Nymphomaniac: Volume One

2 out of 4 Stars

Controversial. Sadistic. Hair-raising. Intense. These are some of the words to describe Lars Von Trier's new film, Nymphomaniac: Volume One. Von Trier's full cut of the movie was so long (four hours) that he had split it into two parts as Tarantino did with Kill Bill. Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is found lying on the snow-covered streets and is saved by Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), a fly-fishing intellectual who listens to Joe tell him how she ended up on the streets.


Joe's story is an intense, no holds bar description of her sex life with tales of having her virginity being taken by Jerome, a moped-driving twenty-something (Shia LaBoeuf, with a terrible British accent), and competing over a bag of chocolates with her friend by seeing which one has the most sex on a train. As she reaches adulthood, Joe's sexual conquests grow from promiscuous to compulsive as she sees the destruction of one man's married life as his wife (An unforgettable Uma Thurman) confronts Joe in her apartment. The film concludes with a chilling cliffhanger that will leave you shocked, yet curious, over how Joe ended up in the warm embrace of Seligman.

Lars Von Trier once said that "films should be like a rock in a shoe." Von Trier's films are like rocks and shards of glass in a shoe with no socks on, whether it is the suspenseful and grueling Antichrist
  or his audacious musical, Dancer in the Dark. Von Trier's Nymphomaniac is of no exception; he succeeds in shocking you with intense imagery, yet leaves you scratching your head over the age old question about filmmakers of his caliber: is the film made to shock us for the sake of being shocked, or is there an underlying message that is overshadowed by the grueling imagery?

In the sake of Von Trier's Nymphomania, it is a film that tries to look at the ethical nature of sexual compulsion in the same vein as Steve McQueen's Shame or Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, yet manages to leave you squirming and turning away from images that make the film anything but sexy. Von Trier's perspective is a heavy handed mix of Freud and Kinsey mixed with a blend of earthy, yet uncomfortable, scenes that are reminiscent of Pasolini. The film is unforgettable, but only from when it is being seen at face value. In terms of the story, it is a feeble attempt of being philosophical as Terrence Malick and overly pretentious as if Von Trier was trying to remake I Am Curious (Yellow).

The Grand Budapest Hotel

3 1/2 out of 4 Stars

In his seventh film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson examines the unconditional need to capture the past with grace and elegance in the face of terror and bewilderment. The result, a delectable and lighthearted journey that secures Anderson's position as one of the great comedic and heartfelt filmmakers in recent memory. His impeccable obsession with detail mixed with the quirkiness of his protagonists is a pleasure to devour with your eyes and ears.

Set in the non-existent European country of Zubrowka, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) is the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel; a charming man with a penchant for perfume, poetry, and pleasuring the elderly women that stay at the hotel. While running the hotel, Gustave mentors Zero (Tony Revolori), a beloved lobby boy who is taken under Gustave's heavily-perfumed wing. After one of his flames, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), dies of a mysterious death, Gustave is named in her will as the owner of her most priceless painting, much to the dismay of her hotheaded son, Dimitri (A hilarious Adrien Brody), and his henchman (A chilling Willem Dafoe). As a result to Gustave's good fortune, murder, adventure, and romance ensue in the tradition of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion and Robert Altman's Gosford Park, yet through the kelidoscopic eyes of Wes Anderson.

Charming and funny, Ralph Fiennes gives a stellar performance as the regimented, yet flawed, Gustave. Tony Revolori is unforgettable as the loyal Zero; it would be hard to imagine not seeing Revolori resurface in another Anderson picture, or indeed, in whatever comes his way next. The rest of the cast, which consist of Anderson's regular actors, add to the fun and warmhearted adventure. Based on the writings of Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig, Anderson and Hugo Guinness have crafted a story that fits the mold of Anderson's previous stories about father-son relationships, yet with the intoxicating images of Anna Pinnock's set designs of the hotel and shot with the sharply focused eyes of Anderson's long-time cinematographer, Robert Yeoman.

As repetitious as my praise for The Grand Budapest Hotel is, the only quote I can think up to sum up the experience comes from the immortal lyrics of the Eagles, "You can check out anytime you like, but just can never leave."

