Love & Mercy (2015) ***

Love and Mercy tells a two tracked story of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson, shifting between the 60s and 80s. The film avoids the cliches of most rock bios and stays focused on the mystery of the creative process, established in the opening shot of Brian quietly working out a song on the piano.

Paul Dano plays the younger Wilson at the height of his creative powers during the making of Pet Sounds and his unfinished album Smile (eventually completed in 2004).  John Cusack plays the middle aged Wilson struggling to regain control of his life.

The best scenes recreate the making of the Pet Sounds, which many consider the greatest rock album ever made. The complex arrangements and multi-layered harmonies were unlike anything on a rock record up to that point. Pet Sounds proved a creative breakthrough for Brian, but the other members were unhappy with the new sound, especially Mike Love who preferred the old pop formula, snidely observing "critics don't buy records."

Eventually pressures from his jealous father Murray Wilson, skeptical band mates, and the heady scene of 60s California drove Brian into drugs and paranoia. While tales of addiction and comeback are a staple of rock bios, Brian's case stands out as especially tragic, since he spent years unable to leave his bedroom or write music.

John Cusack, credited as "Future Brian", gives a quiet, contemplative performance. He's recovered his mental health, but still in a fragile state.  Paul Giamatti as Brian's Dr. Landy dominates every scene, a creepy charlatan who exploited his patients and micromanaged every aspect of their lives.  Elizabeth Banks plays Wilson's future wife, who offered him understanding and stability.

Brian Wilson's music endures.  Love and Mercy should inspire everyone to go out and buy Pet Sounds.

Max (2002) ***

The 2002 film Max attracted controversy for attempting to humanize the ultimate symbol of 20th Century evil - Adolf Hitler. Set in the crucial year of 1919 in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the film traces Hitler's brief engagement with the modernist art world and the start of his political awakening. 

John Cusack plays Max Rothman, a Jewish art dealer who lost an arm while serving on the Western Front. Max lives a bourgeois life surrounded by artists, intellectuals, and a loving family.  Enthralled with new artistic movements emerging after the war, exemplified by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, he sees modernism as a path towards redemption for Germany. 

Noah Tyler portrays Hitler as pitiful, desperate, and uncompromising.  A veteran of four years on the Western Front, he's a failed artist alienated with post-war Germany.  Modernism's emphasis on absurdity and irrationality repels his more classical and puritanical tastes.  

When Hitler stumbles into Max's gallery, the two begin debating what constitutes great art.  Hitler believes art's purpose is to reinforce the moral values that hold civilization together. Rothman believes art must challenge convention for the future to have any hope.  

Despite Hitler's abrasive nature, Max sees potential in the abrasive veteran, and they bond over their time serving in the war. Max repeatedly tries to steer Hitler away from his antisemitic obsessions. These scenes are compelling but strangely airless, they never go beyond showing Hitler incapable of challenging his own beliefs. Cusack's contemporary screen presence sometimes feels out of synch with the period setting, as though he just walked in from a '90s indie film. 

Hitler finds another mentor in a German officer who encourages him to enter politics and master another emerging art form: propaganda. Ideas of racial purity and national humiliation begin to shape the nascent fascism of the era. Hitler develops his performance skills in beerhalls, recognizing the power of imagery and theatricality to stir a crowd.

At one point, Max observes Hitler giving a frenzied speech and is repelled by the racist messaging but captivated at the spectacle of it all.  Later on in the film, Hitler tells Max, "Politics is the new art." 

Written and directed by Menno Meyjes, Max never fully find its footing. A broader film about the fractured artistic climate of early Weimar Germany may have yielded something more compelling. Instead, the film narrows itself to an uneasy relationship that ultimately feels too contrived to sustain the story.  

Reportedly Meyjes took the script to Steven Spielberg, they had previously collaborated on The Color Purple and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Spielberg praised the script but passed on the project sensing the film would offend holocaust survivors. That speaks to the contradictions at the heart of Max, a film constrained by the enormity of the figure at its center. 

