“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Those words, first issued on an evening in October, 1975, by an unknown Chevy Chase are dramatized in Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night. The film portrays the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the first episode of what is now known as Saturday Night Live (first called in 1975 simply “NBC’s Saturday Night”). It’s definitely a work of fiction, but much of it seems to be based on fact, even if they crammed those facts over the course of the week leading up to the show into the 90 minutes just before it went live, all in the interest of making it seem all the more amazing that it actually happened. In the movie, Lorne Michaels is trying to herd his young “not ready for primetime” counter-culture comedians while attempting to assuage the NBC brass (who don’t understand what the show is supposed to be). There’s the backstage beef between Chase and John Belushi, a reticent Garrett Morris, the always-in-character Andy Kaufmann, the wants-to-be-understood Jim Henson, and the host of the first episode, George Carlin, as well as all the rest of the cast and behind-the-scenes crew who would become household names. The actors do a great job of getting into character: when you see the actors playing Al Franken or Gilda Radner or Dan Aykroyd or Billy Crystal or Paul Shaffer, you know exactly who they are supposed to be, without an introduction. If you grew up watching SNL like me (not sure why my parents let me, even from a young age!), there’s plenty to enjoy. The movie is a mess at times, but I think that’s the point, and it is definitely entertaining. ★★★½
I watched Goodrich because I like Michael Keaton (he got great reviews for this), knowing that it probably wasn’t my cup of tea. I’m just not into straight-forward comedies all that much. I like a good laugh as much as the next person, but I tend to like movies that are dramas first, with humor thrown in. Goodrich is a comedy with drama elements thrown in. Keaton plays Andy Goodrich, a 60-year-old who is woken by a phone call one night by his (much younger, second) wife, Naomi, informing him that she didn’t come home because she checked herself into a rehab for drug addiction. Oh, and by the way, she’s leaving him. Andy is thunderstruck; everyone else seems to know she had a problem with pills, but the workaholic Andy was completely unaware. Andy didn’t just miss that, he seems to know nothing about his 9-year-old twin kids, and missed most of the life of his 36-year-old (from first wife) daughter Grace (Mila Kunis). Grace is pregnant with Andy’s first grandchild, and she’s had a lifetime of being disappointed by her invisible father. Andy is now forced to be a father for the first time in his life, even as his business is failing. There’s some great moments as Andy connects with his younger children and (finally) his older daughter as well, but most of the film is definitely a comedy. Lots of laughs, but again, not a genre I generally gravitate towards. I think it is a better film than I’m giving it credit for, just not my thing. ★★½
Mountains is a very interesting and well delivered film, taking a look at immigrants (definitely a popular subject these last couple years), but with a new spin. Xavier and his wife Esperance are from Haiti, and have been in the USA for a generation, raising their son Junior. Both parents work hard and have carved a nice life. Coming from nothing, they aren’t rich, but they own a home and were able to give their son the one thing they never had: the ability to make a choice with what he does in his life. Unfortunately from Xavier’s point of view, Junior has wasted that choice. He is fully Americanized, speaking English in the home while his parents continue to converse in Creole, and he dropped out of college and has been pursuing a career as a stand-up comic. Xavier, who slaves all day in construction (but only on the menial jobs, like hosing down demolish to keep the dust out of the air or salvaging metals or recyclable junk from piles) doesn’t understand why Junior isn’t trying to do more with the opportunities afforded him. While all this is going on, Xavier is watching his neighborhood of Little Haiti in Miami slowly creep away from him through gentrification. His fellow Haitian immigrant neighbors are being pushed out, and the demolition company he works for is starting to tear down houses right around his own, all in the name of “progress.” It’s a startling look at the diminished American Dream, and a reminder that those neighborhoods that are getting “cleaned up” inside urban cities aren’t always for the good of all. ★★★½
Only the River Flows is described as a Chinese noir murder mystery. You should focus on the Chinese part (famous for slow-paced, artsy films) and much less on the latter. Yes, there’s a killer out there, but that’s almost secondary in the telling of this story, which only gets good grades for its cool, slick look and cinematography. A police investigator, Ma Zhe, is brought into a sleepy river town after a woman is found murdered. The prime suspect is quickly pegged as a man she took into her home, known locally only as “the madman,” but Ma has questions right away. Madman seems to have a pretty solid alibi for the time of death. Before long, more people die, so it looks like we have a serial killer on the loose. Madman doesn’t have alibis for those, one of which seems to have been a suicide. I say seems to have been because by now in the movie, it starts branching into the esoteric, and I wasn’t understanding everything that was happening. Ma starts day dreaming or getting some facts wrong, and victims and killers swim in his head (and on screen) to the point that I didn’t know what was going on anymore, what was real and what wasn’t. This is a weird film in that I loved the look and feel of the movie (A+ territory in my book) but I was so lost by the end that I can’t rate it high at all. The coolness of the surrealism was the only thing that kept me going. ★★
Here was heralded (before release) as reuniting the team behind Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, as well as director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, and cinematographer Don Burgess). High bar set, so of course the film bombed when it came out. Got really bad reviews too, so I wasn’t in a rush to see it. This is one that I have to disagree with just about everyone though, because I loved this film, even though I admit it is a bit of a gimmick. The film basically “sets a camera in one spot” and doesn’t move. In fact, at the beginning, we see dinosaurs run across the screen and off into the distance. We see a quick ice age and then green foliage grow, and before you know it, the land is getting settled. Finally, a house is built, and then we get into the story. The film bounces around, from colonial times (a family member of Ben Franklin’s lived across the street) to modern times, with various residents over all those years, but the primary family whose main story we focus on is Al and his wife Rose (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly) and their son Richard (Hanks) and his wife Margaret (Wright). We see Richard born and grow up, marry Margaret, have children, watch his parents age and die, and all of those moments in life that happen in between. It isn’t told in a linear fashion, though the director does save the “end” for the very end, for the biggest emotional impact. Now, I’m a sap, and have thought before about the things “this tree has seen” or that “have happened in this old house” before, and that’s exactly what this movie is. All of the people and lives that one particular spot has seen. Events that mean nothing to anyone in the whole world except for those few who lived in that house at that time. The movie has some issues, namely that it bounces around so fast (most scenes are only 10-15 seconds long) that it can feel exhausting, especially until you get used to it, but I thought the movie was so full of emotion. Ever watch a movie that touched you so much, when it didn’t seem to do the same for anyone else? ★★★★★
- TV series recently watched: The Agency (season 1), Star Trek Next Generation (season 5)
- Book currently reading: Lolth’s Warrior by RA Salvatore
Jons Movie Takes 