Alain Resnais 1922-2014

Alain Resnais, one of most thought-provoking filmmakers of last sixty years, died at the age of 91. Resnais, along with fellow filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, formed the vanguard of Cinema Verite which led to a string of films that broke down the conventional styles of studio filmmaking and lit the torch for a new generation of filmmakers to carry by disregarding the norms and status quo of what should be filmed versus what can be filmed. With 50 films to his credit, Resnais crafted some of the most time worthy gems in postmodern cinema, ranging from his harrowing look at the deserted concentration camps of World War II in Night and Fog to the politically conscious views of warfare in Hiroshima, Mon Amour and The War is Over.

If there was one film that cemented his career as being regarded as one of the most inspirational and revered filmmakers of his generation, it would be his surreal 1961 epic, Last Year at Marienbad. His tale of love lost and gained within the confines of a majestic hotel became, arguably, the source of inspiration for many filmmakers that succeeded him. It would be hard to imagine Stanley Kubrick to film The Shining without looking at Last Year at Marienbad and it's subtext involving memory and déjà vu. The same thing can be said for Lars Von Trier's Melancholia and it's opening sequences resembling the shadowed topiary from Resnais' masterpiece.

Resnais had an unflinching eye that would set the standard for other filmmakers to emulate. Actor/director Jean Claude Biette said that both Night and Fog and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom were films to be shown to "anyone interested in civics." Years before shocking periods of our time, like the Holocaust or slavery, were presented on film, Resnais was the first to film Night and Fog, a thirty minute documentary about the horrors that occurred at Auschwitz and Majdanek. When I was teaching summer film courses in New Hampshire, this was one of the films that I showed to my students and, suffice to say, it is emotionally draining and still packs a powerful punch about the horrors of World War II in the same sense that Hearts and Minds was an eye-opening documentary about the Vietnam War.

Resnais once said, "Luck, I never looked to make difficult films on purpose. You make the films you can make." For Resnais, he succeeded in making the films he wanted to make and as he is physically gone from this life, his films and philosophy on filmmaking live on for the next wave of curious visionaries struggling to make the films they can make.

Harold Ramis 1944-2014

Harold Ramis, one of the definitive comedic writers and directors of the last 40 years, died on Monday at the age of 69. The Chicago native started his career in comedy when he became a joke editor and reviewer for Playboy magazine in the early-Seventies. Like the Cambridge Footlights Review in England did to shape the career of Monty Python's Flying Circus, it was at Chicago's Second City Improv that Ramis fell into the band of comedic icons like Bill Murray, John Belushi and Gilda Radner leading him to excel his comedic talents on stage and at the typewriter when he became head writer of Canada's version of Saturday Night Live, SCTV.

In 1978, Ramis began a long and fruitful collaboration with director/producer Ivan Reitman writing the screenplays for Animal House (which Reitman produced), Meatballs, Stripes, and Ghostbusters, in which Ramis starred in the latter two films opposite Second City alum, Bill Murray. In 1980, Ramis made his directorial debut by helping one of the great comedies of the last thirty years, Caddyshack. The success of Ramis' goofball golfing film led him to direct a slew of other comedy hits like National Lampoon's Vacation, Groundhog Day and Analyze This. While not behind he camera, Ramis made cameo appearances in films such as As Good As It Gets, Knocked Up, and Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story. In the last few years of his life, Ramis directed several episodes of NBC's hit comedy series, The Office.

Ramis will be remembered by his collective achievements in film and television whether it be his nerdy presence as Dr. Eagon Spengler in Ghostbusters, or coming up with gag after gag on some of the most celebrated comedies of the last four decades. Ramis set a standard that many other comedic writers and directors have strived to live up to, such as Seth Rogan, Evan Goldberg and Judd Apatow. I would be hard pressed to believe that no one would think of a Baby Ruth bar floating in a swimming pool or Robert De Niro confiding his fears on the couch opposite Billy Crystal and not think of Harold Ramis.

Long Live Film

It's 8:30 in the morning and I'm holding back my yawns since I've been up since 4:30. I'm wearing a jean jacket and tie-dye shirt my parents gave me for Christmas as I browse the shelves in a local bookstore once, twice, three times until...."Cut!" The director walks over to the leading actor and goes over the next line of dialogue while the cinematographer is positioning the camera in the right position and making sure the lighting is just right. As for me, I'm still browsing through the books as if the camera was still rolling until the director tells me I can take a break.

