grief – We Are Movie Geeks

THE FRIEND – Review

Bill Murray and Naomi Watts star as best friends in THE FRIEND, a comedy-drama about a friend leaving his beloved pet, a Great Dane named Apollo, to his best friend. The friend didn’t let the bestie know about this plan, leaving the friend both grieving and trying to find a place for a dog that is not allowed in her no-pets apartment.

There even seems some doubt about whether that was really ever said out loud. But it is what the friend’s second ex-wife, who has the dog now, tells her he wanted. Naomi Watts plays Iris, the friend who is left the dog when her best friend Walter (Bill Murray) suddenly dies.

This smart, human comedy/drama is set in New York among writers, academics and literary types but it finds common ground with anyone who has lost a friend and maybe had to address the question of what to do with a pet left behind.

Naomi Watts and Bill Murray gives excellent, warm and funny performances as these two friends. THE FRIEND is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Sigrid Nunez. It is skillfully directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who also adapted the novel for the screen. The film also has a wonderful role for Ann Dowd, who plays Iris’ neighbor and friend Marjorie.

The death happens fairly early in the film but we do get a strong sense of their lives and their friendship before that, through many flashbacks to fill out the details, plus a pivotal fantasy sequence where Iris talks to her dead friend Walter about the dog and his death.

Iris, who teaches writing at a college, has been friends with Walter ever since she took his writing class back in college days. Walter is a bon vivant and a writer, a literary figure holding forth at intellectual dinner parties with various tales, including a magical one about finding this beautiful black-and-white Great Dane alone in a park when Walter was out jogging. The dog is poised on the crest of a hill, a perfect picture and Walter just has to approach him. The dog is friendly but has no collar and no micro-chip to identify his owner. Walter takes him into hi brownstone home and names him Apollo. This tale comes out in bits and pieces, in repeated tellings throughout the film, just like some friends might repeat favorite stories that are meaningful in their lives.

Walter may be devoted to his dog but he’s had three wives and numerous girlfriends over the years. He can be entertaining and wonderful, but he can also be irritating, with a sharp tongue and a tendency to always put himself in the best light. In short, your typically flawed human being.

When Walter suddenly dies, Iris and his friends gather for his memorial. There is a bit of an undercurrent of resentment towards Walter but they are there anyway. At the memorial, Iris reconnects with Walter’s first wife, Elaine (Carla Gugino), who was a friend who had been in that same class where Iris first met Walter. Second wife Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) gives the eulogy, while the third and current wife, now widow, Tuesday (Constance Wu) quietly dabs tears off to one side, surrounded by those consoling her. Barbara asks Iris to call her next week, for something important about Walter

The something important turns out to be the dog, Apollo (who gets a credit, played by a dog named Bing). Iris doesn’t want a dog (she’s a cat person) and besides, pets are not allowed in her rent-controlled apartment. Nonetheless, she gives in and brings the giant dog home, with reassurances from Barbara about how well behaved and well trained he is.

It’s not true, of course, which she learns as soon as she smuggles the dog into her apartment, and even before, when the dog balks at getting into the building’s tiny elevator, forcing them to take the stairs.

Inheriting a Great Dane might be a problem for anyone but in New York City, with rent-controlled apartments with no pets allowed rules, it is even more challenging. What’s more, unlike many cities, New York isn’t very pet-friendly, especially for a Great Dane. This isn’t a purse-sized pooch you could just smuggle in somewhere.

On top of that, Iris is supposed to be working on a book about Walter, based on his letters, that her publisher is eager to get out quickly. Walter’s grown daughter Val (Sarah Pidgeon), whom he just met recently, is supposed to be helping but the young Val is not as reliable as she could be.

Struggling to get it all done, Iris sometimes finds herself taking Apollo along on her errands. She is pretty indignant about the no-animals policies she encounters, and routinely expects the guards and doormen charged with enforcing those rules to make an exception for her. She is a bit entitled, and not above violating the rules. Surprisingly, she generally get away with this behavior, sometimes even getting an apology for doormen or front desk security whose job it is to enforce the rule for doing their jobs, rather than calls to security or the police.

