Giving is Receiving

Like watching a magician shuffle a deck of cards (including jokers) into perfect numerical order, director John Crowley (Brooklyn) takes Mark O’Rowe’s screenplay, which consists of a whopping fifty-four characters (hence the jokers) and eleven separate storylines, weaving them together in wholly interesting ways to make Intermission (2003). What is it about Irish screenwriters that gives them the ability to build these complex stories in clever ways? I really don’t have an answer, but like the works of brothers Martin and John Michael McDonagh, there is a unique essence in this narrative that avoids tropes, Crowley intersecting all of O’Rowe’s stories in an impressive way.

And they say things move pretty fast in the 21st century. . . in 1939's Made for Each Other, directed by John Cromwell, the protagonist couple marry after one short day of courtship – and they weren’t even in Las Vegas (instead, Boston). A bizarre script structure, this David O. Selznick production takes an almost vignette-style look at marriage (the opening credits actually feature the couple signing the marriage certificate – a nice touch) – with no foreshadowing or traditional setup in the first two acts, like in life, things just arise out of nowhere. . . yet, despite this unusual format, there is still enough to catch your interest.

Some of you may get a little excited by the film I’m reviewing today – it features both bush and dick. . . get your minds out of the gutter everyone, this is obviously a look at the 2018 Academy Award Best Picture nominee Vice, written and directed by comedic turned dramatic filmmaker, Adam McKay. After reading the introduction describing the difficulties of making a film on one of the most secretive politicians in the history of the American political landscape – the one and only Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), the picture plays up its documentary style approach, jumping around more than a hyperactive kid playing hopscotch – from 9/11 to the distant past of 1963, only to bounce to 1969 – you get the idea.

An out-there European director, Yorgos Lanthimos has made waves with controversial pictures like Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer – intriguing, confounding, frustrating, and mesmerizing audiences worldwide. Now, he has made his first foray into a more mainstream style of film making with the 2018 period piece The Favourite (the first picture he and longtime co-scribe Efthymis Filippou did not write – in this case, an excellent story by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara) – though, one thing is for sure, you cannot take the eccentric out of the Greek filmmaker. Nominated for ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Best Achievement in Directing, and a slew of others), the first thing immediately noticeable is the feature’s striking visual style. Intricately measured and visually opulent (most of it is shot in Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, England), it is often symmetrically framed, a very formal seriousness to the playful story. Like the structured beauty of a perfectly danced waltz, everything is in its place, the camera moving with its characters always in their position, Lanthimos often utilizing a quick 180 degree pan pirouette to provide the viewer with a quick shot of the opposing perspective. Speed is also tinkered with, slow motion and a quicker frame rate adding to the film’s mesmerizing quality. Also worth noting, every once in a while there is a fascinating use of a sort of fish-eye lens-style shot – providing a distorted, arced look to this lavish, gilded world. Hand in hand with this is the exquisite cinematography, director of photography Robbie Ryan shooting almost the whole picture with available natural light (the sun, candles, fireplaces and torches providing an eerie, romantic, and realistic vibe, adding to Lanthimos’ trance-inducing visual style).

There is something special while watching an excellent drama and realizing, perhaps before, or maybe only after the credits role, that a director known almost exclusively for comedy has deftly made the genre switch. Think Jerry Zucker (from Airplane! and writing/producing The Naked Gun franchise to Ghost), Jay Roach (the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents franchises to Trumbo), or Adam McKay (Anchorman and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby to The Big Short and this year’s Vice). . . and the newest member to enter this club: Peter Farrelly – making the jump from Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary to 2018's Academy Award Best Picture nominee, Green Book. A tale near and dear to its writer, Nick Vallelonga (it is also co-written by Brian Hayes Currie and Peter Farrelly), Nick is the son of the film’s main character, Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen). Set in the early 1960s, Tony is an Italian American New Yorker, working as a ‘public relations’ expert for The Copacabana (i.e. a rough and tumble bouncer) – a pudgy bull-shitter who acts first and asks questions later.