My first day as an extra; it may seem like nothing since I had no dialogue, I wasn't hobnobbing with any major actors, and I wasn't looking at the camera waiting for Mr. DeMille to give me my close up, but it was an eye-opening experience as a film critic feeling the pulse of the ever beating heart that is film. I mention my minor venture on the set of an undisclosed film because in the last few weeks, I have heard nothing but the end of film.

As broad as a statement as it has been by several members of the film industry, such as those at the Technical Awards ceremonies in the past month, which have honored the technological and scientific achievements in film, the medium is still thriving yet polarized by those who hold a high regard to celluloid versus digital film. Richard Edlund stated to the Hollywood Reporter that "this year may be the last full year that the movie labs are going to be running."  Sure, it might be an end to celluloid as the definitive object for filmmaking versus the abundant use of digital cameras, but let's not think that the filmmaking process is dead. If anything, film is more alive as it has been at the ripe age of 136 since Edweared Muybridge shot "A Horse in Motion." If we're talking about film as an object, it is fading, but as a collective partnership between people with ideas and stories being recorded for all to see, then it continues to grow.

When the director told me to take a break, I pushed myself back into the corner of the store where the film was being shot and watched the monitor as the director pressed forward along with the rest of the crew as they managed to get the film done and my heart expanded as my eyes did by watching great art being made. I felt the same sense of joy and wonder as Cameron Crowe did when he went on tour with Led Zeppelin as a young reporter for Rolling Stone or Norman Mailer watching Muhammad Ali defeat George Forman by the side of the ring. It's not enough to just sit and watch a film as it is to watching the process of a film being made, which is something very special. As the wheels of technology, such as life, keep spinning, so does the process of filmmaking.

Philip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014

Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the defining actors of his generation, was found dead today in his Greenwich Village apartment of an apparent drug overdose, according to law enforcement officials. Born in Fairpoint, New York, Hoffman had a deep infatuation with the theatrics since he was in high school and attended the Tisch School of the Arts, for which he earned a B.F.A. in Drama. His film career began with the small, but memorable roles, in Leap of Faith and Scent of a Woman. While not playing supporting roles in big budget films, he was walking the planks as an off-broadway actor.

In the mid-Nineties, his friendship with a budding writer-director, Paul Thomas Anderson, blossomed into one of the most fruitful collaborations between actor and director in recent memory. Hoffman gained wide acclaim in 1997 as a gay sound engineer for porn films in the modern classic, Boogie Nights and as the caretaker to a dying Jason Robards and the ensemble drama Magnolia. In Punch-Drunk Love, he went head to head with Adam Sandler as a sleazy mattress salesman. His last collaboration with Anderson occurred in 2012 when he played the flamboyant cult leader, Lancaster Dodd, in The Master.

Hoffman was no actor to be thought of as typecast as his roles spanned the spectrum from playing a sexual deviant in Todd Solondz's Happiness to Lester Bangs in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. In 2005, Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote in Capote earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor as he channelled the iconic writer and his struggle in completing his novel, In Cold Blood. Aside from his only Oscar win, Hoffman was nominated three more times for his performances in Mike Nichols' cold-war satire, Charlie Wilson's War, John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, and in Paul  Thomas Anderson's The Master. In 2010, Hoffman made his directorial debut with the independent romantic comedy, Jack Goes Boating.

In the past year, Hoffman has made critically acclaimed performances on Broadway as Willy Lohman    in Death of A Salesman and in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. In a recent news announcement on IMDB.Com, he signed Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal to star in his second film as a director,  Ezekiel. Sadly, his death struck a blow to the world of film and theatre. He is survived by his three children and his girlfriend, Mimi O' Donnell.

Suffice to say, it's been a tragic year in terms of losing some of the most influential actors of our time, such as Peter O' Toole and Maximilian Schell. Philip Seymour Hoffman was not only one of my favorite actors, but one of the defining actors of my generation as Brando was for his generation or Olivier was for his. Hoffman's ability to immerse himself into a role and delivering such iconic performances will not be forgotten.

