The glorious highs -- and unfortunate lows -- of Damien Chazelle's LA LA LAND

The opening number of LA LA LAND, as you've by now most likely heard, is a five-star wonder. It is almost as if that famous traffic pile-up from Godard's Weekend had suddenly taken flight into the realm of the Hollywood musical. Damien Chazelle's new movie owes much more, however, to the work of Jacques Demy than anyone else I can think of. And if it doesn't manage to come up to Demy's level of marvel (who could?), it remains, at its best, a splendor to behold. At least for those of us who can still appreciate the delights of the not-so-often-seen-these-days movie musical. We're here, all right, but we may not be in large enough numbers to make this critic's darling an all-out box-office blockbuster.

Mr. Chazelle, pictured at left, whose third and best film this is -- after the initial sleep-inducing Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench and the propulsive but utterly over-the-top and unbelievable Whiplash -- has written and directed something that works very well on one level (as a musical) but merely OK on another (as a character-based romance). His characters, as usual, are paper-thin -- they're all motivated by one thing and one thing only -- even if (also as usual), they are played by very good actors -- in this case, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, shown above and below. Even the supporting cast is filled with creme-de-la-creme, although they are, to an actor, under-used in the extreme.

But since it is Gosling and Stone who must do all the heavy-lifting, we pretty much disregard the rest of the cast, except to note in passing, "Oh, look: There's Rosemarie DeWitt (below). Or J.K. Simmons (further below) Or John Legend! (shown at bottom)." And yes, there they all are.

The story, too, could hardly be more pedestrian. Boy and girl want a career and each other. But it seems as though these two goals are incompatible. At least in the universe of Mr. Chazelle. So they -- and we -- must settle.

There are compensations -- for both the characters and us viewers. Their careers turn out to be achievable, all right. (This is a Hollywood movie about Hollywood, after all.) And La La Land, for its audience -- depending on how much one can overlook -- is often at least a semi-delight.

The music, including even the much-vaunted City of Stars, is not particularly memorable, although there is that nifty opening number, and Ms Stone gets to sing one wonderful song toward movie's end that is beautifully written and performed.

What drags the movie down is its would-be love story between two people who really don't have much character, other than their often talked-and-sung-about "dreams." These two are walking clichés. They're fine, and then all of a sudden, with some space between them, they're not. And as much specificity as Stone and Gosling attempt to bring to their roles, the pair remains, alas, cardboard. Oh, movie fans and the very young will identify, all right. But the more jaded or simply experienced among us will want more.

The dancing, too, while sometimes lovely and seemingly almost improvised, is also not especially professional. There's no budding Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse or Leslie Caron on view. So La La Land, for all its outreach and occasional success, must be judged a worthy attempt that provides some pretty good entertainment, and includes some really lovely colors, costumes and production design. We are indeed starved for musicals, however, so this one certainly fills the bill for now.

After opening in the culture capitals a week or so back, the movie -- from Lionsgate and running two hours and eight minutes -- opens across the country this Friday. Here in South Florida you can view it at a number of local theaters. Wherever you are, to find the theater nearest you, simply click here.

John Herzfeld is back with the ensemble piece REACH ME -- his best work in nearly 20 years

It was the fall of 1996 when a small ensemble film called Two Days in the Valley burst upon the world of us inveterate movie-lovers. This very-unusual-at-the-time movie conflated crime and love, work and play in smart, funny, sometimes shocking ways that proved sublimely entertaining. Within the movie's second-tier but hugely talented cast was a young woman named Charlize Theron, in her first credited film role, and she's a knock-out. (You can rent the movie, which finally came out on DVD a year or two back and will be available on Netflix streaming come December 1. If you've never seen it, do.) At the time of its release, I hadn't heard of its writer/director John Herzfeld, but after seeing this little gem of the we're-all-connected-but-in-pretty-bizarre-ways variety, I knew we'd be hearing from him again.

Then we didn't much -- except for a good cable movie, Don King: Only in America and the not-so-hot 15 Minutes. All of which goes toward delighting me no end that I can now report that Mr. Herzfeld, shown at right, is back again -- and, hallelujah! -- he's in the mode of his earlier 2 Days/Valley success. His new film, REACH ME, is all about the reclusive author (Tom Berenger) of a suddenly mega-popular self-help book and the search to find this man. Like his earlier ensemble piece, this one connects a bunch of disparate people in ways that are funny and entertaining. Although there is some crime involved here, what happens is not nearly as dark and shocking as some of the occurrences in 2 Days/Valley. Herzfeld keeps things on a lighter, more buoyant note this time around, and if his new one doesn't quite come up to the earlier level, it's a very enjoyable and beautifully acted romp nonetheless.