Over the course of the film, Iris tries to find a new home for Apollo but mostly looks at Great Dane-only rescues, even signing up for a waiting list for one in Michigan. She does not seem as serious about finding a home for Apollo as she claims, despite what she says and the challenges of keeping him. At the same time, Apollo is clearly depressed and grieving, and his grieving even interferes with Iris’s own grief over the loss of the friend she could talk to endlessly over anything.

As Iris goes through the motions for finding a new home for Apollo, and copes with her apartment’s super, Hektor’s (Felix Solis) repeated reminders that he cannot be there, we see flashbacks of her friendship with Walter.

There is a lot that is very New York and very literary in this film, which will appeal to those of us who love New York and all things books, but it may wear eventually on those who don’t share those sentiments. However, late in the film, there is a turn, as Iris hits a crisis point, after she gets an eviction notice. That turning point opens the story up into a more universal tale of friendship, loss, and grieving, as well as revealing details about Walter and his death.

Even if the New York or academic/literary starts to wear, know you will be rewarded if you wait for this last chapter. No spoilers, but the last part is worth it, as the film opens up into something more universally human experience, perhaps even profound and something we are all likely to experience in some fashion at some point in life.

THE FRIEND opens Friday, Apr. 4, nationwide and at St. Louis area theaters Ronnie’s 20, St. Charles 18, Arnold 14, Town Square 12, and B & B Wentzville Tower 12

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN – Review

*Dana Canedy (Chante Adams) and Charles Monroe King (Michael B. Jordan) in Columbia Pictures’ JOURNAL FOR JORDAN.*

Denzel Washington directs this true-story based drama about love and loss, starring Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams as a mismatched couple who meet and fall in love. Career military man Charles and Dana Canedy, an editor at the New York Times, who meet and unexpectedly fall in love, and the journal of fatherly advice the soldier leaves behind for his son. The film opens with a single mother, Dana Canedy (Chanté Adams), in New York struggling to balance her high-pressure career and the responsibilities of caring for her toddler son Jordan while grappling with grief. Over the course of the two-track film, we see Jordan grow up along side flashbacks to his parents’ romance.

The film is based on Dana Canedy’s non-fiction book “A Journal for Jordan” on love and loss, and which was an expansion of her 2007 article. At first, director Denzel Washington focuses on Dana’s hectic life, alternating with a romantic, slightly comic portrait of the their romance. Later on, the director leans into the tragedy, family themes and patriotic ones of the story.

When they first meet at a birthday barbecue, Sgt. Charles Monroe King (Michael B. Jordan), a career soldier, and Dana Canedy (Chanté Adams), a New York Times editor, couldn’t seem more mismatched. The birthday barbecue is for her father, a drill sergeant with whom Dana, a sophisticated New Corker, has a testy relationship. The news that yet another of her drill Sergeant dad’s young soldiers is going to be there induces some eye-rolling on Dana’s part. Yet when she actually meets handsome Charles Monroe King, sparks fly. The two start an on-and-off long distance relationship, despite her New York sophistication and his penchant for corny dad jokes, that deepens over time, as Charles achieves his ambition to be a career drill sergeant and Dana’s journalism career soars.

Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams have a nice chemistry together, and her more outgoing, big-city character makes an appealing contrast to his ramrod straight, country boy sincerity. When a driver at a traffic signal fails to respond quickly when the light changes, Adams’ Dana reaches over and leans on the horn. By contrast, polite rule-follower Charles instructs her on the proper way to keep hands on the steering wheel at all times. While Dana is happy to drowse in bed in the morning, Charles bounces out of bed and starts doing push-ups on the floor. Michael B. Jordan fans will appreciate the many times the actor appears without his shirt, showing off his fine physique. Since a lot of the story seems to take place in Dana’s apartment, there are ample opportunities.

At first there is a romantic comedy vibe to the film. But just as the couple prepares to welcome their son Jordan and to wed, 9/11 happens. When Sgt. King is deployed to Iraq, Dana sends Charles off with a journal, and instructions to write in it every day he is gone, as a record of advice to his son.

That is, of course, the journal in the title, although Dana waits until Jordan is older to share it with him. The romance thread’s earlier romantic comedy bent yields to a more serious tone, as they anticipate the birth of their child and get engaged, and then tensely dramatic as the events of 9/11 unfold. The story of the romance unfolds along side scenes of Jordan growing up, hitting familiar milestones, but also painting a portrait of a woman working through grief. The two thread come together in a moment of grief, family and sense of duty at the end.

