Movie Nation

Everybody who works with director Alexander Payne trots out the same phrase, it seems — “actor’s director.”
“Saturday Night Live” veteran Will Forte hasn’t done a lot of films, and isn’t even positive what that phrase means. But it suits Payne, he says.
“He would sometimes say a lot, and sometimes give you no direction at all,” Forte says of his work in Payne’s latest, “Nebraska.” It always worked out. He always got his desired outcome.”
Veteran character actor Stacy Keach also stars in this dramedy about an old man (Bruce Dern) who stumbles, with his son (Forte) from Montana to his home state of Nebraska in a delusional quest for a sweepstakes prize he “may have already won.” Keach has worked with his share of actor’s directors, including the most famous of them all — John “The African Queen/Prizzi’s Honor” Huston.
“Actor’s directors are like great conductors,” Keach says, comparing Payne to Huston, whom he worked with on “Fat City.” “They give you very specific, small suggestions — ‘a little softer here,’ ‘a little louder there.’ He sculpts behavior, plays with the clay, moves it around in different directions, looks at it from a lot of angles. He does about five takes. Not one or two, which is normal. He inspires you and gives you the freedom to do different things, from take to take. You get a good take, and he gives you another, just to try something.”
Payne is flattered by that, and the accolades for his films — Oscar nominations for performances in “Sideways,” “About Schmidt,” “The Descendants” — back that label up. He’s not stingy about revealing the secret to the Payne touch, either.
“The extra takes are there for performance,” Payne says. “I get a really fast DP (director of photography), key grip and gaffer, so I don’t spend any time worrying about lights or the camera. Actors, I think, sense that in me, that I’m there for performance. I want the film to be technically perfect, if that’s possible. But acting is still first among equals in importance.”
It started in film school at UCLA. Back then, Payne, now 52, noticed all the other kids “were hotshot guys who knew all the film stocks, all the names of the lights, all the lenses and equipment. But when it comes to working with the actors, they were kind of nonplussed.
“I’m the opposite. I’m there to work with actors, to learn what they’re about. I like to make comedies, and those are all about acting and rhythm and casting. And I still don’t know that much about the technical stuff. I don’t know the names of all the lights. I don’t care to. You pay good people to know that.”
Casting, to Payne, means finding a TV actor or actress ready to be a movie star (Shailene Woodley in “The Descendants”, Thomas Haden Church in “Sideways”, Forte in “Nebraska”) or discovering new life in a long-in-the-tooth character actor (Beau Bridges or Robert Forster in “The Descendants”, Tippi Hedren and Mary Kay Place in “Citizen Ruth”). “Nebraska,” with its world of dying small towns and the old folks who inhabit them, was a field day for Payne.
“I love working with those old pros — Stacy Keach, Bruce Dern, Robert Forster, Jack Nicholson, Beau Bridges. Working with those guys in their 60s and 70s is awesome. June Squibb (as the amusingly shrill wife of Dern’s comical, yet sadly confused alcoholic) I had worked with in ‘About Schmidt,’ and I knew this script had the jokes and tone in it that would let her almost steal the movie. You get people like this, they know film inside and out, and they know acting…As technology changes, the acting doesn’t. I love having people with that kind of experience on the set in front of the camera.”
“Nebraska” may not have George Clooney and Hawaii, or wine country and a career-making performance by Paul Giamatti. But it does have a Nebraska native behind the camera, one who gets “the austere quality of the place and the people, and this (Bob Nelson) script.” Growing up in Omaha convinced Payne to shoot this movie, in the fall, in black and white wide screen Cinemascope, “with no leaves on the trees, no snow, just corn stubble and flatness…austere.”
And thanks to its performances (Dern won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival) and rave reviews, the Oscar buzz is already building around it. Dern’s performance “has an indelible something-or-other quality that may stick to industry ribs,” says online Oscar prognosticator Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-elsewhere.com.
Payne? He just hopes people want to visit “Nebraska.”
“Hopefully, if it’s a good, the audience will find it. Even though it isn’t set in wine country or Hawaii.”

