Movie Nation

In posters, comic books and in “girlie magazines,” hers was a truly iconic image — jet black hair, bangs, and a beaming, accessible smile that said “girl next door” even if those nude or semi-nude poses screamed “BAD girl next door.”
Bettie Page was a Victoria’s Secret model before there was a Victoria’s Secret, a sex kitten’s sex kitten, posing in lingerie or in the nude for magazines or creepy “camera clubs” where “enthusiasts” would hire her for the day to strip and pose so that they could photograph her.
Yes, she was an “inspiration” to generations of models who came after her (many interviewed her), and to women who realized they could find fame and fortune based on little other than their looks and their willingness to exploit them.
She could have been the first Kardashian.
But as “Bettie Page Reveals All”, the new documentary about her, explains, it was a tough life of contradictions. She was naive yet very smart, religious, and became “fanatically” so in her later years. But she never saw what she was doing as “wrong,” even if society disagreed. And if she lived long enough to see and even profit from her huge impact on the culture, we still don’t believe her suggestion that she had few regrets.
Filmmaker (“Building Bombs”) and Page enthusiast Mark Mori taped interviews with Bettie Mae Page in the late ’90s, ten years before she died. And that allows the candid Page herself to narrate her story — Southern bombshell “discovered” in New York and turned into a fetish film and nude photo “star” of the 1940s and 1950s. Swimsuit shots on postcards, magazine shoots in lingerie and bikinis of her own design, posters, she enjoyed a sort of “notorious” fame, even if she hated that word.
Uninhibited and upbeat, she was “this combination of naughty and innocence,” Hugh Hefner says.
“She smiled with her whole body,” a fan who knew her enthuses.
And she showed off that body in photos and films that were often called “pornographic” in her day, but seem quaint and cute now.
“Bettie Page Reveals All” lets us hear her speak of an unhappy childhood, failed marriages, mental illness and exploitation — but without ever a trace of bitterness. She wouldn’t sit for a filmed interview with Mori. Like Garbo she “closed the door” to preserve the beautiful images of her youth. So Mori covers the chat with other interviews, an endless supply of cheesecake shots, old family photos, and clips from her silent, 16mm blue movies (pretty tame, by today’s standards).
The most recent photo of her is a grim police mugshot from the ’70s. The fact that this is included tips you that the story takes plenty of dark turns.
But Mori, like Page herself, emphasizes the positive and lets us see the playfulness in photos that stirred up such a sexually repressed stink in the buttoned-down 1950s. We learn of the villains in her life, but also the unlikely heroes.
And we’re taken back to a naive era, when the boundaries of “smut” were narrower, when even the images of an unlikely “adult” star (she never did sex films or “real” porn) seem now like good, clean fun.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content and graphic nudity throughout
Cast: Bettie Page, Dita Von Tease, Todd Oldham, Hugh Hefner
Credits: Directed by Mark Mori, written by Doug Miller.  A  Music Box release.
Running time: 1:41

