Movie Nation

An eerie pall hangs over “Sunshine Superman,” a documentary history of BASE jumping, the practice of skydiving off Buildings, broadcast Antennas, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs).
That’s connected to both the movie’s main subject, Carl Boenish, who dreamed up the sport, popularized it and died practicing it, and the ongoing high-risk/modest-altitude carnage that it continues to generate.
The very week this movie opened, wing-suit BASE jumping pioneer Dean Potter and his fellow jumper Graham Hunt died in the very park — Yosemite — where BASE jumping was born. Over 250 people have died worldwide doing this.
Marah Strauch’s film has a somberly celebratory air, capturing the manic enthusiasm of engineer-turned-skydiving cinematographer Boenish, a man who survived a childhood bout with polio and lived the rest of his life as if it was bonus time.
“There’s no future in growing up,” he says in archival TV interviews. “We don’t want to be limited by any laws, except nature’s.”
So Boenish and his fellow pioneering divers leaped from natural landmarks that they weren’t supposed to leap from, and trespassed on incomplete skyscrapers and antennas — stunts that riveted TV audiences when the sport first broke out in the late ’70s.
Dangerous and reckless? Sure. That’s why Boenish made such a great spokesman for the sport, weaving poetic spin about testing the limits of “whatever the human spirit can accomplish” while evading authorities and making that one mistake that proved to be fatal.
Strauch deviates from the earlier BASE origins doc “Valley Uprising” by zeroing in on Boenish, and devoting much of the film’s third act to the stunt — diving, with Jean, off Norway’s towering “Troll Wall” for TV’s “That’s Incredible! — and his death the following day.
The footage is striking, the memories of the man vivid, and the finale, a tribute to the next phase of the sport, winged suits, which Carl didn’t live to see, still stuns you. Even if you know two more pioneers just died flying into towering rock walls of Yosemite.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements, some language, smoking, and a brief nude image

Cast: Carl Boenish, Jean Boenish, Kent Lane, John Long
Credits: Directed by Marah Strauch. A Magnolia release.
Running time: 1:40

2013 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards Arrivals Held at Nokia Theatre LA Live
Featuring: Sam Elliott
Where: Los Angeles, California, United States
When: 16 Sep 2013
Credit: FayesVision/WENN.com

Sam Elliott had a window when he might have broken through and become a bankable Hollywood leading man.
It was somewhere around 1976’s “Lifeguard,” which had him playing a hunk who held onto the beachside style of living and loving a little too long, his 1983 performance as the title character “Travis McGee” in a TV movie based on John D. MacDonald’s iconic Florida detective, and 1985’s “Mask,” which turned his manly mustache loose as the one biker sensitive enough to tame Cher and bond with her disfigured son.
Decades of stellar supporting work have been the rule ever since. Need a man’s man to play a military officer (“Hulk”), a growling coach (“Draft Day”) or cowboy? Sam’s been your man.
But maybe the window hasn’t quite closed, even at 70, as his notices in the new indie hit “I’ll See You in My Dreams” suggest. He plays a sort of last chance at romance for a widow (Blythe Danner) not looking for love at this stage in her life. Elliott turns on the flirt in the role.
“Nothing you learn in acting school,” he growls with a grin. “The way I was always taught to treat women kind of gets in there.” Born in Southern California but raised by West Texans, Elliott’s masculine courtliness is something of a trademark.
And “the unlit cigar between his teeth, the glint in his eye and his deep cowboy voice signal virility,” Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times.
Elliott gives that a characteristic “Aw, shucks.”
“Maybe there’s a little of the old ‘leading man’ in there,” he says. “Maybe it’s a little late for that.”
His “Dreams” director,  Brett Haley, who co-wrote the script and cast Elliott, begs to differ. “A LOT of women would disagree with Sam  in that regard,” Haley laughs. “He’s back, and sexier than  ever.”
It could be that the part is tailor-made for Elliott. Hollywood isn’t making many Westerns these days, so Elliott’s Old West mustache and ability to wear a ten gallon hat like he means it is rolled out in cult films such as “The Big Lebowski” (as the cowboy/narrator) or “Thank You for Smoking.” A “Tombstone” comes along rarely, these days.

