In the film Nebraska (2013), it is driven home to David Grant (Will Forte) that two people he is expected to love—and must love—have always had feet of clay:  his elderly parents.  No, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) and his scrappy wife (June Squibb) are not like such nice elderly people in the film as Peg Bender and the Westendorfs.  David decides to spend time with Woody by taking a road trip with him which lacks an actual goal (the goal is imaginary; Woody thinks he has won a million dollars from an outfit in Lincoln, Nebraska).  What a confused old man anticipates will not be coming to pass, but it is a positive occurrence when David is charitable to his father by buying him a truck and permitting him to retain his dignity in the town where Woody grew up.

I found the movie, directed by Alexander Payne, technically impeccable.  There is nothing wrong with how it was shot, full of nifty medium shots and cutting, and this even includes the screen “wipes” for scene transitions.  Though photographed in monochrome, Nebraska sometimes has a Five Easy Pieces flavor, and a fairly well written screenplay by Bob Nelson.  Not the best from Payne (Sideways, The Descendants) but still a success.

Cover of Red (Three Colors Trilogy)

Cover of White (Three Colors Trilogy)

Cover of Blue (Three Colors Trilogy)

The late Krzysztof Kieslowski of Poland directed and co-wrote in the early Nineties a film trilogy named after the three colors of the French flag—blue, white and red—which was intended to express something about the virtue-ideals represented by those colors.

Blue, dealing with liberty, was so atrocious I can’t believe any critic could like it, but of course there were critics who did; and if they liked that, they would most certainly like White, concerned with equality, which was better.  The only thing I liked about White was some of its humor; all else was ridiculous.  That a loser of a husband wants to show his thoughtless ex-wife that he can achieve equality of a kind with other men was a good premise, but how fatuously and awkwardly it was presented.

Slightly more pleasing, but still not acceptable, was Red, about the nicest virtue-ideal of them all: fraternity.  Regarding this one, I can at least say there is more than just one quality about it I like, but it is hardly cheering to see customary absurdity in plotting.  Red is even more effectively filmed than, and just as nonsensical as, White.

In what lies the fraternity?  Here is what I enjoy most about Red:  it lies in a friendship between a 20-odd-year-old female model and a 60-odd-year-old retired male judge, which friendship is just that—a friendship—there is nothing sexual about it.  They simply take an interest in one another, and rightly so from a cosmic perspective.  The model, you see, is destined to hook up with a man who thoroughly resembles the judge when he was young, but this is the film’s biggest groaner.  Last I checked, life doesn’t work like that.

With his dignified face and quiet manner, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the judge, and with her friendly face and mature-young-lady manner, Irene Jacob plays the model; both are palatable.  So is Kieslowski’s supple direction.  His scripts did a disservice to his moviemaking.

Sky High (2005 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Re Sky High (2005):

The teen son of a world-saving husband and wife not unlike the animated couple in The Incredibles begins attending a secondary school for kids with superhuman powers.  There, the enrollees are assigned the place of either hero or sidekick depending on the utilitarian value of their power; hence an unfortunate caste system exists.

The couple’s son, Will, discovers that his power is the same as his dad’s—extraordinary physical strength—certifiably not a sidekick gift.  It is a hero’s, even though modest Will has made friends with sidekicks.  In fact, his best friend, hippy girl Layla, is a sidekick by choice.  Layla has a mighty crush on Will, who, however, has the hots only for toothsome Gwen, another hero.  He obtains a foe in a truculent firestarter hero named Warren because Will’s father put Warren’s father, a scoundrel, behind bars.  Fire Boy eventually wises up, however, and other anti-Will enemies take his place.

Sky High is neither great nor perfect pop cinema.  It’s merely terrific.  The story’s not quite a groaner, and it coheres.  There is something fey about the movie, and it’s wildly goofy.  Warren’s full name is Warren Peace!  All a shape-shaping girl can change herself into is a guinea pig!  And on and on.  The teenagers often remind me of teenagers one meets at church; I like them.  Michael Angarano plays Will with comic appeal, and he and his young co-performers outact Kelly Preston (as Will’s mom).  Kurt Russell cartoonishly convinces as Will’s dad.  Both the pretty Danielle Panabaker (Layla) and the very pretty Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Gwen) fill the bill, with the very pretty girl getting the harder role.  The good director is Mike Mitchell.

Cover of Medium Cool

In the 1969 picture, Medium Cool, Robert Forster skillfully purveys a TV photographer’s calm extroversion and no-nonsense defiance.  He is true, and Peter Bonerz, as the sound man, is even truer.  Verna Bloom (as Forster’s love interest) does everything possible to create a complex character, and shines with authenticity and poise.

There.  I comment on the acting because, seemingly, far less has been opined about it than about everything else in this Haskell Wexler film.  Highly topical in ’69, it is partly about social agitation and, especially, violence in what used to be present-day America.  Its flaws have been well explained by critics like William Pechter, which flaws, I believe, sink Medium Cool.  Though very imaginative, it’s a New Lefty political film which goes almost completely awry.

It is set in Chicago, indeed the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.  Talk about violence.  Consider today’s violence in Chicago, New Lefties.  Murder on top of murder.

Cover of Elf (Infinifilm Edition)

Plenty of belly laughs are to be had from Jon Favreau‘s Elf (2003), but this holiday picture is not very smoothly and sensibly scripted.  Favreau proves he can direct comedy, and Will Ferrell is nothing less than marvelous as an oversized elf . . . er, I mean a human raised by elves and who believes himself to be an elf.  The chap’s unceasing childlikeness, though, began to wear on me, and that’s only the beginning of problems.  Today’s Hollywood is poor at concocting comic stories, not even as adept as the inadequate Neil Simon.  Elf is still worth seeing, but inspires hope no more than it does Christmas cheer.

And another thing:  it’s a sad day when a scriptwriter (in this case, David Berenbaum) does not know that the ungrammatical phrase, “less and less people believe in Santa Claus” ought to be rendered “fewer and fewer people believe in Santa Claus.”