An aged professor stops a young woman from leaping off a Swiss bridge. She disappears, leaving behind only her bright red coat and a moving, poetic, 40 year old book — in Portuguese.
Thus begins “Night Train to Lisbon,” an old fashioned romantic mystery that benefits from a wizened, much-honored cast and a still-exotic setting.
Jeremy Irons plays Raimond Gregorius, the philosophy teacher who abandons his class — right in the middle of a Marcus Aurelius lecture — to follow this book and chase that anonymous, lost soul to Lisbon. During the course of his travels, he will see the ancient city, walk its streets and meet lots of people his own age who tell him of the book’s author, of the world he moved in and the very unpleasant Portuguese history — the 1970s, the tail end of a dictatorship — of that author’s time.
In flashbacks, we meet the writer, a doctor played by Jack Huston with just enough romantic dash. Melanie Laurent and August Diehl are the doctor’s contemporaries in those flashbacks. We see secret meetings, the intrigues, torture and love triangle that was the doctor’s life. And we hear his words — read by the professor.
“Everything we do is out of fear of loneliness,” the doctor muses. “Take a completely different direction from the one that has made us who we are.”
That’s the one the professor has taken to heart, a man of letters acting on an impulse, traveling with only his wallet and his phone from Bern to Lisbon.
It’s a sedate and civilized movie, which Danish director Bille August (“The House of the Spirits”,”Pelle the Conqueror”) handles with care, if not a lot of spark or daring. The film plays like a more satisfying version of his soapier collaboration with Irons, “House of the Spirits.”
The real pleasure here is in the casting, in seeing the great Irons share scenes with Tom Courtenay, as a crippled old revolutionary, Charlotte Rampling as the doctor’s still-grieving sister, Christopher Lee as a priest who knew the fiery young doctor, and Lena Olin and Bruno Ganz as fellow revolutionaries.
Irons gives a sensitive, brooding performance, never once letting us question whether such a man would engage in such out-of-character behavior. And the book he quotes (the film is based on a Pascal Mercier novel) is just pithy enough to inspire such a journey. When we travel, Dr. Amadeu de Prado writes, we withdraw into our heads and into our past.
No matter where we’re going, the doctor wrote and the professor understands, “We travel to ourselves.”

MPAA Rating:R for a scene of violence, and brief sexuality
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Lena Olin, Jack Huston, Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Bruno Ganz,
Credits: Directed by Bille August , written by Greg Latter and Ulrich Hermann, based on the Pascal Mercier novel.  A  Wrekin Hill release. 
Running time: 1:51

Memories of “The Deer Hunter” creep in long before the deer hunt in “Out of the Furnace.” Co-writer/director Scott Cooper’s ambitious, impressionistic and confused ode to steel belt machismo, code, family and revenge.
Cooper’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Crazy Heart” landed a cast studded with Oscar winners and Oscar nominees. But the story he stuck them in is an unsettlingly violent and unfocused stomp, from its psychotic drive-in assault opening to its dispiriting and unsatisfying finale.
Christian Bale and Casey Affleck play Pennsylvania steel town brothers. Russell (Bale) stays out of trouble and works hard at the mill, as his dad before him did. Rodney (Affleck) gambles when he’s at home, anything to mimic the risks he takes as a soldier stuck doing multiple tours in Iraq.
Russell is planning a life with Lena (Zoe Saldana). But looking out for Rodney is his life’s work. When the kid gets in deep with the local hustler/loan shark (Willem Dafoe), Russell tries to settle his debts. But after he does, with the requisite drinks that come with that transaction, a deadly car wreck lands him in prison, costs him his girl and his future.
When Rodney returns from war, the kid ups the ante by getting into illegal, bare-knuckle prize fights in the abandoned steels mills of Appalachian Pennsylvania. And that’s when he runs afoul of Harlan. A New Jersey thug with his fingers in everything illegal in these mountains, we’ve seen him brutalize a date at the drive-in in the film’s opening scene. He’s the sort of guy who picks fights.
“We got a problem, buddy?”
“I got a problem with EVERYbody.”
In this character and Woody Harrelson’s performance of him “Out of the Furnace” shows its strengths and its failings.
There are no small performances in this movie. Characters, motivated or otherwise, are mercurial, flying into rages, breaking into tears, none more that the psychotic Harlan. Cooper’s deal with the Devil here is promising all his players lots of big, busy emotive close-ups. And to a one, they chew the scenery in their big moments. From Harrelson’s drawling, teeth-clogged ugliness to Affleck’s tirades about what he saw and did in Iraq and his bristling, boxer’s reaction to meeting Harlan, scenes just sort of blow up on us because that’s what the actors are allowed to do.
“Am I s’posed to be a-scared of him ’cause he sucks on a lollipop?”
Forest Whitaker takes on a different voice and shows us more of his peerless range as the town police chief, in love with Russell’s old girlfriend and trying to keep the brothers out of harm’s way.
“You’re walkin’ down the wrong road.”
Dafoe, who doesn’t get nearly enough work, plays the most concerned loan shark this side of “Guys and Dolls.” How can a man who scares no one ever collect on a debt?
Bale, playing a dutiful, industrious son who carries guilt over the car crash and can’t even pull the trigger when deer hunting with his uncle (Sam Shepard), makes an interesting character study. But with so many characters, Cooper was content to simply sketch in around the edges, not letting the snatches of half-mumbled dialogue get at who this guy, or anybody else, really is.
The vivid rusting, roughneck milieu is as sharply drawn as the Meth Belt Ozarks of “Winter’s Bone.” But as colorful as it and its people are, Cooper lets the brawling and the bigger-than-big performances get the better of him, and his story. “Out of the Furnace” feels undercooked, as a result.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, language and drug content.
Cast: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Zoe Saldana, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe
Credits: Directed by Scott Cooper, written by Brad Ingelsby and Scott Cooper. A  Relativity release.
Running time: 1:53