Bill, his “I’ll See You In My Dreams” character, has a “Hemingway-esque masculinity” and swaggering “self-satisfaction” which Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal didn’t warm to. But that “that coy but confident head tilt he does…draws women in like an invitation to come closer,” says Kathryn Shiflett, “a big fan” from Virginia. There’s a touch of the courtly cowpoke to that this businessman who goes after what he likes, including Carol (Danner).
“He happens upon this gal who strikes who strikes his fancy, and goes to work on her,” Elliott says of “Dream.” “He’s kind of sensitive, I guess. But he’s also very direct. I like that. That directness appeals to Carol.
“That’s part of the real me, too. I’m probably more direct than some people would like, especially out here in Hollywood.”
Voice-over work in everything from car commercials to “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner,” sustains him and wife Katherine Ross (“The Summer of ’42”). Elliott says he and Ross talk about “how lucky we were to come along when we did, with parents who grew up during The Depression and all.” But it’s hard not to see his brand of masculinity, timeless as it is, as out of its time. So he’s grateful for the good reviews for “I’ll See You in My Dreams.”
“It’s been mind-boggling, on some level. Never seen the likes of it, myself.”
And there’s just a chance he’s hearing his director’s “sexier than ever” plug, and maybe wondering if those “Lifeguard” days could earn a reprise.
“I just had some gal interview me who wanted to know if I still had the red shorts from that m0vie,” Elliott says with a chuckle. “Man.”

A blockbuster weekend for two films marks this third Sunday in May.

An established brand, “Pitch Perfect 2” shattered whatever glass ceiling there was for femme centric comedies/musicals and may have $70 million+ in the bank by midnight tonight.

Astounding. Whatever George Lucas said about “figure out what 12 year old girls want” is money in the bank for Universal, which cashes in on a middling sequel to a perfectly cute a cappella comedy of a couple of years back. WAY above any predictions for the opening weekend.  I figures $40 was a bit generous, but again…girls.

“Mad Max” is decades removed from its Mel Gibson origins. A more feminist tack and Tom Hardy paired up with Charlize Theron didn’t deliver much juice, but George Miller showed he still has the magic dystopian touch. Dollars to donuts, “Fury Road” moves ahead of “Pitch” in the top ten next weekend, and may bank more bucks in the longer run.

“Avengers 2” is still #3, and the artier fare has fallen out of the top ten as summer settles in, in earnest.

He wasn’t well-known before HBO’s “Entourage” tossed him out there as a classic nobody turned somebody in Hollywood.

He was the “actor” — the talent — who propped up his less talented brother, his lumpy no-talent skirt-chasing pal and his pizza store manager best bud-turned-manager based on his Hollywood success.

Like that ever happens.

Lots of questions for Adrian Grenier about what he learned about Hollywood from doing the show  (and the new film based on it) and from the experience of becoming a “name” overnight himself thanks to it.

But you? Got a question? Comment below. I’m looking for suggestions, and thanks for the help.