However, not every great, moving true story makes a great movie. The translating of this story to the screen loses some of the poetry of Canedy’s writing and the sentiment is heavy in this three-hankie tragic drama. Director Denzel Washington leans into the sentimental, although the romance has some nice comic turns early on, but the sentiment gets more ponderous as the story goes on. Fans of romantic weepers may be the best audience for this sentimental film, while others might find it too Hallmark Channel for their taste.

A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN opens Saturday, Dec. 25, in theaters.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars

MASS – Review

*Martha Plimpton and Ann Dowd in MASS. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.*

Is there anything harder for a parent than the loss of a child? That heartbreak is at the center of the drama MASS, in which one couple who suffered such a loss meets years later with the couple whose child was responsible for that loss. Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton play one of the two couples, Gail and Jay. who have agreed to meet with the other parents, Linda and Richard (Ann Dowd and Reed Birney). The meeting is to take place in around a table in a small room of an Episcopal church, in a town in a Western state. The meeting has been arranged by a therapist who has been working with Gail and Jay. It has the look of a “truth and reconciliation” meeting to help both couples get past what happened.

That is not giving away any more than is in the film’s trailer. Exactly what did happen, and even which son is the killer and which the victim, is not clear at the film’s start, a deliberate choice by first-time director, but long-time actor, Fran Kranz. The carefully written script, also by Kranz, slowly brings out details of the events, as the actors develop and reveal aspects of their characters, giving the drama much more suspense than if the film had laid all cards on the table to start. The therapist and the couples know the facts but the audience does not. The meeting of the two couples is tense, even wary, and a sense of anger and sorrow permeates the room.

Eventually it is revealed that the killing happened during a school shooting six years earlier. The four parents have dealt with the aftermath in differing ways, and one couple, Richard and Linda, have divorced, although they are still cordial to each other. Most of the drama takes place in the church meeting room with a lead-in sequence, in which the therapist inspects the room while a hovering church worker makes too many helpful suggestions, which serves to pique our curiosity.

Of course, it is hard to avoid the sense of a stage play with a drama set largely in a single room. What makes for searing drama on stage does not always translate to the big screen. But director Franz deals with this problem first by shifting angles and moving the characters about the space, but largely by revealing the information, about what happened and who these people are, in carefully paced bits. The drama also rests heavily on the skill of the cast, who exceed expectations as each slowly reveals their characters. Who they seem to be in the scene where they first meet changes over the course of the shifting drama, as new facts are revealed.

Martha Plimpton’s Gail is seething with barely suppressed anger even before the meeting, anger we glimpse in a scene with her and Jay before the two couples meet face-to-face in the church room. It looks at one point as if she will back out at the last minute, and the couple have an exchange about something she has come to say. By contrast, Ann Dowd’s Linda seems more open, even eager to reach out, offering Gail flower arrangement as a gift. It leads to the first of many awkward moments as Gail politely thanks her but does not reach out to accept them, a fore taste of the back-and-forth emotional dance to come.

The scene also illustrates the careful construction of each moment in the film and the skill of the performers. Eventually, the ice breaks and bit by bit, facts and feelings come out, as one side seeks to know if there were a hints that could have prevented what happened and the other struggles with the answers.

Richard seems the most wary and reserved at the beginning, speaking about agreed to contracts and seeking to avoid acknowledging anything or sharing details that could lead to legal action. By contrast, the more open Jay has devoted his life to activism on school shootings. As the meeting goes into deeper emotional depths, Richard’s surface gradually cracks a bit, exposing raw unspoken feelings, and Jay begins questioning what his work really has accomplished in the ensuing years. Questioning and self-doubt, admissions and denial all swirl through the charged atmosphere.

Outstanding performances are the key to MASS, which it has in abundant. All the actors are excellent but Ann Dowd is the standout. The discussions thoughtfully explore the variety of issues that have been raised by school shootings, such as debates over guns, violent video games, and the political aspects that have grow up around them. At the same time, these characters grapple with their own complex, sometimes conflicting emotions – anger, regret, guilt, grief – all of which are on both sides in some fashion, leading slowly towards forgiveness and acceptance.

