongonistics.

While the film soars in effects, it is merely mainstream in plot. At its heart, Avatar is a love story and a war movie. It most resembles Star Wars but with super-sized graphics and characters that are mostly computerized. The humans, led by paraplegic Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, Cameron's star in Aliens), are compelling characters as real people trying to infiltrate the Na'vi and convince them to move in order to allow their unnamed "corporation" to mine "unobtainium" (really?), a precious natural resource desperately needed on Earth. Of course, as Jake becomes one of the Na'vi, he is captivated by their people and their culture, deciding in the process to scuttle the plans of his corporation. But the "corporation" (or is it 'The Force"?) is determined to get the unobtainium (the audience is never told why Earth needs it or what it does). That means we need a bad guy. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is the leader of the military whose job it is to decimate the sacred land and mine the unobtainium. The character and Lang's portrayal of Quaritch (or is it Darth Vader?) are one dimensional; he is all evil. The rest of the film is technological triumph and typical war movie of the all-powerful invader against the little people.

At 2 hours and 42 minutes, the film is too long but I was only bored early in the movie as Cameron felt compelled to painstakingly introduce us to the new world. Once the action began in the Second Act, the movie was exciting, compelling and engaging. I saw Avatar in 3-D, which is really the only way to see it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cameron did not overdo the 3-D; it truly enhanced the film. A certain Best Picture nominee, we'll see if Cameron gets to claim he's "king of the world" again.

It's Complicated (2009)

Conflicted about "Complicated"

[6/10 · 25 December 2009]

I am conflicted about "It's Complicated." As you would expect, the acting is impeccable. Three exceptional actors (Queen Meryl, 30 Rock's Emmy winner Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin) ply their craft perfectly. She is Jane, a late-50s divorcée, luxury bakery owner, and mother of three grown kids. Jake (Baldwin) is the cad of an ex-husband who remarried a much younger woman, Agness (played by Lake Bell) but who remains close to the kids and even to Jane. Martin plays Adam, the architect who has designed Jane's dream home addition, which includes the kitchen she always wanted (a nod to her turn as Julia Child in Julie & Julia). When the whole family goes to New York for the youngest child's graduation, the chick flick begins. The kids go off to a party, leaving Jane to dine by herself in the hotel restaurant/bar. Jake is there alone, too, since his wife and her precocious son conveniently stayed home when the kid got sick. Surprise! Jane and Jake end up drinking and eating at the bar, having a good old time and landing in the sack. The PG bedroom scenes are the best in the movie.

As the trailer depicts, the two start an unusual affair, she feeling guilt, he having second thoughts about his new marriage. Jane confides in her best friends (played by all-star veterans Rita Wilson, Mary Kay Place and Alexandra Wentworth), who are totally superfluous to the film, and her shrink, all of whom encourage her to pursue her indiscretion. Enter Adam, a wild and sensitive guy, as the nice guy Jane needs. He and Baldwin are polar opposites. By now, we all know where the film is headed.

So what's not to like? Plenty. Writer/director Nancy Meyers hates philandering men. Fine. So why is Jane's character painted so sympathetically? She's doing the same thing to Agness that broke up her marriage and sent her into a 10-year skid. Meyers, who also directed chick flicks "What Women Want," "Something's Gotta Give," and "The Holiday," lets the movie lag for almost 20 minutes in the middle. I wanted to scream: Move it along! The film doesn't hit its stride until 75 minutes in, propelled by an unlikely scene where Jane and Adam share a joint and make fools of themselves at a party. Lastly, just when you think the movie is going to give you an unconventional ending, it doesn't. I adore the actors, like the genre, bought the premise, and ultimately was disappointed.