September Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: HBO’s PERRY MASON

Raymond Burr’s burly, dignified Perry Mason, (on TV: 1957-66, 80-90’s), is a far cry from Matthew Rhys’ (The Americans) down-‘n-out, hang-dog version, set in 1930 noirish LA (that ‘has disgraced itself as a Gomorrah where truth is bought and sold like the head of...a-rutabaga’--per E.B. Jonathan, Perry’s mentor). This was written as a prequel to the Mason of courtroom lawyer Erle Stanley Gardner’s over 80 Perry Mason novels penned 1933 on. Oddly it offers a thankless distortion, a morose and self-defeating private investigator Perry. Other changes worked. Instead of a case per episode, the entire series is about a baby’s kidnap and murder (plus some delicious side-shows).The dirty cops and officials that look the other way are pitted against a 99%’er, the baby’s mother, charged with the murder. Below, little Charlie Dodson’s eyes are sewn open to persuade his parents that their baby is fine before they let go their suitcase of $100k.

This new Mason reminded me for a second of Lt. Columbo, police detective, who trademarked a rumpled coat, run-down roadster, and the phrase ‘just one more thing’ off and on from 1968-2003 (now on Peacock and Amazon Prime), pestering his suspect (a narcissistic biz mogul, movie star, etc.), a 1%-er, living in what my mother would call a Bronx Renaissance or Hollywood Baroque style penthouse/mansion — with annoying questions until the frumpy detective could pounce — no police-forcing needed. Wily Columbo (below) with that smart brain was more in keeping with the old Perry Mason. 

No — the 2020 version of pre-courtroom maestro Mason lacks Columbo’s kindliness and in fact can’t get out of his own way, needs therapy for his PTSD. Haunted by the trenches of WWI, he’s losing his family dairy farm, now a shabby house and two scrawny cows surrounded by a small airfield. He shops for neckties at the city morgue (like Columbo, his own is stained with tomato — or is it mustard?), where the coroner says he’s got a stabbing victim with a three-piece suit if that would suit. 

Although fans of Raymond Burr's Mason are taunted by this new back-story, other pointed departures from the old show work better. Hamilton Berger, his former courtroom opposition, is now a (gay) colleague/advisor to Perry as he argues his first case; Berger insists that criminals never confess on the stand—oh no —confessions were signature moments in the old tv series. Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) is not a PI but a young black policeman, a good person, trying to do an honest job while being manipulated by crooked white cops who have seniority he can’t aspire to: an excellent 2020 update. (Below, the past -- William Hopper, left -- and present Paul Drake). 

In a further inversion of the gay facts, actor Raymond Burr was in the closet, while 2020 Mason’s secretary, Della Street, (Juliet Rylance, daughter of Mark), is a gay woman whose girlfriend is around and about. And class-act Della is a quietly determined example of a woman forging ahead in a man’s world — marvelous. 

Altogether this mystery series is fun, its satire and irony stirring the pot of 2020’s inequality mess. Check out Perry’s PI sidekick Strickland (Shea Whigham), master of worthy asides (below). 

Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany) charms as the guiding angel of the Radiant Assembly of God even if you hate the holy roller thing. She and her devoted, abusive mother, Birdy (Lili Taylor), earnestly stage their own flamboyant sideshows while board members rob church coffers. (Below Sister Alice, left, with the period’s real radio evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson.) 

Perry’s mentor, EB Jonathan, John Lithgow, is irresistable no matter what he does (below). And Stephen Root is the perfect, sneering, leering district attorney.  

But I remain stumped at the anti-heroic Perry drawn for this reboot. Creators thumbed their noses at (now old-to-very old) TV Mason fans, rather than building a character that plausibly merges new and old. True it’s is a harder problem to solve — requiring less egoism, less exploitation of a durable icon and its fans.

Perry is already on the road to civility by the time he begins to lawyer the case late in the series, but the enterprise is off-key because of this unlikely origin story for sharp-witted Mason.

   

It’s not a bad story, it’s just a different character’s story. Rhys, a lovely Welsh actor, makes you care about the dour, blank-eyed, slovenly fellow who shouts at people, but he belongs in a series not called Perry Mason. On the plus side, it’s a splendid, artistic production, with similarities to the graphic Boardwalk Empire of HBO rather than the Perry Mason template for Law & Order and many current legal procedurals. Here is on offer every inch of 1930’s LA topsy-turvied by the depression and the evolution of silent film into talking pictures. 

Below is the ‘Angel’s Flight’ cable car ride where the crooks display the Dodson baby through the windows. (Angel’s Flight also appeared in a 1966 episode of the old Perry Mason.)