The subject matter, and the film’s structure as a drama built around discussion, means there is a limit on the kind of audience MASS will draw. But the drama offers much, with its thoughtful, complex discussion of difficult subjects, its delving into human nature and the human heart, and its stellar, multi-layered performances. There are no easy answers and there are no uncomplicated people nor personal stories in MASS.

MASS opens Friday, Oct. 22, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema and other theaters.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

THE CAKEMAKER – Review

*Tim Kalkhof as Thomas in director Ophir Raul Graizer’s THE CAKEMAKER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing.*

Israeli writer/director Ophir Raul Graizer crafts a brilliant, moving drama that touches on identity, secrets, loneliness, sexuality and grief, in the Israeli-German drama THE CAKEMAKER. The drama is in English, German and Hebrew, with English subtitles.

Israeli businessman Oren (Roy Miller) is a man living a double life., traveling monthly between Israel and Germany for his work as a city planner for an Israeli-German company. He has a wife Anat (Sarah Adler) and young son in Jerusalem and a gay lover Thomas (Tim Kalkhof), a gifted young baker, in Berlin. The quiet German baker knows from the start that Oren is married, and accepts their secret status, but Oren’s wife Anat (Sarah Adler) does not know, and according to Oren, never will. For a year, Oren visits Thomas every month or so, always taking back a box of Thomas’ cinnamon cookies for his wife. One time, Oren leaves Berlin, forgetting his keys, but he never returns or even returns Thomas’ phone messages. Eventually, Thomas learns that Oren was killed in an accident in Jerusalem.

The next time we see Thomas, he is standing on a Jerusalem street, watching Oren’s widow Anat as she shops in a large open-air market. Still mourning her husband, Anat has just re-opened her kosher cafe. Thomas comes in, but says nothing about knowing Oren or who he is. Instead, he asks her for a job, and she eventually hires him as a dishwasher, unaware of his baking skills.

THE CAKEMAKER is so good, it is hard to believe it is Graizer’s directorial debut, yet it is. The story is basically a love triangle with the third person being the lost Oren, in which both Anat and Thomas try to hold on to their lost love.

The basic structure is melodrama and there are obvious ways this story could go, but Graizer takes none of those paths. The film is restrained, delicate and nuanced, with a striking feeling of reality. The unlikely bond that grows between Anat and Thomas revolves around Oren, like both each is using the other as a substitute for him. But it is not that simple nor that obvious, and Graizer has plenty of other things to say.

There are no villains or heroes in this story, all is shades of gray and nuance. The acting is excellent, particularly by Sarah Adler as the weary, struggling widow and Tim Kalkhof as the restrained baker, who only seems truly comfortable when he is baking. The whole film is shot in a lovely, lyrical style by cinematographer Omri Aloni, which is further enhanced by an elegant, graceful piano-based score by Dominique Charpentier.

Anat’s cafe is kosher, and the presence of a non-Jewish person in the kitchen creates some problems with the kosher certification of the cafe, newly awarded by the inspector Avram (Eliezer Lipa Shimon). Anat’s brother-in-law Moti (Zohar Strauss) is also upset to find someone non-Jewish in the cafe, and a German no less. Moti complains about him being an immigrant but clearly that he is German is especially distasteful.

Director Graizer uses Thomas’ shy demeanor to make him a bit of an enigma. His motives are opaque but his baking helps make Anat’s cafe a success. The director uses the baker’s German identity and his presence as a outsider to comment on Israeli society. Thomas does not speak Hebrew and communicates in English, while the Israelis around him switch back and forth between Hebrew and English, depending on whether they want him to hear. However, Anat is unfailingly kind to him, perhaps given her husband’s work in Germany, and even invites the lonely outsider to Shabbat dinner.

Thomas arrives for dinner at Anat’s with a Black Forest cake, one of Oren’s favorites. It had been raining, and Anat gives him some dry clothes – Oren’s. At dinner, Oren’s son Itai (Tomer Ben Yehuda) puts a yarmulke on Thomas’ head, and the German listens attentively as Itai says the prayer. When it comes time for dessert, the Black Forest cake, Itai volunteers that his uncle Moti told him not to eat any of Thomas’s food. Anat gentle chides her son, and helps herself to some of the delicious cake. Later that night, Anat devours another slice of cake with relish.

