Between the Temples: Insufferable direction sabotages a sweet story

Between the Temples (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and explicit sexual references

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

A tender, poignant love story is all but obliterated by the relentless barrage of stylistic tics and hiccups courtesy of director Nathan Silver, who — at times — has made his little film just this side of unwatchable.

 

When Carla (Carol Kane) has trouble properly pronouncing many of the Hebrew terms
in the bat mitzvah ceremony, Ben (Jason Schwartzman) helps by "playing" them
on a guitar.

Although the setting is modern-day upstate New York, the style is a throwback to 1960s cinema verité: grainy, 16mm film stock; claustrophobic settings, and a roving camera that follows the actors as if they were characters in a stage play; and Robert Altman-esque overlapping dialogue, which — because of the low budget and poor sound quality — often makes it damn difficult to understand what people are saying.

Worse yet, Silver and cinematographer Sean Price Williams favor tight-tight-tight close-ups to an ludicrous degree. I mean, seriously: Do we really need to zoom in on a woman’s mouth, as she eats some crackers? Along with an endless array of shots that show only portions of a given person’s face?

 

If all this clutter serves some artistic or symbolic purpose, it eludes me.

 

Jason Schwartzman stars as Ben Gottlieb, a small-town cantor at the local synagogue. He has lost his “bliss” following the tragic and untimely death of his wife, Ruth, a year earlier. Since then, he has been unable to sing ... and a synagogue cantor who can’t sing, is about as useless as the proverbial screen door on a submarine.

 

His two mothers, in an effort to bring him out of his funk — the doting, sympathetic Meira (Caroline Aaron) and overly stern and critical Judith (Dolly De Leon) — try to “solve” the problem by setting Ben up with an endless stream of inappropriate, sneak-attack blind dates.

 

The one we meet, as this film begins, is over-the-top bizarre in a manner that may have intended to be humorous, but Silver and co-scripter C. Mason Wells exaggerated her to the point of absurdity. Or maybe the actress in question improvised her brief scene. Either way, this prologue is so Out There, that it may prompt viewers to flee the theater.

 

Aaron’s Meira is the model mother: patient, sensitive to others, and always ready with a kind word. In great contrast, De Leon plays Judith as an cold-hearted, judgmental control freak ... which is ironic, since she and Meira likely faced their share of intolerance, during the early days of their relationship. It’s hard to think kindly of Judith.

Asteroid City: A heaping helping of peculiar

Asteroid City (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for suggestive material and fleeting nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.7.23

Calling filmmaker Wes Anderson “eccentric” is like saying the Pope is slightly Catholic. The word doesn’t begin to convey the vast scope of Anderson’s outré sensibilities.

 

The motel manager (Steve Carell, left) is distracted by another atomic bomb test,
when J.J. Kellogg (Liev Schreiber, right) and his son Clifford (Aristou Meehan) arrive
in Asteroid City.

As one would expect, the results have been mixed. ranging from dazzling hits (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox) to, shall we say, lesser efforts (The Darjeeling Limited, The French Dispatch).

But Anderson — a true artiste — remains undaunted, which is just fine; even his bizarre films are interesting … and everything he does is visually fascinating.

 

That’s certainly the case with Asteroid City, which is a dazzling display of architectural whimsy by Anderson, production designer Adam Stockhausen, and the art direction team headed by Stéphane Cressend. I mean, like wow; you’ve never seen so many pastels. They’ve gotta be Oscar-nominated.

 

Whether this colorful setting is supported by an equally compelling story … is another matter. Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola’s script is, ah, really Out There.

 

The film begins in standard-ratio black and white, as a host (Bryan Cranston) presents the back-story to the newest production by celebrated playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). We subsequently become the “audience,” as a huge cast of actors present the play in three acts (plus an epilogue). These dominant portions of the film are in stylized wide-screen pastels, sumptuously staged by cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman.

 

The actors occasionally break character in between scenes, which adds yet another (often confusing) layer to the story-within-a-story.

 

The year is 1955, the setting Asteroid City, a dot-on-the-map desert community — population 87 — in the American Southwest. The enclave includes a luncheonette, a gas station, a phone booth, an unfinished highway ramp, and a motel comprising a dozen or so cute little bungalows.

 

The city is named for its regional monument: a massive crater created by the grapefruit-size Arid Plains Meteorite, also on display. Small radio telescopes and an observatory can be seen not far away.