“The Best Man Holiday” is a most welcome sequel to the 1999 sleeper hit, “The Best Man,” about a tight-knit circle of black friends who gathered then, for a wedding, now to spend Christmas together .
Yes, it’s occasionally maudlin and melodramatic, and it’s entirely too long. But it’s also heartfelt and often downright hilarious, and shows off just how canny Malcolm D. Lee’s casting was, all those years ago.
Everybody’s paired up, now. Pretty much everybody, anyway. And everybody seems successful, with careers, families and high-end cars.
But when Mia (Monica Calhoun) and her star running back husband Lance (Morris Chestnut) invite everybody to their suburban New Jersey mansion for the holidays, cracks show in everyone’s facade.
Novelist Harper (Taye Diggs) is a long time between best sellers and worries about money as he and Robyn (Sanaa Lathan) prepare to have a baby.
Candace (Regina Hall) and Julian (a twitchy Harold Perrineau) run an up and coming private school, but there are funding problems.
Jordan (Nia Long) may be a top exec at MSNBC, but she’s embarrassed to be embarrassed by having a white beau (Eddie Cibrian).
Marketing consultant and sometime music producer Quentin (Terrence Howard) is still partying and pot smoking like it was 1999.
“I don’t know why white people pay me all this money to tell them what black people like. Man, I’m light-skinned.”
And floozy Shelby (vampy Melissa De Sousa) may be the villain on “Housewives of Westchester.” But she is between marriages and failing as a mom as she manages her fame.
A flashback reminds us of the bonhomie they shared back then. And this cast of seasoned pros slips easily back into old roles playing characters who can’t help but fall back into their old roles within the group.
Once we get past the cliches and compliments — “You’re a sensitive brother,” “I’m your man” and “It’s all good.” — the fur flies and things get a bit too real.
“You just LOVE stirring the pot!”
Lance and Harper have unresolved issues, which Harper needs to sneak around and fix if he’s to get Lance to agree to letting him ghost-write the jock’s autobiography.
Julian has to figure out a way to raise money despite the fact that his wife’s ancient sexual history is now a Youtube phenomenon.
Everybody’s got a secret, every player has a role in the play, with Howard as the funniest he has ever been doing a sort of sassy, stoned comic relief.

The cute stuff — the men do a lip-sync “talent show” as New Edition — is balanced against the raw language and the downers that come in the serious and sad second half of the film. Tonally, it’s hard to reconcile the film’s raw bits with a shoehorned-in nod to faith.
That weighs down “Holiday” and makes it overstay its welcome. But it’s still an amusing, well-acted and sharply-timed holiday comedy, old friends getting together to prove that careers, families and kids aside, they’ve still got their R-rated edge, just as they did in college.

MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content and brief nudity
Cast: Morris Chestnut, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Terrence Howard, Monica Calhoun, Harold Perrineau, Eddie Cibrian
Credits: Written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee. A Universal release. 
Running time: 2:02

Dylan Thomas taught us all we ever need to know about old age, death and dying.
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Woodrow “Woody” Grant makes his rage a quest. He’s 80ish. He’s gotten a letter in the mail that tells him he “may have already won” a million bucks in a magazine sales sweepstakes. And by God, he’s going to get from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect it.
“They can’t say it it if it’s not true.”
There’s no talking him out of it. His son tries.
“You haven’t won ANYTHING.”
His wife nags — “You dumb CLUCK!”
And since he’s too feeble to drive, there’s nothing for it but to give the slip to his doubting family. He’ll walk, in early winter, from Montana to Nebraska.
Alexander Payne’s bleak, brilliant and bitterly funny “Nebraska” begins with the image of Woody, played by Bruce Dern in a spot-on, shambling, performance, trudging down a highway in wintry Billings. The cops pick him up and we meet his long-suffering stereo-salesman son, David (Will Forte, terrific).
We meet Woody’s shrill, cranky wife (June Squibb, who steals the movie).
“You know what I’d do with a million dollars? I’d put him in a home!”
David agrees. But from the start of this story to the end, David and we come to realize that it’s taken a lifetime of hardship, disappointment, trauma and drink to get Woody to this point.
“You’d drink too, if you were married to your mother,” Woody growls. He’s going to Lincoln”if it’s the last thing I do…I’m runnin’ out of time.”
The director of “Sideways” serves up another poignant and hilarious road trip comedy, with David — freshly split from his girlfriend — indulging his dad’s lunacy by driving him to Lincoln. Not much sense in stopping at Mount Rushmore. But a side trip to Mom and Dad’s old hometown, Hawthorne, Nebraska, pays comic dividends in this forlorn farce set along America’s “You betcha” belt.
Payne, working from a Bob Nelson script, lovingly sums up the milieu of thousands of dying little rural farm towns whose aging populations are still social enough to hit the Sodbuster Bar & Grill, but who long ago ran out of much to say to one another. Woody can’t help but share his good news with an old partner, a character so sharply played by Stacy Keach that he is small town venality summed up in one, neat, gregarious package.
The old are sticking around towns like Hawthorne because it’s all they’ve ever known, and the younger adults we meet — a generation removed from the hard work of the farm — are trapped, overweight and just self-aware enough to be bitter about it.
David discovers dimensions to his stubborn, addled dad (“Beer ain’t drinkin’.”) and bullying, co-dependent mom. Bob Odenkirk plays the small-town TV reporter brother who doesn’t get to make the same internal journey David does.
And Dern, a great character actor who made his mark opposite everyone from Redford and John Wayne to Jane Fonda, embraces the role of a lifetime. He only occasionally lets us see the rascal he was through this disheveled, troubled, reticent wreck of a man. There might be an Oscar nomination for him in a movie that is, in every sense, a victory lap for a great career, a lap that circles and staggers from Billings to Lincoln, with every amusing or melancholy stop in between.