LA is a star here, a glowy, steamy mecca — 30’s crowds of fedora-topped gentlemen cascading down courthouse steps, boxy grumbling autos, ecstatic swooning parishioners, dusty roads, mountains, and a mournful trumpet — fitting replacement for a jangly series theme. What both Perry’s have in common is a desire to see more justice in the world, to do the right thing, i.e.: where bad cops are punished by the legal system rather than knocked off by each other. The series, overall a fine ride, especially the tension-filled second half, has been renewed. Next time, please, integrate more confident Perry into the whole to put hang-dog Perry in the rear-view mirror.

Emma Thompson, superb as usual, in Richard Eyre and Ian McEwan's THE CHILDREN ACT

If you are looking for a movie full of ideas, excellent performances and situations that will move you and make you think -- without actually forcing you into some preordained box -- THE CHILDREN ACT may be exactly your cup of classy British tea.

As written by Ian McEwan (from his novel) and directed by Richard Eyre, the film probes subjects such as oddball religion beliefs, the law, justice, and most especially, what your responsibility is to someone whose life you have entered and irrevocably changed.

Mr. Eyre (Stage Beauty, Notes on a Scandal), a director of theater, opera, film and television, pictured at right, has had an up-and-down movie career, and this is one of his "ups," encompassing so much so gracefully that you may find yourself thinking about the film as much after viewing as during.

The film's main character is a noteworthy British judge named Fiona Maye, played exceptionally well by Emma Thompson (below), whose workload seem to concentrate most on cases involving children at risk. She soon finds herself embroiled in a case involving a family of Jehovah's Witnesses whose teenage son desperately needs a blood transfusion that the son and his parents all reject for religious reasons.

Simultaneously Judge Maye is going through a bad time in her sexless, emotionless long-term marriage to her University professor husband Jack (a tamped-down but still effective Stanley Tucci, below), who is about to embark upon an extra-marital affair. When the judge decides that she must meet with and question the son regarding his reasons for not agreeing to the blood transfusion, everything suddenly begins to change.

How and why this happens provides the meat of the movie, and, my, is there a wealth to chew on. All of it is held together via Ms Thompson's very strong performance -- which is spot-on moment to moment. The actress takes us through changes minute and major, allowing us to see clearly her character, flaws and all, helping us understand the reasons for each new decision that she must make.

In the pivotal role of the son, Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead (above) is even more remarkable here. He captures both the closed-off strength of the religious cult believer and then the strange, sad, buoyant freedom that can come via the release from that brainwashing. A word, too, must be said for the fine Jason Watkins, who plays the judge's aide, a kind, quiet fellow would clearly do anything for his boss yet is treated by her as something approaching the invisible.

What happens in the course of this thoughtful, deeply felt and surprisingly realistic film involves such sudden and life-changing events that even the possibility of these happening to our cast of characters offers more real nourishment that a year's worth of the overdone plots of mainstream soap operas. Viewers who insist on melodrama and cliché may go away unsated, but those who appreciate genuine feeling -- along with characters who struggle with right and wrong and all the stuff in between -- will come away from this film richly rewarded.

From A24 and  running 105 minutes, The Children Act seems to have opened here in South Florida one week prior to its originally scheduled playdate. It hit theaters this past Friday, September 21, at the Movies of Delray and Lake Worth, the Living Room Theaters, and the Tower Theater in Miami. Wherever you live across the country, click here to find the theaters nearest you. If you can[t find a theater close to you, note that the movie is also playing simultaneously via DIRECTV.

Women power at OPENS ROADS 2018: Marco Tullio Giordana's NOME DI DONNA and Francesco Patierno's DIVA!

Two of the eight films I've been able to view for this year's OPEN ROADS are decidedly feminist -- but in quite differing ways. One is a documentary about the famous Italian actress (still alive but not longer making movies), Valentina Cortese, the other a fictionalized account of the journey one single mother must make in bringing to justice the powerful workplace boss who has propositioned her and then made her work life miserable after she rejects his "proposal." Both are worth seeing, though the documentary is the stronger and more interesting work.

DIVA! is the over-used but still appropriate title for the film that gives us a very oddball yet fascinating and surprisingly intelligent and even sometimes moving account of the life and career of Ms Cortese, who began her film work in Italy, moved on to Britain and finally America, before returning to her homeland and Europe to continue performing in movies and legitimate theater.

The filmmaker is Francesco Patierno (shown below), who last year made a much-heralded documentary titled Naples '44, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, and back in 2003 the well-received narrative film, Pater familias.