“I’ll See You in My Dreams” has a dream cast — Blythe Danner, Sam Elliott, and such supporting players as Mary Kay Place, Malin Akerman and Rhea Pearlman.
It’s got a dreamy plot, about last-chance love, grief and finding that passionate avocation from your distant past.
But it hangs on a screenplay as random as a dream. It drifts to and fro, straining for laughs, leaning too hard on the sparkle provided by its veteran cast, never quite settling on what it wants to say or do.
Danner plays Carol, twenty years a widow, settled in her suburban LA home with her bridge-playing pals (Pearlman, Place, June Squibb of “Nebraska) close by in a nice retirement community. She refuses to move there.
“I don’t like my life too complicated.”
Then, her beloved yellow Labrador Retriever dies — Danner gives this scene a lovely ache. That jolts her to widen her horizons, just a bit.
She flirts and becomes drinking buddies with her pool guy (Martin Starr), an aimless young man with a worthless degree in poetry. They hit the karaoke bar where Carol’s chanteuse past (“Cry Me A River”) pays off.
Speed dating, dabbling in medical marijuana with her pals — easy laughs aimed at an older audience. Or they would be if the scenes had any snap or jokes to them.
Then the tall, swaggering stranger sidles up to Carol in the vitamin aisle and growls, “You don’t need all that. Just right, the way you are.”
Sam Elliott positively twinkles in the role. And Carol, perfectly put together, lets a little blush slip through and a tiny possibility sneak into her thinking.
Co-writer/director Brett Haley’s great coup was in having a script that attracted an A-list of older-than-average actors. The effortlessly stylish and still winsome Danner calls to mind the various Diane Keaton dotage comedies — “Darling Companion,” “And So It Goes,” “5 Flights Up” — still perfectly coiffed in a perfect stiff of a movie.
The moments of grief have very little sting, the laughs die of oxygen deprivation. Malin Akerman, as Carol’s daughter, has nothing to work with aside from a cute wardrobe.
Danner’s performance can be savored for its subtlety, but even that robs the budding romance of its spark. Elliott provokes grins and giggles with every appearance, all drawling charm and “Life’s too short” confidence. He should be a transformative acquaintance for Carol.
But “I’ll See You in My Dreams” wouldn’t dream of anything so overt or delightful.

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for sexual material, drug use and brief strong language

Cast: Blythe Danner, Sam Elliott, Martin Starr, Rhea Pearlman, Mary Kay Place
Credits: Directed by Brett Haley, script by Marc Basch, Brett Haley. A Bleecker Street release.

Running time: 1:32

One created the “Saw” franchise, and as an actor/writer and now director, has “Insidious 3” coming to theaters. That would be Leigh Whannell.

The other is a veteran actress, a comedy and horror mainstay who learned to laugh at herself with “There’s Something About Mary” and who is Leigh’s heroine in “Insidious 3.”

Lin Shaye’s big break was being the younger sister of New Line Cinema CEO Robert Shaye, but she’s parlayed that into a sort of movie mascot career, dressing up scads of films, from “Jewtopia” and “Ouija” to “Snakes on a Plane” and the upcoming “Helen Keller vs. the Nightwolves.”

Wait, seriously?

Whannell has become a brand name writer of horror, thanks to the “Saw” and “Insidious” franchises. He’s still an actor, and his recurring role as “Specs” in the “Insidious” films stands him in good stead. As he becomes a director, I’m curious about the tricks of the trade he’s learned, and Lin’s place within horror fandom.

But how about you? Questions for Leigh and Lin? Comment below, and thanks for the help.