In the ensemble cast are a lot of "names," none perhaps quite as surprising as that of Sylvester Stallone, one of my least favorite actors, playing the role of a big-deal gossip blogger (think maybe a male version of Nikki Finke?). And damned if Stallone isn't first-rate. Who knew?

The rest of the estimable cast includes the likes of Thomas Jane (above), Ryan Kwanten, Kyra Sedgwick (below),

Lauren Cohan (below), a terrific Kevin Connolly, (two photos below), Omari Hardwick, Danny Aiello, Tom Sizemore, Nelly (shown at bottom), Kelsey Grammer (in the penultimate photo) and a whole bunch more -- even the filmmaker himself does a cameo here.

Reach Me (the title of both the movie and the motivational book around which it circles) moves like a house afire and has incredible energy all the way along. Herzfeld's secret, considering how many characters are involved here and how fast the plot unfurls, would seem to be an ability, via his dialog and crack cast, to make every moment strong and true.

This carries us along beautifully, and the movie's subject -- something special and dynamic tossed into today's world of tweets and online immediacy -- makes what's happening seem important enough for us to tag along, and most of the characters are needy and sweet enough, if a bit deranged, to gain our sympathy.

There's a lot of funny dialog that initially adds to the mystery of who's who and what's what but that also seems believable and true. If we lingered longer over events, they might fall apart, but the filmmaker gives us little time for that.

In the end, we've spent 95 fast-paced minutes of crazy, joyous connection that leaves us a bit out of breath, but absolutely grinning with satisfaction.

Reach Me, from Millennium Entertainment and running a sleek 95 minutes, opens this Friday, November 21, in New York City at the AMC Village VII, and via On Demand and digital download.

Broadbent and Duncan in LE WEEK-END: It's another fine Michell and Kureishi collaboration

The decade-long collaboration between director Roger Michell (shown below, right) and writer Hanif Kureishi (further below, left) now includes three remarkable films: The Mother (from 2003, in which Daniel Craig showed us capabilities far in excess of anything his 007 has managed), Venus (2006 and one of Peter O'Toole's latter-day wonders) and now LE WEEK-END, in which Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan play a long-married Brit couple taking a quickie vacation in Paris. For my money the Michell/Kureishi oeuvre is every bit as interesting and fine as Kureishi's earlier collaboration with Stephen Frears that resulted in only two films (but good ones!): My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.

Le Week-End proves quite a surprise for both its on-screen participants and those of us in the audience because, though it goes places we might expect concerning a long-married couple, because this "terrible twosome" is in a foreign country, and particularly in "the city of light," some kind of sea change occurs that allows the pair to, yes, bicker, fight and hurt each other but somehow manage to burn right through to the other side of it all. This is due, I think, to some very

fine writing by Kureishi that probes history and need in a natural, non-expositionary manner, and to three simply marvelous performances (the third is from the amazing, funny and quite wonderful Jeff Goldblum, who plays an old friend and compatriot of the husband, whom the pair encounters by chance one Parisian evening). How our couple steers its course around the Scyllas & Charybdises (did I get those plurals correct?) of the senior years, marriage, mentor-ing and professional jealousy makes for a most thoughtful, moving, funny and entertaining 93 minutes.

Mr. Goldblum, above, continues to amaze via his later work -- from Adam Resurrected onwards (he's out now in two movies: this one and The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I've yet to see). Here he tamps down the pomposity (it's still there but used so charmingly and well) and offers a performance alive with the quiet fear of a successful man who realizes that he is something of a fake, while enjoying what that fakery can bestow. And, ah, how he still loves his old friend.

Mr. Broadbent and Ms Duncan, above and below, as always, are stunningly real and immensely enjoyable to watch as they show us the ins and out of a couple for whom life together and life apart seem equally unbearable. Every moment here is real -- and entertaining, too, in the manner that fine acting always is.

Paris, too, has seldom seemed so special. And not in the charming and funny manner that Woody Allen presented it at "Midnight." Just walking down the street seems some kind of blessing, and  the meals -- ah, well! The British, as well as us Americans, may make fun of the French (and vice versa) but there is no denying the special place Paris hold in the hearts of so many of us. This movie brings that home.