For whatever reason(s), though Cortese is still alive, only archival footage of her and from her movies is used here. When the Cortese character is "shown" us, she is portrayed by eight different actresses, each standing in for a specific time frame. You might think this would be confusing or simply too strange to work very well, and yet it really does. The actresses include some of Italy's best, and the words they speak -- which appear to come from Cortese's oww diaries, letters and reminiscences -- resonate and sparkle with acute intelligence and feeling. Cortese certainly had a way with words (really: what a command of language she has!) and hearing her words spoken so well, with such understanding and emotion, makes the documentary continuously alive and riveting.

The actresses include the likes of Isabella Ferrari (above), Anita Caprioli and Barbora Bobulova (below), each one quite different and yet seemingly a fine stand-in for the actress herself, as the bio-pic documentary skips back and forth in time, resonating more on an emotional plane than via any strict time line.

Intercut with these actresses speaking the words of Cortese are numerous clips of the star's film work, as well as archival photos of her younger days. (That's she in her heyday, below, and as an older actress, further below, and at bottom in one of her earliest films.)

We meet Cortese's various lovers, co-stars, directors and producers -- among them Dassin, Truffaut, Zeffirelli, Losey, Gilliam, Zanuck, Richard Basehart and many more -- as they get screen time (or at least verbal remembrances), in which Mr. Zanuck comes out worst of all. As the film rolls along, even as crazily back-and-forth in time as it goes, there's a character, a personality and a strength here that is genuinely surprising.

I have never seen another bio-pic-doc anything like this one, and I doubt I would recommend that other filmmakers try it this way. But Patierno has certainly achieved something unusual and memorable. When I think of Ms Cortese from now on, in addition to her many fine performances, this documentary is sure to come immediately to mind.

Diva! plays at Open Roads this coming Wednesday. June 6, at 8:30pm. Click here for further information and/or tickets.

Marco Tullio Giordana (shown below) has long been one of my favorite Italian filmmakers. His The Best of Youth still stands as an amazing movie achievement. He has been represented at Open Roads before, and his latest film, NOME DI DONNA could hardly seem more timely, dealing as it does with sexual harrasment of a woman by her powerful and wealthy employer. What's more, it is beautifully photographed and acted, and features a lovely supporting turn by Adrianna Asti (at left, two photos below), as one of the residents in home for the elderly into which our heroine, at the film's beginning, is hired to work.

That character, Nina, is single mom with a young daughter and a genuinely caring and thoughtful boyfriend (who in not that daughter's dad) in tow. Nina is played by Cristiana Capotondi (shown below, right and further below), an actress whom I've enjoyed since first encountering her in the wonderful Italian film, Kryptonite! (click and scroll down). She is very good in this role, as well.

As directed and co-written (with Cristiana Mainardi) by Signore Giordana, Nome di donna proceeds quickly and smartly along its designated path, with never any doubt about the kindness, strength and overall quality of heroine, which Ms Capotondi brings to fine life.

Nor is there any doubt about the incident of sexual abuse that sparks the action of all that happens for the rest of the movie. It is also more than clear that the abuser has practiced this on more women in his employ than merely Nina.

The movie is particularly good at showing us the ins and outs of the Italian justice system, workers' unions, and how the workers at this home for the wealthy elderly, when their employment is threatened by the one woman who stands up for herself, will band together against this woman and allow the sexual abuse to continue. It also shows us, via Nina's daughter and what she "learns" at school, how immigrants are so easily demonized in Italy (as they are elsewhere throughout Europe) these days.

So how to fight all this? While Giordana, his cast and crew deliver the goods, all right, and his film is consistently interesting as it moves along its charted course, everything begins to look a little too easy -- almost pre-ordained. "I don't want to brag, but I've won every case," her lawyer (Michela Cescon, below) tells Nina. One wonders, what with the Italian courts so noted historically for their rather lax understanding of justice where the powerful are concerned, how all this can work itself out so easily. Well, maybe Italian courts are changing these days? God knows, American courts certainly are -- for the worse.

In any case, once the movie reaches its conclusion, you can feel free to bask in good feelings. Whether or not you'll be able to believe it all is another matter. I wonder if even Giordana actually believes it. The film's final nasty joke involving a newscaster, together with the ironic song played on the soundtrack, indicates that, for all the feel-good going on here, there remains an awfully long way to go toward gender equality.

Worth seeing, Nome di donna screens at Open Roads today, Saturday, June 2, at 3:30pm (with a Q&A with the director following the screening) and again Tuesday, June 5, at 4:30pm. To see the entire Open Roads schedule, click the link preceding. And to see TrustMovies' earlier posts on this year's series, click here, here and here.