MPAA Rating:  R for some language
Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk.
Credits: Directed by Alexander Payne, written by a Bob Nelson. A Paramount release.
Running time: 1:55

Here’s what Shia LaBeouf has been up to since finishing his turn in the “Transformers” franchise.
He made “The Company You Keep,” a modestly-budgeted high-minded thriller with Robert Redford.
There was “Lawless,” the Prohibition Era moonshining action picture with Tom Hardy.
He’s in the melancholy Dane Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac.”
And now there’s “Charlie Countryman,” a modestly ambitious psychological thriller with a romantic streak. Not a “safe” star vehicle in the mix. So give the kid some credit for guts and ambition.
Charlie (LaBeouf) is on hand to watch as his mother (Melissa Leo) is taken off life support in the hospital. But she’s not done teaching him.
“I sure didn’t mean for you to be running out on death scenes,” her ghost lectures him.
“Just this once, tell me what to do.”
“Go to…Bucharest.”
Is she sure? He isn’t. Nor is anybody else, such as his ex (Aubrey Plaza).
“You don’t mean Budapest?” It’s a running gag in the movie.
The Hungarian capital is cute, touristy. The Romanian capital Bucharest, as Charlie quickly learns, is something else. He meets a charming old Romanian Cubs fan on the flight over. The old man jokes around with him, dozes off, and dies. He, too, communicates with Charlie post mortem. Give this hat to my daughter, tell her this phrase in Romanian.
Charlie is tased, arrested and hassled to beat the band when he does. Even if that daughter, Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood) is worth the trouble, this is the other side of Romania — thuggish, confrontational, callous. The ambulance carrying the old man’s dead body crashes because the driver is a reckless jerk. And the shady men who know Gabi (Mads Mikkelsen, Til Schweiger) are menacing in the extreme.
“God knows, it can all turn into blood in the blink of an eye,” Viktor (Mikkelsen) purrs.
On the other hand, there are the amusing Brit stoners (James Buckley, Rupert Grint) Charlie meets at the youth hostel. They’re all about popping pills and voting on what “shared hallucinations” they all should have in this Eastern Bloc Sin City.
Music video vet Fredrik Bond ably shows off the seamy side of Bucharest. But the script is too reliant on coincidences and showing the insane lengths Charlie goes to in order to prove how smitten he is with the beguiling cellist, Gabi.
LaBeouf is less manic and boyish here, giving a performance stripped of the smart kid patter of much of his work. He does less with more, even as he’s taking ferocious beatings.
Wood, slinging an accent, is well-cast in any role that demands jet-black eye makeup and a wounded scowl.
The bad guys really stand out, with Mikkelsen pulling off something he never managed as a Bond villain. He’s genuinely frightening.
“Charlie Countryman” is not a graceful movie, with hints of characters trimmed down, themes launched (talking to ghosts, Charlie’s fearful inability to love un-established) and abandoned.
But it works well enough. And it’s a fascinating shot in the dark for a star who is making interesting choices with his stardom, and going to exotic places as he does.
Even if he meant to go to Budapest. 

MPAA Rating: R for some brutal violence, language throughout, sexuality/nudity, and drug use.
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Evan Rachel Wood, Mads Mikkelsen, Til Schweiger, Melissa Leo, Rupert Grint
Credits: Directed Fredrik Bond, written by Matt Drake . A Millennium release. 
Running time: 1:43

“Thor: The Dark World” did almost exactly as predicted in the box office race this weekend, dashing off to a huge though not epic $83 million.

“Last Vegas” climbed past “Bad Grandpa” for second place.  Three films clustered around the $11 million mark (“Free Birds”) so we won’t know for sure until final figures come out Monday afternoon.

“12 Years a Slave” continues to hang around the top ten.

“Ender’s Game” took a dive its second weekend. “Gravity” continues to defy gravity and “Captain Phillips” is closing in on $100 million.

Established comic book franchise, a character audiences have taken to in a couple of films, part of the Marvel Universe.

Will “Thor, the Dark World,” which has pretty much exactly the same story beats as “Thor” blow up at the box office this weekend?

It should do well. VERY well. Somewhere in the $80-100 million range.

Box Office Mojo says “anything above $85 million will be a win.” Yeah. Upper $80s says he.

Variety one-ups him, figuring $95 million will be the number to hit.

Box Office Mojo thinks the holiday movie season will erupt with an $86 million dollar weekend for “Thor: The Dark World.”

I lean toward the lower number. These are fun films, but they don’t have the Downey top drawer appeal any more than “Captain America” does. $85 seems on the high end of “about right.”

“About Time” opens wider this weekend but nobody expects this no-big stars (Rachel McAdams) time travel romance to collect much over $5 million, even in over a thousand theaters.

“Ender’s Game” is expected to plummet. “Bad Grandpa” should pull a second place finish. Or could. “Gravity” continues to hold, and there’s a good chance “12 Years a Slave” will linger around the top ten.

The great Stacy Keach, like the great Bruce Dern, gets a late-career dash of glory added his storied resume in “Nebraska.” He’s the back-slapping ex-business partner of Woody (Dern), a decrepit drunk whom we start to suspect has been taken advantage of his whole life. Keach (“Fat City,” “The Bourne Legacy,” “American History X”) has piled up the credits. He was Mickey Spillane’s tough gumshoe “Mike Hammer” in a couple of different series, the crank grandpa in “Titus.”

He even enjoyed a little Cheech and Chong sidebar to his career in the ’70s. Questions for Keach? Comment below. And thanks for the suggestions.