“Twice Born” is an old-fashioned war romance with all the sexing up and complications we expect in newer entries in this genre. Overlong, with stars who don’t have a lot of chemistry, but packed with third-act surprises, this Bosnian War remembrance needs every ounce of pathos stars Penelope Cruz and Emile Hirsch can bring it.
Jemma is an Italian academic with a teenage son. Her policeman/husband isn’t the boy’s father. Nor was her first husband, an architect. No, young Pietro’s parentage is more complicated, something we discover through the long flashback that’s inspired by her return (with Pietro) to Sarajevo, summoned there by an old friend, Gojco (Adnan Haskovic).
Back then, on the eve of the Sarajevo Olympics, she was doing research in Bosnia, where the biggest concern of the locals was whether they’d have snow for the winter games. Married Jemma meets hunky fashion photographer Diego (Emile Hirsch), who pursues her in that aggressive American way.
“Drop everything and run away with me,” he purrs. “Every day will be a party with me, baby.”
She resists the attentions of the younger man. Until she doesn’t.
And then the war starts.
Director Sergio Castellitto bounces this narrative back and forth between the present, with Jemma dealing with some aching loss in her past, and different points in that past; a courtship, a birth, the horrors of war.
Novelist Margaret Mazzantini, who co-wrote the script, gives everyone a sort of Serbian fatalism about the genocidal civil war.
“How can you always be so happy?”
“I can’t stand being sad.”
Gojco, back then, was Jemma’s flirtatious poet-guide to the country. He has the best lines.
“Poetry is God when he feels nostalgic for man.”
Gojco is part of a Sarajevo arts community where the denial runs deep. Lines of people fleeing the city when the shooting starts only earns a “They would never TOUCH Sarajevo” from him and his friends, the silly dreamers.
The war plays out on TV, until the snipers show up in Sarajevo and the power is cut off and the city is under siege. Meanwhile, Jemma’s efforts to conceive “to tie him (Diego) to me” play out against that bloody backdrop.
The sweeping setting, sad characters and sexy stars give this a touch “The English Patient.” But “Twice Born” fails to tug at the heartstrings or wring tears from us. Hirsch plays exuberant and callow well, Cruz is tragic and earthy as ever. But the two of them never really click — sex scenes included.
Still, when the third act rolls in and the surprises start piling up, when events from long ago are shown through a more accurate lens, “Twice Born” rises to something nobler and closer to heartbreaking. And that’s exactly what cast, crew and novelist were going for.

MPAA Rating: R for violence including a rape scene, sexuality/nudity, language and some drug content .
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Emile Hirsch, Adnan Haskovic
Credits: Directed by Sergio Castellitto, written by Castellito and Margaret Mazzantini, based on her novel. An eOne release.
Running time: 2:07

He’s got a reputation for smart, insightful and bitingly funny films that push the boundaries of narrative (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation” “Where the Wild Things Are”).