The film is sprinkled with delicately moving scenes. Back in his apartment, Thomas lays out Oren’s clothes on his bed, and then puts the yarmulke back on as he looks at them, in a haunting scene. In another scene, Thomas uses the keys Oren forget last time he was in Berlin to open a locker in a swim club. Thomas takes a swim in Oren’s swim suit, an act of intimacy, and then takes home the trunks and towel.

Something else Thomas finds in the locker suggests that he was not Oren’s first gay lover. Anat seems unaware of her husband’s sexual preference but there are hints that Oren’s mother Hanna (Sandra Sadeh) knows. Hanna is remarkably kind towards Thomas, even offering to show him Oren’s old bedroom. Even Moti seems to come around to accepting the gentle, passive baker, bringing him some food his mother fixed and inviting him to his apartment for the next Shabbat, so he isn’t alone.

Food and love have been linked in films before, and THE CAKEMAKER has several lush scenes of baking that convey that link. There is a lot of about food and love in this film. That both Thomas and Anat runs cafes is significant, as well as their complementary skills as cook and baker. Oren was a person who loved to eat, as Anat tells us, but didn’t cook. Both wife and lover filled that need for him.

The director skillfully guides us through a complex maze of issues and feelings. Thomas’ shy gentleness and hidden pain means he tugs at our hearts but who he is, where he is, and what he is doing unsettles us. Graizer shows a deft hand as he navigates the fraught issue of this German in Israel, raising issues of the growing economic ties between the two contemporary countries, as unspoken memories of the Holocaust haunt us. As a German immigrant in Israel, Thomas encounters mixed reactions, but the fact that Thomas is hiding his true nature and his relationship with Oren makes the audience uneasy on top of the uneasiness created by that.

THE CAKEMAKER, in English, German and Hebrew, with English subtitles, opens Friday, August 17, at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

WAMG Giveaway – Win LAST FLAG FLYING on Blu-ray

The Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh heartfelt comedy, Last Flag Flying, starring Oscarnominees Steve Carell (Best Actor, Foxcatcher, 2014), Bryan Cranston (Best Actor, Trumbo, 2015), and Laurence Fishburne (Best Actor, What’s Love Got to Do with It, 1993) arrives on Digital January 16 and on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital), DVD, and On Demand January 30 from Lionsgate and Amazon Studios. Based on Darryl Ponicsan’s book of the same name and directed by Oscar nominee Richard Linklater (Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Writing, Boyhood, 2014), Last Flag Flying reunites three Vietnam War veterans 30 years later when one of their sons tragically dies in the Iraq War. Jointly written for the screen by Ponicsan and Linklater and considered “one of the very best films of the year” (Clayton David, AwardsCircuit.com), the warmhearted film about the bonds of brotherhood also stars Oscar^® nominee Cicely Tyson (Best Actress, Sounder, 1972) and Yul Vazquez. Featuring new bonus content including never-before-seen deleted scenes, audio commentary, and behind-the-scenes featurettes, the Last Flag Flying Blu-ray and DVD will be available for the suggested retail price of $24.99 and $19.98, respectively.

Now you can own LAST FLAG FLYING on Blu-ray. We Are Movie Geeks has 2 copies to give away. All you have to do is leave a comment answering this question: What is your favorite movie that stars Steve Carell? (mine is BATTLE OF THE SEXES!). It’s so easy!

Good Luck!

OFFICIAL RULES:1. YOU MUST BE A US RESIDENT. PRIZE WILL ONLY BE SHIPPED TO US ADDRESSES. NO P.O. BOXES. NO DUPLICATE ADDRESSES.

2. WINNERS WILL BE CHOSEN FROM ALL QUALIFYING ENTRIES.

In 2003, thirty years after they served together in the Vietnam War, former Navy Corps medic Richard “Doc” Shepherd (Carell) reunites with former marines Sal Nealon (Cranston) and Reverend Richard Mueller (Fishburne) on a different type of mission: burying Doc’s son, a young marine killed in the Iraq War. Doc decides to forgo a burial at Arlington National Cemetery and, with the help of his old buddies, takes the casket on a bittersweet trip up the East Coast to his home in suburban New Hampshire. Along the way, Doc, Sal and Mueller reminisce and come to terms with shared memories of the war that continues to shape their lives.

