BEFORE: I had to make a quick decision today, because after pointing out that there were two paths out of "Shorts" - Leslie Mann and William H. Macy - I started wondering about that other path. There's my OCD, kicking in again, it can't resist focusing on the fact that there might be another way of getting where I want to be, in a more perfect number of steps possibly. The reason I was hesitant to go ahead with the plan as I initially conceived it is that when I made the June schedule, I was SO SURE that I'd be back to work in June, that it would be no problem for me to borrow the Academy screener of "Motherless Brooklyn" and watch it for free. (Of course, I always keep notes on which films I watch for free, and then later on, when they're on premium cable, which I pay for, I burn a copy to DVD if I can, and therefore I do pay for the film eventually, just sometimes not when I first watch it.)
OK, no problem, I'll just watch the film on iTunes and then get a copy later when it's on cable. Wait, $5.99? That's a high rental for a film that's been on iTunes for a while! I guess I figured the price would drop to a $2.99 or $3.99 rental by the time I got around to watching this in mid-June. Well, it hasn't. I'll go broke if I'm paying for cable AND On Demand AND iTunes when needed. (My wife pays for Netflix and Hulu, and I'm still getting Disney Plus for free.). For that price, I might as well pay a dollar more and rent this from Spectrum on Demand for $6.99, that way I'll get a copy that I can burn to DVD and always own it, even if I never have a reason to watch it again. You see, when this film finally does appear on premium channel, it might be on one of the two premium channels that run a blocking signal that prevents me from dubbing the film to DVD (I'm not saying which ones, but they know who they are...). So why pay $5.99 to watch this on iTunes now and then possibly another $2.99 later to get a copy on DVD, when I can pay $6.99 now for On Demand and keep a copy in my library? That's a better deal, right? It's still not as good as free, but I can pay $6.99 once in a while for a rental, since I haven't paid for a movie ticket since January. I just hope this film is worth the cost now.
Anyway, I did find another way to get where I need to go, I could have avoided "Motherless Brooklyn" for now and re-scheduled it later when it became more available - but that would have involved moving "The Lincoln Lawyer" up on the schedule and away from the other McConaughey films on the list, then linking to "End of Watch" on Netflix and then re-linking back up with a flipped section of my chain to "State of Play" with Russell Crowe. Oddly, flipping around that section would have put the same exact film on Father's Day as my original plan - only it ADDS one film to my June schedule at a time when I'm trying to REMOVE one to make things fit. Then I'd have to remove TWO, and I'm not prepared to do that. So I'm sticking with the original plan, I'll find one film to drop from the June plan, and adding one more McConaughey film to the July schedule puts the films I want on Father's Day, July 4 and slot #3,600.
Sorry, William H. Macy, but sticking with the original plan means that Leslie Mann carries over from "Shorts". I've got to be flexible and open to changing the plan around, but I also have to recognize when my original plan is still the best plan, even if that costs me $6.99 once in a while.
THE PLOT: In 1950's New York, a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette's syndrome ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend.
AFTER: I remember seeing a lot of promos for this film last year, around the time of Academy qualification - they tried REALLY hard to get Academy members to see this film, hosted screenings in many cities, and it seems like it just didn't work. The film got no Oscar nominations (and only one Golden Globe nom), almost no buzz, and by now most people just plain haven't heard about it. To top it all off, it's not on any of the streaming services yet, but I hope it can find a second life on cable or streaming, because I rather enjoyed it.
It's the kind of film that they just don't make much of any more, because it's set in the 1950's, but the early 1950's, not the sock-hop, leather jacket, grease-haired people eating burgers and fries at drive-ins 1950's, but the still-affected-by-world-war, still kind of noirish and gritty, hey-what's-this-thing-called-racism 1950's. (Hang on, we're going to get there, because this ended up being somewhat pertinent to current events.). But then there are things that you usually don't see in a movie from the 1950's, and a white man having a romantic interest in a black woman is just one of them. Would you ever see a lead character from a 1950's movie with Tourette's syndrome? Probably not, because not much was known about the disease back then, and that would also mess with the concept that the hero character has to be perfect, some kind of macho ideal like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. (EDIT: believe it or not, today happens to be the last day of Tourette's Awareness Month - how about THAT for a coincidence?)
What's interesting to me is that the novel "Motherless Brooklyn" is set in the 1990's, current to when it was published. It was director Edward Norton's idea to move the setting back to the 1950's, and bring in a lot of those noir tropes, like smoky jazz clubs and fedora hats and all those classic cars... It looks like they filmed on location on NYC streets and in buildings that just haven't changed a lot since the 1950's, streets with brownstones and certain municipal buildings and the NY Public Library, there are a lot of buildings still in use that I'm sure have had renovations done over the years, but they still have the bones and the look of buildings that were designed decades ago. The one they got wrong, however, was Pennsylvania Station. Not the current one below Madison Square Garden, the one that used to take up the whole block south of the James Farley post office - you can see it in films like "Strangers on a Train". It was gorgeous, in the same architectural style you see at the JAF, which was sort of modeled after the Greek Parthenon. The old Penn Station is no longer there, because it was torn down (not updated, not remodeled, just demolished) in the 1960's, and public sentiment rose up against that, which led to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Act that we have today.