The Kafkaesque nightmare a woman endures trying to get a divorce in a theocracy is played out, in sometimes comical/often excruciating detail in “Gett: The Trail of Viviane Amsalem.”
This Israeli production, in French and Hebrew with English subtitles, puts its heroine through years of trial by rabbis, who all but refuse to hear her pleas and point of view simply because of her sex.
“Know your place, woman,” the Israeli rabbinical triumvirate barks at her. That’s after Viviane, played by co-writer and director Ronit Elkabetz, has dared to speak out in desperation, fear and fury after years of delays and stonewalling by her long-estranged husband, Elisha (Simon Abkarian).
We, of course, have shouted long before then. With every inter-title telling us “two months later” and “three months later,” you want to yell at these sexist pigheaded “judges.”
“Don’t doubt our ability,” they grouse, “granted by both heaven and Earth.”
But we3 do, as does our heroine. Viviane sits and balefully stares at the rabbi brother (Sasson Gabai of “The Band’s Visit”) representing her husband as he questions her character, her nature and the effort she put into a marriage that lasted, she says, 30 unhappy years and produced four children.
Her unobservant lawyer (Menashe Noy) loses his temper, but keeps fighting within the system, as first months and then years go by and Elisha refuses to grant her wish. At every turn, the court claims powerlessness in forcing Elisha to do this. Viviane exhibits the patience of Job as she endures first this tack, then another, from the court and from her husband. Reconcile, bring witnesses who’ve seen the marriage fail, etc.
Since both the court and her husband are working for the husband’s interest, you start to question Viviane’s sanity and piety. Who could stay with a religion that forces a woman to stay in a bad marriage? Who could willingly live in a country where such kangaroo courts exist?
Seriously. And you thought Sharia law was all the women of the liberal West had to fear.
Ronit and her husband Shlomi Elkabetz, in fashioning a sequel to their earlier drama “To Take a Wife,” are slow to reveal the rift that broke the marriage depicted in the  2004 film. But that story, set when the couple lived in Morocco, planted the seeds. He was traditional, and turning more conservative by the day. She strained at the many constraints her religion and her husband’s interpretation of it put on her.
Divorce is rarely “amicable” and rarely pretty, in spite of what people say when the end comes. But the quiet cruelty of a dated system designed to keep women in a form of bondage makes you wonder just how happy the “happiest” marriages in the Holy Land could possibly be. Not with a system this Satanic maintaining them.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, smoking.

Cast: Ronit Elkabetz, Menashe Noy, Simon Abkarian, Sasson Gabai
Credits: Written and directed by Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi Elkabetz. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:55

“Time Lapse” is time travel thriller that flatlines, mainly because of the consistently flat performances.
Love, betrayal, confidence games and murder all unfold in this interesting wrinkle on a timeworn plot. But the cast never gets the pulse racing, and the direction never adds the urgency this sort of picture needs to come off.
Finn (Matt O’Leary of “Live Free or Die Hard”) is a painter who serves  as building superintendent for a small bungalow-style apartment complex. He lives with his girlfriend Callie (Danielle Panabaker of TV’s “The Flash”) and their pal, Jasper (George Finn).
Their boring lives of work, frustrated ambition and pill-popping  are interrupted when they realize that one of their tenants hasn’t been seen in several days.
They check in on Mr. Bezzerides (John Rhys-Davies, basically edited out of the picture) and stumble across first his collection of Polaroids, and then this huge machine that takes them.
It’s a camera pointed at their apartment window. The wall covered with photos  tells the intimate details of their lives. What’s more, it turns out it develops these pictures before the events in them actually happen.
Time travel by photo? Naturally, the hustler Jasper figures out a way to use that to get rich. Dog racing results. Post them in the window, the camera will capture the winners the day before. Something like that.
“The risk is so minimal, almost non-existent,” Jasper insists. We know he’s wrong, even if we can’t quite figure out how they travel ahead to get the results and post them for the camera to photograph.
Soon complications set in, chief among them the scary bookie (Jason Spisak) who gets suspicious. The trio build their whole existence around the camera. Finn gets over his creative block (his paintings in the photos give him the ideas he never seems to have), Callie can zero in on her dream and Jasper can get rich.
“We’ve gotta do what’s in the photo,” they  decide, otherwise they’re messing with time and the natural course of events. Which of course, they’re already messing with.
Better time travel movies are a dime a dozen, but this intimate indie pic had potential. “Prime”,”Safety Not Guaranteed” and “Project Almanac” had more going for them in terms of plot, but the performances could still have made this work.
But not one threat, not one pointed gun, not one panic-stricken moment when they’re conceiving the cover-up (they find the old scientist/neighbor’s body) is believable.
So time doesn’t travel, it stands still in “Time Lapse.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, adult situations, drug abuse

Cast: Danielle Panabaker, Matt O’Leary, George Finn.
Credits: Directed by Bradley King, script by Bradley King and B.P. Cooper. An XLrator Media release.

Running time: 1:42