BLU-RAY / DVD / DIGITAL SPECIAL FEATURES

Deleted Scenes
“An Unexpected Journey: Making Last Flag Flying” Featurette
“Veterans Day” Featurette
Outtakes

CAST

Steve Carell Foxcatcher, The Big Short

Bryan Cranston “Breaking Bad,” Argo

Laurence Fishburne The Matrix, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

Yul Vazquez Captain Phillips, The Infiltrator

Quinton Johnson Everybody Wants Some!!, “The Son”

and Cicely Tyson The Help, TV’s “How to Get Away with Murder”

LAST FLAG FLYING – Review

**From L to R: Bryan Cranston as “Sal,” Steve Carell as “Doc,” and Laurence Fishburne as “Mueller” in LAST FLAG FLYING. Photo by Wilson Webb. Courtesy of Amazon/Lionsgate ©**

Steve Carell gives a sensitive performance as a grieving Vietnam vet father on a road trip to bury his son killed in Iraq, accompanied by his two Vietnam War buddies, played by Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne, in Richard Linklater’s LAST FLAG FLYING.

Set in 2003, the film combines elements of a road trip buddy movie and a reflection on two wars and soldiers shared experiences. In Vietnam, quiet Larry Shepherd (Steve Carell), who the others call Doc, was a Navy Corps medic while the more boisterous Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston) and Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne) were Marines in the same unit. When Doc’s son, who joined the Marines, is killed in Iraq, the father is left alone in the small New England town where he lives. Long widowed and with no close family, he decides to seek out his two wartime buddies, whom he has not seen in decades, to come with him to pick up the body of his only child and stand by him while he is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

LAST FLAG FLYING is a road movie, a buddy movie crossed with a drama about a grieving father, a combination that works intermittently. Byran Cranston delivers a loud, attention-grabbing performance but what elevates the film is Carell’s quiet, moving one as Doc, a performance that might give Carell an Oscar nomination.

Doc first visits Sal, at the bar he owns, where he finds the loud, drunken Sal has not progressed much from his wild days in Vietnam, still getting drunk, passing out, and waking up to have cold pizza for breakfast. Actually, Sal is frustrated with his failing business and becoming vaguely aware that he can’t keep this up forever, so greets Doc’s arrival and the idea of a road trip, albeit for this sorrowful purpose, as a welcome distraction, as well as a chance to support an old buddy. But Sal insists they have to bring along their third pal, his carousing buddy Mueller.

Unlike the aging bar-fly Sal, Mueller has changed – a lot. He is now a preacher, with a wife and a congregation, a responsible adult who regrets and even conceals his wild youth. More than that, Mueller is feeling his age, walks with a cane due to a wartime injury and has also become perhaps a bit over-cautious. He expresses his sympathy towards Doc but has no interest in the road trip, not believing he is physically up to it, but eventually is persuaded.

Cranston’s Sal is sort of miffed that his long-ago fellow wild man has changed so much, and so constantly needles him, pushing until Fishburne’s Mueller until he explodes. The louder, big personality Sal and Mueller clash constantly, while quiet Doc calmly goes along, and one gets the sense this was their dynamic back in Vietnam. While the other two bicker, Carell’s character works through his grief, as the men reminisce and reflect on the present. At first, Doc is mostly in need of company that takes him back to the days of his own military service. But then the three learn something from one of his son’s buddies (J. Quinton Johnson), that reveals the military have not told Doc the full story of how his son died, Outraged, Doc insists on taking his son’s body back to his hometown for burial. The revelation echoes something that the three buddies did back in Vietnam, which still haunts them. Putting that right becomes part of the journey.

One might expect a story set in 2003 about a Marine killed in Iraq to have something to say on the Iraq War but instead the film focuses on their Vietnam War experience. There are few parallels drawn, apart from how the military deals with Gold Star families, putting the most glowing spin on the circumstances of the soldier’s death, and sometimes even concealing what happened.

The road trip aspect provide the comic relief side of this tale, while Carell is the center of the drama. Cranston’s over-the-top, loudly obnoxious character is amusing at first but eventually wears one down. Cranston takes up so much of the air in the room that it is hard for the talented Fishburne, playing the prickly voice of reason and restraint, to get as much chance to shine as he deserves. Director Richard Linklater mostly handles the film well but needed to rein in Cranston a bit, to give the talented Fishburne a bit more room to shine, making their scenes more ensemble and less a competition.