And his new film, “Her,” is out there as well — the story of a man in the not too distant future who falls in love with a voice and a personality — an operating system. Daring. Playful. He had a hand in “Bad Grandpa,” and was edited out of the final cut (dressed in drag for the film, the dead grandma).

I figure we’ll talk about the film as commentary on our dialed-in/disconnected age, the care that went into the voice casting, his visions of the future.

High-waisted corduroy pants and Hush Puppies rule.

Got questions for Spike Jonze? Post them as comments, and thanks for the help

For about 30 minutes, “The Last Days on Mars” hides its sci-fi antecedents well enough.
The desert-scapes of Jordan make for a passable Red Planet, the production designed space suits, space habitats (rocket fuselages) and six-wheeled rovers are convincing enough.
Then a scientist who thinks he’s found life turns out to be right. Only he gets infected. And “Alien” breaks through and “Mars” turns into a zombie movie with a better-than-its-pay-grade cast.
Liev Schreiber is Vincent, a pessimistic astronaut, one of eight just finishing up an exploratory tour. Olivia Williams (“An Education”) is very good as the brittle, irritable scientist hellbent on “not going back empty-handed.” Elias Koteas is the commander trying to keep the peace and Romola Garai (TV’s “Emma”) is the one scientist who seems to know that Vincent has a reason for being all glass-half-empty about everything.
They’re about to leave. Their relief ship is hours away. But Vincent grumps about “a six month commute on a floating coffin.”
Then there’s an accident in the middle of a discovery. And the commander has no sooner asked “You’re not going to do anything stupid?” when someone does something stupid.
That’s when the makeup people and gore-wranglers take over and this sharp looking but flat-footed thriller lurches off on overly familiar ground.
Williams, in an egomaniacal fury, is the best thing in it. But you can see why Schreiber was drawn to his role, too. Every decision is conflicted. Vincent expects the worst at every turn and is never disappointed. He’s not some grizzled space vet who’s seen it all. He’s a guy who is scared, who has nightmares and flashbacks to something that happened earlier. Garai and Koteas never let us see the fear. Which is a mistake.
The rest of the cast is merely “Who buys the Martian farm next?” fodder, and since director Ruairi Robinson hasn’t the film score or editing wherewithal to ratchet up the tension, we’re treated to strobing lights, bloody attacks and “The Living Dead” in space suits.
Though it rarely looks as malnourished as say, “Europa Report” or “Moon,” “Last Days on Mars” does show how starved of new ideas sci-fi cinema is. It’s a shame they wasted this cast on “Dawn of the Alien Dead.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language.
Cast: Liev Schreiber, Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas
Credits: Directed by Ruairi Robinson, scripted by Clive Dawson, based on a Sidney Bounds short story. A Magnolia release. 
Running time: 1:38

The first couple of cinema awards of “Awards Season” are the most irrelevant.

So don’t read too much into The Gotham City centric “Gotham Awards” going for “Inside Llewyn Davis” as best picture. Over “12 Years a Slave” and “Gravity” and everything else. They’re no early Oscar indicator.

“Fruitvale Station” earned their version of “Nice try, newcomer” in actor and director honors.

I’d like to think Matthew McConaughey is now the Oscar front runner after winning their best picture, but Gotham track records are weak in this regard.

Similarly, when the “National Board of Review” rolls out its announcement, if anybody is still paying attention to them, we won’t have any clearer picture about Oscar nominees-future winners.

Late December is when the momentum shows itself, and the premature awards of early Dec. will be forgotten.

