The Coens' "Inside Llewyn Davis" / connection: Mazursky's "Next Stop, Greenwich Village"

Credit: Alison Rosa / CBS Films 

The artist who becomes paralyzed with self-doubt when left adrift and alone by a creative partner is something of a subgenre among films about musicians.  One example: Dean Martin played just such an immobilized composer way back in 1960 in Vincente Minnelli’s “Bells Are Ringing.”  It took perky Judy Holliday to rouse him out of his stupor and self-pity.

"Inside Llewyn Davis,” Ethan and Joel Coen’s idiosyncratic take on the material, is much less commercial or corny.  It is a visually striking mood piece about the blossoming folk culture of the 1960s and about one man, the titular Llewyn Davis (a blank Oscar Issac), who just can’t cut it.

Davis can't gain entrée into this somewhat cloistered word – either because he doesn’t have the ambition or the great talent or because he cannot curb his aggressively self-directed and alienating ways. The Coens have created a film around an annoyingly unlikable person who is also quite uninteresting.  Davis is so thoughtless and in so many different ways - and, frankly, so stupid - that it’s impossible to feel any sympathy with or empathy for him, although I’m not sure if the Coens even want us to.

The character’s negativity seems to bring out the worst in the people around him – Carey Mulligan as an ex reduced to hurling insults and expletives at him; John Goodman as a decrepit hipster who sees through Davis, sizing him up in no uncertain terms, and Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett as a patient academic couple finally driven to distraction by their narcissistic, addlepated friend.  (They are the owners of one of three unlucky cats that have unfortunate encounters with Davis.)

In many ways, "Inside Llewyn Davis" is hugely reminiscent of Paul Mazursky's autobiographical film, "Next Stop Greenwich Village" in its mise en scène and the delineation of a young professional - in Mazursky's case, a struggling actor named Larry Lapinsky and played by the late Lenny Baker (that's him below) - who, like Davis, may be too scattered and unfocused to succeed. But the difference, as Pauline Kael opined in her review of "Next Stop, Greenwich Village," is that the Mazursky character has a "manic generosity that holds the film together." 

"Inside Llewyn Davis" is inarguably evocative and hugely atmospheric, thanks largely to Bruno Delbonnel's brooding cinematography, but with Davis at its center, there's, well, simply no there there. And like its anti-hero, the movie challenges us to like it.  It dares us."

Credit: 20th Century-Fox

McKay's "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

  Credit: Paramount Pictures

Will Ferrell, in character as the delusional news anchor Ron Burgundy,  has been so ubiquitous, tireless and clever in promoting “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” his latest collaboration with writer-director Adam McKay, that the movie itself is somewhat anti-climatic – not nearly as much fun as the marathon marketing prelude leading up to its release.

It’s also something of a missed opportunity.  Ferrell and McKay have material here that’s ripe for a scathing satire – the advent of the 24-hour news cycle – but they apparently were more intent with regenerating gags and situations that, over the past decade, has turned 2004’s “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” into a cult favorite.   Case in point:  Their restaging of the first film’s memorable rumble sequence is twice as big and twice as long and boasts twice as many cameos, but what was so exhilarating in the original now feels leaden and obligatory.

The movie’s one original comic high point has Burgundy whipping a nowhere car chase into a sensational news story and ratings winner, but Ferrell and McKay don’t take the joke any further.  All those wasted cameos in the rumble could have been scattered through similar faux headline pieces,  the kind of nothing stories that cable news shows currently – and routinely – beat into the ground with wild-eyed fervor.

Instead, the film gets waylaid by an extended and endless sequence that has the Burgundy character going into hiding at a seaside lighthouse to rehabilitate himself.  It’s very odd, not very amusing and it stops the film cold. “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” never bounces back from this bizarre, needless detour and never becomes the bigger and better follow-up that it was designed to be.  Besides, Ferrell and McKay more than topped themselves two years after the original “Anchorman” with“Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby.”

unworthy

 

One of the many virtues of Turner Classic Movies is how it always honors film people in all areas of the art in its year-end In Memoriam feature.

Never less than fastidious, Turner has been traditionally inclusive. In fact, it routinely puts the Oscars' yearly botched obit tribute to shame.

Seemingly - seemingly - no one is disregarded or omitted by Turner.  Until this year...

I appreciate that many more film people pass away who can be fit on any reasonable list, but for some inexplicable/inexcusable reason, the 2013 edition of TCM Remembers neglects Paul Walker, the appealing actor who died in a tragic car accident at a young 40 on November 30th. His death was major news that one would think could not be ignored.  But it was.

I would day that Turner simply didn't have time to include him, but wait! Eleanor Parker, who died more than a week after Walker - just two days ago, on December 9th - is very much included.  Funny how they were able to accommodate Parker on such short notice, but not Walker.

Hmmm...

And unlike James Gandolfini, who also qualified for Turner's list, Walker wasn't known largely as a TV actor.  He had a solid film résumé. 