The film's climax takes place at a dinner party at which our couple goes their own separate ways for a time: she into the sphere of an attractive younger gentleman (above), he into the room of the Goldblum character's son. These are lovely, poignant, genuine scenes, and the result -- taking place over the communal dinner table -- is one for the books.

Le Week-End, released by Music Box Films, opens tomorrow, Friday, March 14, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark. The following week it will hit theaters in another dozen cities and then continue spreading out in the weeks to come. To see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters listed, click here, and then click THEATERS on the menu bar midway down your screen.

Andrew Fleming's BAREFOOT: The real movie for Valentine's Day is opening one week late....

I'm a sucker for an Andrew Fleming film. From the ahead-of-its-time bisexual movie Threesome, through his witchy The Craft to that sweet and loony deep-throat political satire Dick to the under-rated Nancy Drew and the marvelously crazy Hamlet 2, the work of this director and sometimes writer is distinguished by its sweetness, smarts, invention and honesty, no matter how crazy things get. (The only Fleming film TrustMovies didn't much care for was his remake of The In-Laws). Now comes perhaps his first honest-to-goodness attempt at a by-the-book "romance" featuring a hero and heroine up against odds that would make lesser characters quake (and many directors and screenwriters run for the hills).

From the outset, BAREFOOT, which Mr. Fleming (shown at left) has directed from a screenplay by first-timer Steven Zotnowski, is probably as unbelie-vable a premise as you're going to find on screen these days (ex-cept perhaps Winter's Tale), in which the elder son of a wealthy New Orleans family, owing major money to gang-sters and in trouble with just about everyone else, while working off his probation doing maintenance in a mental hospital, has one of those mutual love-at-first-sight moments with a new patient who's just checking in. Well, whatcha gonna do?

What Fleming & Zotnowski do is plot this cleverly and then play it for all it's worth. Fortunately they have a very good cast lined up to bring their love story to life, starting with a luminous Evan Rachel Wood (above) as a girl raised in isolation by a crazy mother and Scott Speedman (below) as the bad boy with a heart of gold (and the visage to match).

As my spouse said, just post-viewing, "This one was thoroughly paint-by-numbers -- but still very enjoyable."  That's almost true, except that, as usual with Fleming, the numbers he's using to paint by are quirky enough to -- at least for the time that the film is flowing by -- make you believe that such things as we see might actually be possible.

Speedman and Wood are always moment-to-moment real, and they know how to command the screen via both beauty and genuineness. Their chemistry together -- his strength against her vulnerability -- makes this charming little movie consistently percolate, finally bringing the sweet wish-fulfillment fantasy home. And Fleming knows how to move his film along, with smart, tight editing and pacing that keeps things flowing.

Add to this a supporting cast of fine actors, particularly  J.K. Simmons (as the doctor in charge) and Kate Burton and Treat Williams as Speedman's parents. Actually, every actor with a line to read or a visual moment comes through just fine. But the movie belongs, and rightly so, to its two would-be lovers.

The film whisks us off from Los Angeles to New Orleans and then gives us a road trip/occasional car chase back to square one. Along the way every small character who pops up adds to the sweetness and fun, and by the time the film is finished, you'll be, just as the filmmakers want you, in romance heaven.

Barefoot (the title refers to a quirk of the leading character) -- from Roadside Attractions and running 89 minutes -- opens this Friday, February 21 (though it should have opened one week earlier, as it would have made the perfect fit for Valentine's Day) in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 and in New York City at the Quad Cinema.

BEFORE MIDNIGHT: 3rd time (still) lucky for the Linklater/Delpy/Hawke franchise

As great movie trilogies go, forget Lord of the Rings and the recent Batman crap. Leave it to Linklater (Richard, that is) to come up with the real keeper. Who'd have thought, back in 1995, when he had two strangers meet on a train and mostly just talk (but what talk!) in Before Sunrise, that he would follow it up with more of the talky twosome nine years later with Before Sunset, then do it again with this latest and best of the three: BEFORE MIDNIGHT.

I say "best," but maybe not. Without the first two films, there would no third. Would there? The idea is interesting: Could this movie stand on its own? (I suspect so.) How would it play for people who have not seen the other two? Not badly, I warrant. Most of the folk who flock to Linklater's latest (the filmmaker is shown at right) will already be fans, and I don't think they'll be disappointed. For this film is -- by virtue of its continuing a great love story and enriching it over time as its characters grow and change -- the standard-bearer of relationship movies: remarkably real, moving and funny, while giving both parties their power and say, without ever for a moment descending to anything as paltry and tiresome as "fair and balanced."