Which brings me to the big bad in this film, Moses Randolph, who's clearly modeled after William Moses, who was a real NYC city planner, though he held over a dozen different city jobs at various times. During and after the Great Depression, he basically remade the city with federal grant money, and though some of his initiatives were forward thinking and improved the city, others have fallen under scrutiny since, like that demolishing of Penn Station, and his emphasis on highways over subways, to collect more toll money, and turning poorer neighborhoods into slums so that nobody would stop him from tearing down those slums to build more highways. You want to know why we're in the mess we're in with too many cars on the road in New York? Blame Moses. On top of that, his roads took people with cars out to the wonderful Long Island beaches during the summer, but he built overpasses so that poor (black) people couldn't travel out there on buses. There's a bit here about Randolph (the thinly veiled Moses analog) building hundreds of parks and recreation facilities across the city, but only one in Harlem. We wonder now why the system is rigged against minorities having the same benefits as whites, city planning like this for decades is a major reason.
The casting of Alec Baldwin as Moses Randolph seems right in step with the type of character he's well-known and well-suited for, and by extension, since he's also known for imitating our President on SNL, it makes you wonder if there's also an indirect connection between William Moses and Donald Trump. City planners, construction moguls, NYC mayors, Presidents - they're all corrupt, right? I don't know why we think the next set is going to be any different than the last one was - these systems like construction unions, lobbyists, campaign contributors, they're all rigged, too, and they all have been for decades. At least in the 1950's maybe you knew who the shady characters were, they were the guys in hats who'd take people for a ride and rough them up or make them disappear, now the shady characters you should be watching closely are the people you voted for, giving goverment jobs and contracts to their friends and contributors.
I liked Mayor DiBlasio when he was first elected, but enough shady deals have come and gone that he's been involved with, he tends to appoint his wife as Commissioner of Whatever Social Topic is Trending This Week, which is nepotism of the highest order, even if she's qualified. As much as he hates Trump, DiBlasio is cut from the same cloth - they both appoint family members as advisors and commissioners, when any government job should go through a thorough interviewing of several candidates and an equally thorough review process, which has been overlooked, time and time again. Now he's been siding with both police and protestors, and sorry, you just can't have it both ways. Time for DiBlasio to go - though Bloomberg was the NYC mayor who passed term limit laws, and then just ignored them when he wanted to serve a third term. Also corrupt, for sure.
The movie that "Motherless Brooklyn" really reminded me of was "Chinatown". And that film was set in the late 1930's, but the story really reflected the politics of the year it was released, 1974. In a very similar way (though the city in question is different, New York instead of L.A.) "Motherless Brooklyn" is set in the 1950's, but we see that decade through the lens of today. We know that an elected official depicted is most likely corrupt, and the people who are in charge of things like city planning, the electrical grid, and lawmakers are the ones that hold true power. Or, rather, the people who secretly CONTROL those people who APPEAR to be in charge are the ones with the true power.
I'm going to read up now on the differences between the movie and the source novel, but since this was a box-office bomb, it scarcely matters. BUT if they could only re-brand this film and play up the racial angle (I saw that Netflix added a new playlist for "black voices", that's one way to take advantage of America's current racial turmoil...) someone could have a sleeper hit on their hands when they finally release this film on streaming platforms.
I enjoyed it, however, I'm glad I paid the $6.99 to include it in my chain - and the main critical knock against it in the court of public opinion seems to be "they were trying too hard." I agree up to a point, especially when you consider how hard the film's publicists were trying to get nominations - but in the filmMAKING process, I don't think trying too hard should be held against it. So I'm bumping up my score to make up for the haters, with their very weak arguments against "Motherless Brooklyn". Umm, now, remind me, who was the murderer again?
Also starring Edward Norton (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (last seen in "The Cloverfield Paradox"), Alec Baldwin (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The House that Jack Built"), Bobby Cannavale (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Cherry Jones (last seen in "Wine Country"), Michael K. Williams (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Ethan Suplee (last seen in "Brothers"), Dallas Roberts (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Josh Pais (last seen in "Joker"), Robert Wisdom (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Fisher Stevens (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Peter Gray Lewis (last seen in "Untraceable"), Eric Berryman (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Nelson Avidon (last seen in "Keeping the Faith"), Joseph Siravo (last seen in "The Report"), DeShawn White, Migs Govea (last seen in "Ocean's 8"), Erica Sweany, Deborah Unger.
RATING: 7 out of 10 press passes
No comments:
Post a Comment