Streaming debut: Brian Knappenberger's doc, NOBODY SPEAK: Trials of the Free Press

Brian Knappenberger is the guy who gave us one of 2014's best documentaries, The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. He's back again this year with an equally important and worthwhile doc, NOBODY SPEAK: Trials of the Free Press, which is a warning about how and why one of the (always problematic) pillars of our (less and less) free society continues to crumble beneath us.

The approach of Mr. Knappenberger (shown below) is three-pronged: He shows us

the trial involving Hulk Hogan's sex tape and the news/scandal site, Gawker (and what lay beneath it), the sudden take-over the Nevada's foremost newspaper by billionaire Sheldon Adelson; and finally Donald Trump's ongoing war against the press, truth and facts.

The result of this trio of events points clearly to the increase in danger to a free press in this country, with the filmmaker marshaling his evidence well and presenting it in a focused, meaningful fashion. The result should leave you further aware and frightened.

How you may feel about the late Gawker, its owner Nick Denton (shown below) or Hulk Hogan (shown further below) does not matter here (I was a fan of neither), but the threat to a free society by a billionaire bankrolling a lawsuit he had absolutely nothing to do with (as we learn most definitely happened here) in order to put a news source out of business does indeed matter -- and in fact sets a bad precedent.

Knappenberger lets us meet a number of the fine journalists, as well as the editor, who worked for that Las Vegas newspaper and have now had to depart, due to its utterly compromised position in terms of journalism, and the filmmaker's round-up of Trump's various lies involving the press all add up to a depressing view of these current times and the disappearance of former standards. What's to be done? As we continue to see, in both narrative films and documentaries, no easy answers -- hell, any answers, save the violent overthrow of government, since honest elections are now a thing of the past thanks to gerrymandering, voter restriction, and probable vote tampering -- are forthcoming. Good luck to us all.

Distributed via Netflix and now streaming on that site, as well as opening today in theatrically in New York City (at the IFC Center) and the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, the documentary is worth your time, energy and discussion. 

Ivano de Matteo's screen version of Herman Koch's popular novel, THE DINNER, hits DVD

I hadn't read the novel (by Herman Koch) on which the award-winning Italian film, THE DINNER, was based. My spouse had, however, and he pronounced it a very fine film, as good as, though somewhat different from, that novel. The movie's tag line -- How far would you go to protect your children? -- should quickly bring to mind another Italian movie that hit US screens early this year: Human Capital. Both are, in their way, scathing critiques of Italian life today, though "Dinner" has the edge on "Capital" in some interesting ways.

First off, the film's director and co-adaptor (with Valentina Ferlan), Ivano de Matteo (shown at left), seems less interested in singling out for shame and reprisal the Italian upper classes and bourgeoisie than he is in offering up the human condition in all its complexity: love, anger, hypocrisy and occasionally even some self-examination.

The film begins with an act of road rage involving two drivers and one of their children and ends with a rather different sort of rage on a road. In between we meet those involved in that initial incident, as well as an extended family of two generations who find themselves also involved, from very different angles, in the results of that road rage. Before long, the family is also enmeshed in another, even darker and more unsettling incident that proves a much stranger example of, well, road rage again.

One of the strengths of this film is that it does not go where you expect. and when it goes elsewhere, it does so quite honestly and believably. It's a short film, too -- only 92 minutes -- yet in that time de Matteo and Ferlan lay their groundwork so well that there is no way we can say that the characters we are left with have not evolved from the characters we've been watching all along.

Those characters include two brothers, a highly-paid lawyer played by Alessandro Gassman (two photos up) and a pediatric surgeon (Luigi Lo Cascio, just above)

and their respective wives, Barbora Bobulova (below) and Giovanna Mezzogiorno (above). You will find your sympathies moving back and forth, but slowly, as character further reveals itself, goosed ever onward by the situation conceived by Koch in his novel and brought to fine life by the filmmaker.

Those children who (may or may not) need protecting are played all too believably by Jacopo Olmo Antinori (below, left) and Rosabell Laurenti Sellers (below, right) and will make many of us parents want to take a second look at our own children, whom we may not know as well as we might imagine. The film will also make us take another look in the mirror and wonder what we would do under the circumstances found here.

This is the film's major achievement. It does not judge. It simply unveils. And it does this spectacularly well, with unusual economy and precision. The finale, in fact, is a case study in how little you need to show to make clear your point. The Dinner, distributed by Film Movement, arrives on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, November 24. As with many of Film Movement's releases, the film will soon be available digitally as well, as it debuts on Netflix as of December 23.