Oscar Isaac figures he owes his big break, taking the title role in the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” to two things.
Since the filmmaking Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan (“Fargo,” “True Grit””A Serious Man”) aren’t known for giving their actors a lot of direction in finding the quirky, offbeat characters the actors must play, Isaac had to find the brooding, grieving Llewyn — a struggling folk singer in 1960s Greenwich Village — on his own.
“Charles Bukowski’s poem ‘Bluebird’ starts out, ‘There’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out. But I’m too tough for him, I say, ‘Stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see you’,” Isaac, best known for a chewy supporting role in “Drive,” says. “Coming from a guy as unsentimental as Bukowski, I found it very moving. Llewyn’s ‘bluebird’ is his music. It’s the only time he softens, let’s us see the softer guy beneath this tactless, hard exterior.”
And the other key to his landing the role? “Crossroads.” Not the famous blues song by Robert Johnson, the one about the guitar picker who sells his soul to the Devil for greater talent. He’s talking about the 1986 film.
“I started off on classical guitar because I had seen ‘Crossroads,’ with Ralph Macchio and Steve Vai. It’s ‘The Karate Kid with Guitars!’,” Isaac says, laughing. “At the end, the classical guitarist beats the rock god (Vai) in a shredding contest, so I learned classical guitar because I thought that would teach me how to shred. It took me six months to figure out, ‘only in the movies.’ So I went straight for Metallica, after that.”
Isaac cackles at the memory. But it served him well when he angled for and got the audition for “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which has him singing and performing classic tunes from the folk music repertoire — “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”, “The Shoals of Herring” — performances captured in full, in long takes and in close-up. No faking it, there. A guy who’s been singing and playing the guitar since he was 13, Isaac had the inside track on Llewyn.
“I grew up listening to Dylan, Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkel. I had never heard of this strange transitional period, between Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and when Dylan showed up (in 1961). All new music to me, a very different era. I had a lot to learn.”
In the late 1950s and early’ 60s, folk music enjoyed a stretch in the national spotlight. The McCarthy Era was over, so formerly blacklisted performers like Pete Seeger and his group The Weavers turned up on TV. New stars emerged and their records sold well enough that record companies even started manufacturing folk groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary.
“Everybody was descending on the Village,” Isaac says. “The pulse was quickening. All these people were trying it out, roots music was in and everybody was already turned on to The Beat poets.
“Folk singers started out as the performers you brought in to clear the room, between poets.”
He’s joking. Folk musicians do that, especially laconic, deadpan performers of the Llewyn Davis type.
“I see him as inspired by Dave Van Ronk, who had been on the scene forever, this kid from the boroughs. Dave wasn’t ‘authentic,’ didn’t invent this Woody Guthrie mythology for himself and change his name the way Dylan did. And that’s who Llewyn is, just a Queens guy playing and loving folk music.”
Isaac, 33, is a native of Guatemala who grew up in Miami, an alumnus of Juilliard and an actor on the rise, with four films in the can, ready for release. His exotic, dark good looks landed him supporting parts in all sorts of films, from “Body of Lies” to “Robin Hood” over the past ten years. He was Joseph in “The Nativity Story”, and first showed off his musical talents on the big screen in the little-seen but well-received high school reunion drama, “10 Years,” playing a pop star.
He’s earning breakthrough reviews as Llewyn Davis, with Slant Magazine praising his “eloquently beleaguered” take on the character and Screen Daily noting his “charm and subdued anger” in the part. The character’s internal struggles are what play out on the screen, his bitterness at not breaking out as a star, his irritation at those who are, his guilt over family and the singing partner he lost. The performance, Isaac says, was dictated by the simple act of camera placement.
“The cameras…were just four inches from my face. The Coens don’t work with a lot of long lenses. When it’s that close, the instinct is to underplay it. You don’t externalize much. You just ‘think it.’ You rely on them to provide the context that tells you what Llewyn’s thinking.”
Not every role is going to showcase him like this. Not every film will require the ability to hold a close up while playing and singing a folk song. But Isaac figures the things he takes from “Llewyn Davis” will serve him in great stead in years to come. And not just in the movies.
“It’s changed my life, changed my acting, changed my musical repertoire,” he says of the film. “I think this has opened up a lot of doors because that Coens stamp of approval goes a long way in this business.
“But aside from that, I have a whole new set of songs I could take out to a coffeehouse, or go on the road with. It might be nice to take these songs out and play  them for people.”