 

The occasion is Asteroid Day, a celebration which has gathered five junior scientists and their families; master of ceremonies Gen. Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) acknowledges each teen’s fabulous invention with an award, followed by the presentation of the annual Hickenlooper Scholarship to one of the quintet.

 

Klaus: No coal in this stocking!

Klaus (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.24.20

The holidays are weeks behind us, but — thanks to the recently announced Academy Award nominations — a little slice of Christmas warrants renewed attention.

Having failed in every effort to make a go of his forlornly empty local Post Office,
Jesper shares his woes with tiny Margú, who listens attentively ... despite not
understanding a single word.

Klaus garnered very limited theatrical release for a heartbeat in early November, just long enough to qualify for its well-deserved Oscar nomination; availability since then has been solely via Netflix, which certainly picked the right project for its debut animated feature film. Co-directors Sergio Pablos and Carlos Martínez López have delivered a marvelous seasonal bonbon that’s equal parts charming, snarky, sentimental and — ultimately — powerfully heartwarming.

Several earlier films — many of them not very good — have contemplated the origin of Santa Claus. (1985’s Santa Claus: The Movie is a particularly notorious stinker.) The approach generally involves a good-hearted fellow who enthusiastically accepts this noble responsibility; some films also acknowledge references to the fourth-century Greek Christian bishop now known as Saint Nicholas.

Pablos — assisted by co-writers Jim Mahoney and Zach Lewis — has taken an entirely different tack.

Postmaster General Johansen (voiced with regal bearing by Sam McMurray) has devoted his life to the service; he’s therefore dismayed that his ne’er-do-well son, Jesper (Jason Schwartzman), has distinguished himself as the Postal Academy’s worst student. Angered beyond words, Dad banishes Jesper to the frozen island of Smeerensburg, miles above the Arctic Circle.

The lad is given one year to deliver at least 6,000 letters, or he’ll be stuck there forever.

Saving Mr. Banks: Deplorably heartless

Saving Mr. Banks (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, and needlessly, for "unsettling images"
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.20.13

Pamela Lyndon Travers published Mary Poppins in 1934, and quickly followed it with Mary Poppins Comes Back. Shortly before the series’ third book arrived, she was approached by Walt Disney and his older brother, Roy, about bringing her character to the big screen.

As screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) sinks ever further into his chair,
P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) painstakingly nitpicks the proposed script for
Mary Poppins, questioning increasingly inane details such as the placement of
punctuation marks.

She declined.

Walt, never one to surrender easily, persisted. Indeed, he persisted for roughly two decades, at which point a crack appeared in Travers’ armor.

Director John Lee Hancock’s rather unusual film, Saving Mr. Banks, suggests that financial necessity drove Travers to contemplate Disney’s offer. This seems a reasonable assumption; Travers’ literary output inexplicably stopped in 1953, shortly after the series’ fourth entry, Mary Poppins in the Park. (Travers also wrote other books in between.)

Scripters Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith had at least four biographies from which to fashion their narrative, along with a 2002 Australian television documentary (The Shadow of Mary Poppins) and the voluminous recordings and internal documents made during Travers’ two-week visit to the Disney Studios, in the spring of 1961. We therefore can assume reasonable historical accuracy, although — this being a Disney production — the portrait can’t help being shaded in favor of Uncle Walt.

All that said, unknowing viewers are likely to be quite surprised by this film, and perhaps not in a good way. Everybody will bring iconic memories of the cheery 1964 musical, with its effervescent songs and marvelous star turns by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Hancock’s film, in great contrast, is a serious downer: frequently depressing and, ultimately, unforgivably mean-spirited.

Emma Thompson is a precise, highly skilled performer who never wastes a word or gesture, and her take on Travers brings new meaning to the word “shrew.” The author depicted here is arrogant, boorish, condescending and hyper-critical to a degree that suggests mental illness. She demands polite behavior from others but gives none in return. One searches in vain for kindness.

This film’s split narrative — the other half taking place during a crucial year of Travers’ childhood, in rural Australia in 1906 — offers ample reason for the impregnable, emotionally withdrawn shell she’d construct, as an adult; it’s a saga of great sorrow, and we grieve for this little girl, played to apple-cheeked perfection by young Annie Rose Buckley.