They Ain't Nothin' But Two Hound-dogs

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason on 'Elvis & Nixon.'

We get a "Thank you, thank you very much" fairly early into Elvis & Nixon, the new comic bio-pic detailing that legendarily bizarre photograph of the musician and the politician shaking hands in 1970, and that tips the movie's hat toward its will to please - this is a genial little thing, a bejeweled trifle, that leaves these two men's storm-clouds mostly off-screen at the horizon, opting instead for a light-hearted clash of Fame and Power and the Great Men who wield either/or. At times the Jack Benny score wouldn't feel out of place.

Not that not taking itself overly serious is a demerit by any means - Michael Shannon is The King of taking himself awfully seriously, so it's a relief to see him relax here under a different crown. He never really looks the part, but then everybody looks the part enough when you slap enough Presley paraphernalia on them (there's a wry little scene where Elvis meets an Elvis impersonator at the airport that messes with these notions of identity and self) - so Shannon under-plays and amuses through that under-play, allowing everybody around him to fill in the gaps. His Elvis is one who knows what a change in temperature his very presence causes upon entering a room, so why work so hard? Everybody will remember what they remember, regardless of what he does or doesn't do.

Kevin Spacey too tries to turn Tricky Dick into a goof, but that's a taller order (Dan Hedaya did the best job I've seen in the movie Dick, by leaning hard into Nixon's oversized assholishness) and he's given less to work with than Shannon - the film's clearly more interested in its Graceland cast of characters then the White House suits; unless I'm forgetting something I don't think we ever see Spacey outside of the Oval Office? 

Anyway once the fateful meeting finally comes to pass, the movie screeches to a halt in the best sense - indeed I think it would've been a better movie had it found a way to slow time to such a standstill that it extended these scenes out for even more of its run-time. We never much care about anything else that the script tries to make us care about, but there's real burning love between its two main attractions.

Grade: B-

Tribeca: Everybody Knows...Elizabeth Murray. (Including Meryl Streep)

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Manuel on 'Everybody Knows...Elizabeth Murray.'

There are many things to love about Everybody Knows...Elizabeth Murray, Kristi Zea's documentary on the iconoclastic visual artist: its impassioned chronicle of sexism in the upper echelons of the art establishment which long kept Murray out of the big leagues in the art world; its playful visual aesthetic which both borrows and reflects Murray's own, turning the screen into a malleable canvas; its understanding of space as mirror and echo of Murray’s personality (unsurprising given Zea’s Oscar-nominated work as a production designer); and then, of course, there's Meryl Streep's narration of the artist’s journals.

Murray died in 2007 of lung cancer and Zea had clearly begun working on this project before she passed: we get to see her talk about her long career as well as working on what would become her last piece, "Everybody Knows," which gives the film its title. But Zea recruited the Oscar perennial to bring to life the private and intimate musings of the artist. Much has been made of Meryl's uncanny ability to mimic accents and dialects, but listen closely and you'll note that her most lived-in (and even her most forgettable) performances rely on the candor of her voice. Think of the sibilant esses in Devil Wears Prada, or the shrill pitchy timbre in Death Becomes Her. In Zea's film she plunges us further into Murray's headspace with a well-placed suppressed giggle or an intentionally accidental pause. It almost becomes Murray’s final artistic collaboration, a fitting one for someone who broke glass ceilings and bore her feminism proudly.

Grade: B+

Review: A Hologram for the King

Eric here, with a review of the new Tom Tykwer film in theaters, A Hologram for the King, an adaptation of the best seller by Dave Eggers. It's the tale of a desperate American businessman near the end of his professional rope, who travels to Saudi Arabia to sell a holographic teleconference system to the king. 

While Tom Hanks isn’t at the peak of his popularity these days, he remains one of the biggest movie stars alive.  So it may feel surprising that this film is being released with very little publicity, dumped rather unceremoniously in “arthouse” cinemas...

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Viggo Mortensen: Still here, still fantastic

Our celebration of Actors this month continues with Lynn Lee on Viggo

Is Viggo Mortensen the most interesting man in the world?  Based on his peripatetic history and eclectic interests, he’s certainly a contender.  In addition to acting, he’s a prolific painter, photographer, composer, and poet who founded his own publishing house.  A dual American and Danish citizen who spent his early childhood in South America and Denmark before returning to his native New York, he speaks multiple languages, with greatest fluency in English, Spanish, and Danish.  Oh, and his ex-wife is punk singer Exene Cervenko, with whom he has a son. 

As my husband put it, “Viggo Mortensen is who James Franco wishes he was.”

I can’t speak to the artistic merits of Viggo’s off-screen pursuits, but I do see him as a kind of anti-Franco in keeping them largely off the public radar.  And while he’s clearly driven by a need to express himself via many outlets, he still exudes a sense of some private, fundamentally unknowable core self.  It permeates his screen presence, too, and is part of what makes him so intriguing as an actor.  (Well, that plus the rugged Scandinavian good looks and dimpled chin don't hurt, either.)  More...

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The Huntsman: Winter's War

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...

The Huntsman: Winter’s War, now playing, promises a “new” fairy tale. That’s true only if you’re willing to stretch the definition of the word. This “new” and awkwardly titled picture is both prequel and sequel to Snow White with some Frozen fan fiction in the middle. It begins long before the events of the revisionist Snow White & The Huntsman (2012) and eventually skips ahead to pick up where the last movie left off. In case you’ve forgotten your blockbuster history — spoiler alert! — Snow White and her Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) triumphed at the end by killing the true twin stars of the picture: Queen Ravenna and Her Oscar Nominated Costumes (a.k.a. former Oscar winners Charlize Theron & Colleen Atwood).

Dead though Ravenna was, when there is money to be made in franchise resurrection, nobody stays buried. In the new film we learn that the royal witch came to power alongside her kind loving sister Freya (Emily Blunt). After an unspeakable tragedy, though, Freya also became evil. Ravenna had that Magic Mirror to inspire her wickedness but Freya opts for a worn Blu-ray of Frozen as unholy talisman...

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