American Hustle *** (2013)

Initially I dismissed American Hustle as David O. Russell trying to be Scorsese.  Maybe it was the glaring 70s milieu, which automatically recalled Taxi Driver or Goodfellas.  After repeated viewings I realized American Hustle offers more than flashy style, but is a perceptive character study disguised as a procedural.

American Hustle imitates the style of Goodfellas with its multiple narrations, rock and roll soundtrack, and fascination with low level players.  Unlike the wiseguys in Goodfellas who defy society through creating an alternate one with their own standards of upward mobility, the con artists in American Hustle go for the big money by playing the system against itself.

The three leads Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Bradley Cooper flourish in their roles as smooth talking city dwellers.  They must adapt in order to make the big score. Jennifer Lewis shines as Irving's eccentric wife Roslyn.

An obese Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, an owner of dry cleaning businesses and sometime dealer in forged art.  He meets the seductive Sydney (Amy Adams) and they team up in real estate Ponzi schemes.  When an undercover FBI agent Richie (Bradley Cooper) catches them in the act, they are forced to take part in the famous Ab-Scam operations of the late 1970s when undercover agents disguised as Arabs set up politicians to take bribes.

Irving and Sydney set their sights on Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), populist mayor of Camden, New Jersey. Renner, looking like Joe Pesci, comes across as sincere in his dreams to revitalize his community, but gets done in by his own good intentions.

Although set in the 70s, American Hustle would work in any decade. I believe early versions of the script set the story in the 1930s. Hustling and capitalism go hand in hand, a trait American Hustle celebrates and laments.

The French Connection (1971) ****

The French Connection depicts a brutal world of quicksand morality and reckless gamesmanship.  For the two protagonists in the film, Gene Hackman and Fernando Ray are mirror opposites of each other in every way except one - both view life as a game, an existential journey with no destination save enforcing their will upon the world.

Based on a true story and set in 1970s New York, director William Friedkin emulated documentary film making style and achieved a gritty realism.  The wintry urban decay verisimilitude proved highly influential in the 70s and beyond.

Hackman earned the Best Actor Oscar for playing "Popeye" Doyle, an anti-hero who will stop at nothing to crack the case (the real life Popeye appears in the film in a significant supporting role).  Popeye's an alcoholic, taunts his suspects, harbors a blatant racism, ignores authority, and annoys everyone around in his orbit.  His level headed partner "Cloudy" (Roy Scheider) somehow tolerates him.

When Popeye and Cloudy learn a massive shipment of heroin is about to arrive in New York from France they learn of a mysterious figure referred to as "Frog" (Fernando Rey). A bourgeois Frenchman and big time dealer in drugs, Frog eludes capture at every opportunity.

Really The French Connection is nothing more than a cat and mouse game, but an endlessly compelling one. The famous chase scene between a car and an elevated train remains a jaw dropping sequence.  The final pursuit ends up in an abandoned warehouse as the film ends on deeply ambivalent note. Don Ellis's edgy jazz score sustains the tension.

Midnight Run *** 1/2 (1988)

In 1988 the "buddy comedy" took a cerebral turn with Martin Brest's Midnight Run.  The unlikely pairing of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, provide an amusing study of contrasts in the tension between their acting styles, screen personas, and character motivations.

De Niro (Jack Walsh) plays a bounty hunter who must contend with sleazy colleagues, especially the rat like bottom feeder Marvin (John Ashton). In a lucky break, Jack apprehends the highly prized fugitive Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin), an accountant who embezzled millions from mobsters and gave it all to charity. Now he's got Feds, mobsters, and bounty hunters on his trail.

So we get a version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles in the guise of a chase film.  De Niro almost never shuts up, while Grodin speaks in simple Zen like dialogue, much like Terence Stamp in The Hit.  Prone to anger issues, Jack frequently goes into profanity fueled rages, prompting Jack to observe "You have two emotions - silence and rage." Jonathan's philosophy of living proves helpful for Jack in overcoming some personal pain. As a white collar Robin Hood, who stole from mobsters to give to the poor, Grodin shows a yuppie can have a conscience.