Fortunately, Cranston’s showboat performance does not interfere with Carell’s striking quiet but moving performance. In one of his best performances, Carell works through a host of feelings, while exploring life in thoughtful conversations with the more reflective Mueller and the bolder Sal. Those conversations, and Carell’s quiet dignity, are the best moments of the film.

Cranston has big opinions on what Doc should do but often based on his party-til-you-drop philosophy of life, something even Sal is secretly starting to question. While Cranston and Fishburne squabble and the road rolls on before them, Doc slowly works through his grief and then anger, sometimes with the help of his more careful friend Mueller, and occasionally the risk-taking Sal, but often in his own thoughts, expressed in quiet conversation or reflected on Carell’s expressive face.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is best as an exploration of a father’s grief at losing his son in a new war after having survived his own war experience, although it fails to say much on the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. Still, Carell’s sensitive performance is a standout, strong enough to be a possible Oscar nomination, which makes this film worth your time.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

BACKTRACK Review

“Nothing haunts like the past.” It’s a catchy tag line that attempts to sum up writer and director Michael Petroni’s new film BACKTRACK, but there more to this mystery/thriller than can be summed up in a single breath. What begins as a moody drama about a troubled psychotherapist quickly reveals itself as a deeper tale of supernatural intervention into the darker underbelly of human nature.

Peter Bower, played with wrenching emotional finesse by Adrien Brody, is struggling with the loss of his daughter while barely holding together his practice and his marriage. Bower blames himself for his daughter’s death, while not entirely clear on what happened exactly. When not in sessions with his own patients, Bower seeks counsel from fellow psychotherapist Duncan Stewart, played by Sam Neill, which only leads Bower further down the twisted rabbit hole that will be come a truly unnerving revelation.

BACKTRACK is a ghost story of sorts, but at it’s core, the film is a highly internalized story of a man thrown up against his own emotions, his own inner demons, perhaps manifesting as tortured apparitions, or perhaps fueling an unwelcome opening in himself to another level of percieving the pain and grief that surrounds him on a daily basis. Whichever it is, the film merely suggests the possibility and leaves the audience to interpret the events as they unfold through our own filters.

The story truly shifts gears into an engaging, gripping mystery once a teenaged girl named Elizabeth Valentine shows up outside Bowers practice, unable or unwilling to speak. This sets Bowers off on a mission to understand driven by his own lack of certainty. From here, the energy and pacing of the film picks up and never lets the viewer go, pulling us in closer by a narrow thread, one tiny hand over another as we grow closer and closer to the morbid truth that awaits Bower.

BACKTRACK is an atmospheric film, shot with the visual tone to match the looming dread and sense of endless loss. The film looks dark and decayed, strangled of vibrant colors and replaced with a multitude of richly depressing shades of black, blue and gray. There is a gothic element to the film’s palette that maintains the tone, which is crucial as the film’s 90-minute running time doesn’t waste a beat after the initially slow but short opening sequence.

Sam Neill is splendid, as he usually is, but in a rather limited use. His character has minimal screen time, but serves as a crucial element in developing the plot, on a several psychological milestones for Bower as he pieces together the shattered puzzle that is his memory of what truly happened to spark the series of unfortunate events in which he finds himself involved. George Shevtsov provides an understated but impressive performance as Bower’s father, while Chloe Bayliss’ performance as Elizabeth Valentine is overshadowed by a slight overuse of questionably less than stellar special effects, but the level of distraction is minimal in comparison to the overall enjoyment of the film.

A particular achievement goes to the music in BACKTRACK from Dale Cornelius, providing a thick, robust injection of moody atmosphere to the film that truly sells the darkness. The score grabs the viewer by the ears and forces us to sit up and take notice right from the opening credits. It makes a statement, declaring something bad will happen and you do not want to miss out.

Michael Petroni draws on our innate human nature, or ingrained need to witness the horrible things that happen in others’ lives as if that somehow means our own lives will be immune of such tragedy. Petroni’s screenplay is definitely deserving of Brody’s committed intensity. While there is a temptation to over analyze the story as an extension of another previous film from 1999, I encourage the viewer to let that thought pass and remain open to the less superficial nature of BACKTRACK, which still carries some surprises of it’s own.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

BACKTRACK released in theaters and video on demand

on February 26th, 2016.

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Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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