The Wolf of Wall Street

4 out of 4 Stars

In 1987, the phrase “Greed is good” epitomized the environment of Wall Street. In his new film, The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese stretches out Gorden Gekko’s infamous line into a three hour tale of sex, drugs, and hedonism that is shameless, corrupt, and brilliant. Based on his bestselling memoir of the same name, Jordon Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) started off his career on Wall Street at the age of 22 until Black Monday pulled the rug out of any investor and stock broker in the country, that is until he decides to sell penny stock at rake in fifty percent commission on his sales to any clueless investor on the phone. Soon enough, he creates the infamous Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm which is nothing more than a playground of excess for any horny businessman in suspenders and two-thousand dollar suits. As Belfort’s dealings in fraud and a laundry list of SEC violations soar, so does his addiction to living life in a manner in which Caligula would approve of until he falls fast like Icarus getting too close to the sun.

As with any Scorsese film, there are antiheroes, but not in Wolf Of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio’s unsympathetic portrayal of Belfort is wild and edgy from being given oral sex in his Lamborghini to having a candle being shoved up where the sun doesn’t shine by a hooker (and that’s just in the first hour of the film). When he’s giving his pep talks to his fellow brokers, he channels the clenched teeth of Kirk Douglas in Spartacus to Al Pacino’s profanity-laced roars from Any Given Sunday. DiCaprio is surprisingly funny when he spends a solid three minutes trying to crawl into his car as soon as he takes high doses of Quaaludes. Jordan Belfort, he has no moral compass and DiCaprio brings the worse out in him leading to one of his best performances  in his long-established career of playing rebels and antiheroes in the last four films he collaborated on with Scorsese.

Jonah Hill gives an unforgettable performance as Belfort’s right-hand man, Donnie Azoff, a Quaalude-popping, goldfish swallowing degenerate with a set of teeth as pure white as the mountains of cocaine consumed in the movie. Hill goes from Superbad to “Super-badass” giving a performance that fits in with the comedic roles he portrayed in Judd Apatow’s films in the past with the raw intensity that only Scorsese can capture on film. The chemistry between Hill and DiCaprio can easily be comparable to Joe Pesci and Robert Di Niro, except Pesci and Di Niro never smoked crack together or performed CPR during a drug trip. Australian-born Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Jordan’s ex-model second wife is full of zest as she goes along for the turbulent ride of being Joardan’s wife. Her femme-fetale persona is ironic given the fact that she seems to be the only sane one in this three-ring circus of sex, drugs, and greed.

The expansive cast includes a stellar 10 minutes of Matthew McConaughey as a Wall Street veteran giving a young Jordan Belfort the methods leading to his madness over martinis and cocaine. Jean Dujardin, who won the Oscar for his silent performance in The Artist two years earlier, oozes with charm and shiftiness as a Swiss banker that comes into Jordan’s life. The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal is outstanding as Brad, one of Jordan’s Long Island goons and the muscle for Stratton Oakmont. Rounding up the cast is a series of great cameos from directors; Rob Reiner as Jordan’s hotheaded father, Jon Favreau as Jordan’s eyes and ears on Wall Street and the SEC, and Spike Jonze as a hapless penny stock broker working out of a strip mall.      

Scorsese’s passion for music blending into the story is irresistible, such as the case for enlisting his old musical buddy Robbie Robertson and Wes Anderson’s musical supervisor Randal Poster to pick and choose a wide and wild selection of music for Scorsese’s corrupt interpretation of the mean streets of Fifth Avenue. The excess and euphoria of the brokers at Stratton Oakmont is complimented by the diverse sounds of Howlin’ Wolf, Cypress Hill, and Billy Joel. In addition to the selected music is the infamous chant Matthew McConaughey gives that becomes a musical war cry for any stock broker about to rob anyone blind.

The film has stirred controversy for Scorsese’s hedonistic portrayal of life on Wall Street, however almost all of his films hit a nerve at holding a mirror up to society and the rise and fall of opportunists, even with a dark comedy such as The Wolf of Wall Street. For example, one secretary shaves her head for ten thousand dollars while Jordan and his wife have sex on a pile of money. The satirical elements of Wall Street are as comedic as the heads of state fighting in the War Room in Dr. Strangelove. If anything, The Wolf of Wall Street is a Fellini-esque look at modern day America and the pursuit for the most addicting drug known to man: Money.