Philosophical issues aside, Midnight Run works as a first rate action film with an amazing supporting cast including Yaphet Kotto, Dennis Farina, Joe Pantoliano, and Phillip Baker Hill as tough talking cops and robbers.  But the presence of Grodin adds a subversive element; a voice of quiet outrage intruding upon the cinematic universe of the wiseguys.

Midnight Run, directed by Martin Brest transcends the stereotypical buddy comedy with well shot sequences, smart plot movement, and some witty satire.

Howard the Duck (1986) **1/2

What if George Lucas made a superhero film? He did!  Back in the summer of 1986 Howard the Duck took a thrashing from critics and emptied multi-plexes. For what it's worth, Howard the Duck was the first marvel character to get their own movie.  Recently I had a chance to watch the film for the first time - and it wasn't too bad. 

Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz wrote and directed their adaption of the surly Marvel character created by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik.  Although they're not household names, they are important figures in the career of George Lucas.  They co-wrote American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  It's well documented they helped Lucas revise his original Star Wars script by injecting some much needed humor. Much of that style of screwball comedy makes it into Howard the Duck.

The movie begins with Howard miraculously being transported to Earth, Cleveland of all places.  Apparently he lived on a planet identical to earth, only ducks are the most intelligent species.  He is pursued by a space demon who wants to blow up the Earth.

Upon his arrival in Cleveland, Howard quickly befriends Beverly played by a delightful Lea Thompson. Beverly's the lead singer of an 80s New Wave band.  You can debate just how far their relationship actually went - all I can say it went to a place no Marvel film of 2015 would venture! Maybe the inter-species sexual tension proved too much for 1986 audiences. 

Also, don't miss an early Tim Robbins performance as a wacky scientist.

The movies ends with perhaps the most ridiculous chase sequence ever put on celluloid. 

Howard the Duck goes to great lengths to not take itself too seriously, while managing to entertain (if you are in the right mood.)

Mad Max: Fury Road ***1/2 (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road literally grabs you from the beginning and never lets go. In a reboot/sequel to George Miller's trilogy of Mad Max (1979), The Road Warrior (1981), and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Fury Road not only adds to the mythology, but expands upon it with the introduction of amazing new characters and jaw dropping action sequences. Fury Road makes The Avengers: Age of Ultron look like a polite tea party, Miller and his crew have fired a salvo into the Marvel Universe saying: This is how it's done. 

In the post-Apocalyptic world of Mad Max, gasoline is a scarce resource and fanatical thugs run the world as humanity reverts to tribalism.  The setting owes something to A Clockwork Orange, a world run by violent young men who rape, pillage, and terrify the helpless masses.  In the first trilogy the gangs had a punky vibe, now they are religious fanatics.

As Fury Road begins Max, now played by Tom Hardy (replacing an aging Mel Gibson), continues to wander the earth alone after thugs murdered his family. He is captured by one of the gangs and is used as a blood donor for the warlord Immortan Joe's army.  The tyrants are violent zealots who use food and water to control what's left of a post-nuclear war world.  Women are considered useful for "breeding" purposes only. 

Then we meet Furiosa memorably played by Charlize Theron, a scavenger of gasoline who goes off route with Joe's wives aboard and an epic chase begins. Furiosa is determined to liberate the wives and return them to her homeland.  Eventually, Furiosa and Max form an uneasy alliance in their determination to escape Joe.  During their long desert sojourn the tension never lets up. No one is safe from instant death.

What separates Fury Road from so many others of its genre is that the action serves the story. The sequences move forward in a logical way and are easy to follow.  Like a silent movie the story is told visually and the actors do a fantastic job of emoting with minimal dialogue.

Fury Road is pure cinema.