So Eleanor Parker and James Gandolfini make the grade (and deservedly so) but not Paul Walker. OK, but also feted by Turner are Virginia Gibson, who danced in a few films and, from time to time, even got to speak a line of  dialogue; Rossella Falk and Diane Clare.  Diane who? Who's she?

Well, Diane Clare is a prime example of Turner's admirable inclusiveness.

But apparently not Paul Walker.

So exactly what's going on here?  By appearance, it smacks of a disturbing case of film snobbery - you know, the "he's not one of us" mentality that is way beneath what Turner Classic Movies is supposed to represent.  Heck, Turner is so democratic that it regularly allots precious air time to the dubious films of Elvis Presley and Frankie & Annette.

Regardless of the rationale for this exclusion, it's still hugely disappointing.

Update:  I subsequently engaged in a friendly email conversation about this subject with a Turner rep, who acknowledged the chore of weeding through so many deaths, but who noted that those who are finally chosen are selected with "an eye towards picking personalities whose film work resonates strongly with the TCM community."  Um, OK.  Also, I was told that Diane Clare, a name that still means nothing to me, was selected because she was "best known for appearing in Hammer horror films which make sense with our brand." I guess I understand that.

Frears' "Philomena"

Credit: Alex Bailey/Weinstein Company

As a Catholic-turned-Lapsed-Catholic-turned-Collapsed-Catholic, Stephen Frears' heartbreaking "Philomena" resonated with me.  My reasons for appreciating the film oddly coincide with the reservations of those Catholics who condemn the film: It is an unblinking attack on the Church.

And deservedly so.

The film is "based on a true story," and ironically, those sections that deal with the Church's harsh treatment of its title character are the only ones based on fact.  Just about everything else about the movie has been fictionalized.  There are areas of "Philomena" where one can question its veracity but, by all accounts, its depiction of the Church in this particular time and place are based on an eyewitness account and are accurate.

Initially, the story here is almost Dickensian - It is 1952 and a teenage Philomena Lee (Sophie Kennedy Clark), pregnant and unwed, is sent to a convent in Roscrea, Ireland, where she gives birth and is then put into viritable servitude, seeing her infant son only once a week.  The nuns there treat their wards with contempt, intolerance and utter disregard, the latter epitomized by their routine of selling the babies in their care to wealthy Americans.  That's how Philamena loses her little Anthony.

Flashforward to today when the 70-year-old Philomena (Judi Dench), distracted by guilt and curiosity, sets out to find her son with the help of a jaded journalist, Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), who is there to cover her plight/journey for a magazine piece that eventually became the book, “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.”  They travel to American to locate Anthony and "Philomena" becomes a road film with an odd couple at its center. Entertaining as this is, it's also blatantly untrue.

Philomena never traveled to America.

But the film remains fascinating nevertheless - and disturbing, thanks to those nuns, who worked for decades to keep mother and son apart as one looked for the other.  And "Philomena" also remains wrenchingly sad.

What Philomena eventually learns about Anthony only validates her lifelong fears for him, her dread. She lived a nightmare that never went away and, yet as played by the great Judi Dench, she was everything that her tormentors, the nuns, weren't - forgiving and humane.

Dench's masterful performance here effectively humbles the audience.

Payne's "Nebraska"

Credit: Merie W. Wallace / Paramount Vantage

In her review of the 1974 Paul Mazursky fillm, "Harry & Tonto," Pauline Kael noted that it was "the most difficult kind of comedy to bring off, because it comes directly from the moviemaker's feelings about life."

The exact same observation could be made of Alexander Payne's hauntingly spare and gnawingly moody "Nebraska," another "old-man-on-the-road comedy," as Kael also described "Harry & Tonto."

The tricky part, I think - and the reason Kael opined about the difficulty of the genre - is that these films aren't entirely comedies.  There's also a melancholy to them. especially "Nebraska," which takes the risk of coming close to depressing its audience with its clear-eyed, sometimes harsh. view of a certain area of Middle America, one in the state of stasis.

Payne offers no surcease from his depiction of a people left immobilized by a paralyzed economy as he follows the plight of Woody (Bruce Dern, excellent), an old man who has deluded himself into think that he's the big winner in a millionaire sweepstakes and is intent on collecting his prize, much to the chagrin of snappish wife (June Squibb, also excellent), a woman who has had to develope a tough skin and alienating persona in order to get through life with a man who was always an easy touch.

Accompanying him on the pointless trip is Woody's younger son, David (Will Forte), who feels empathy for the old man, perhaps seeing his own beak future in him, and who sees this as one last opportunity to finally connect with his father.  As wonderful as Dern is in the film, "Nebraska" really belongs to Forte, whose relaxed, naturalistic turn as  a decent man is quietly powerful. His performance is entirely transparent.

The mood of hopeless that pervades "Nebraska" is sustained by the gorgeous, evocative black-&-white, wide-screen cinematography by Phedon Papamichael.  It completes the picture.

Credit: Paramount Vantage / Courtesy of Paramo