The two characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke, above and below, right) and Celine (Julie Delpy, above and below, left), after meeting and growing close in the first film, meet again nearly a decade later in the second, once they've gone their separate ways and hooked up with others.

Now after almost twenty years, they're together with a family of their own, though Hawke's son from his earlier marriage (in the great "airport" scene that begins the movie), after a vacation with his dad, is headed back to Chicago.

The two and their two adorable little girls are vacationing on one of the Greece isles, so the scenery is jaw-dropping gorgeous. But it's the conversation that will really get you. Over an al fresco dinner, they and their friends and hosts talk about so many things, and the dialog -- involcing creativity, love, sex and marriage -- simply sparkles, without every becoming precious or unreal. God, this is wonderful stuff!

All the performances are all spot-on, with a special shout-out to a fabulous cinematographer, Walter Lassally (at left, back to camera), who here proves also to be a good actor.

Finally, though, it's the relationship between Jesse and Celine -- still fraught, tender, loving, angry and so much more -- that commands the movie, leading us and these two into a greater state of maturity that encompasses more, while allowing us to understand it, than we've seen before.

Delpy and Hawke collaborated with Linklater on the screenplay, as in the past films, and it's clear that all three continue to grow and mature. In the process of this day and night, scabs are ripped from a few not-quite-healed wounds, some continuing problems resurface, but so do the memories, good humor and self-deflating irony that help healthy relationships survive.

The filmmaker keeps his camera close when necessary, distanced when appropriate and always watchful so that we see what we need to -- via the spot-on performances -- and so can fill in certain blanks better even that the expert dialog.

You might think of this as the narrative companion to something like Michael Apted's 7-Up series, though it doesn't really compare to much else that cinema has given us. It's a rich, blessed experience and the kind of honest love story (as much for its uncertainty as for anything else) that comes along once in a lifetime for both the participants and us viewers. I won't be alive for the next nine-year installment. I'm missing it already.

Before Midnight, from Sony Pictures Classics and running 108 minutes, opens this Friday in New York City (at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13), Los Angeles (at The Landmark and the Arclight Hollywood) and Austin (in Linklater's hometown at the Violet Crown Cinema). In the weeks immediately following, the movie will open all over the USA.
Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates.

A late-coming-of-age movie, Tom O'Brien's FAIRHAVEN finds something genuine and kind in our ordinary, everyday life....

FAIRHAVEN is a nice little movie, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise, so be it. I don't imagine the cast and crew of this labor of love (for that is what is appears) will mind the description. What this group, led by co-writer/
director/cast member Tom O'Brien (shown below), has produced is a small film full of character (and characters) that's heavy on place and mood and is filled with smart, well-observed dialog brought to life by a well-chosen ensem-ble cast. What intelligent movie-goer wouldn't welcome this?

To begin with, Mr O'Brien's screenplay is a nifty piece of work: weaving exposition casually, calmly, unobtrusively into dialog that always sounds real. A funeral is taking place over the weekend we spend with three old friends: Dave (played by Chris Messina, who also co-wrote the screenplay), whose estranged father has just died; Sam (Rich Sommer, of Mad Men, here playing a role that has a little sex appeal for a change); and Jon (played by O'Brien), who proves the centerpiece -- but not by too much -- of this resolutely ensemble movie that plays remarkably fair by all its people and that is never misogynistic, even though the central characters are all guys.

The enjoyment of movies like this -- aside from their choice rendering of place and time (above and below: the ace, widescreen cinematography is by Peter Simonite, whose shot of morning over the ocean is a keeper) -- comes from watching and listening carefully, as character and situation are slowly revealed. There is nothing here that will set the screen afire (or, more likely, your at-home monitor, as I suspect VOD and DVD will prove the biggest venue for the film). On the other hand, it is always a pleasure to see a creative piece in which a new filmmaker (this is O'Brien's first first-length work) bites off just about what he is able to chew.

O'Brien also manages to surprise us somewhat by setting up what at first appears to be one of those bad-boy-returns-home-to-wreak-havoc-on-his-town-and-former-friends scenarios, and then slowly subverts this. Messina (below, right, with Sarah Paulson, and at bottom, center), in the bad boy role, is terrific, as always. Is there anything this actor cannot do? If so, we haven't seen it yet.

As noted, Sommer (below, right) brings a nice maturity and even a little sex appeal to his role. His scene, late in the film, with Natalie Gold (below, left) is just lovely, with every tiny emotion and hesitant bit of dialog beautifully rendered by both actors.

O'Brien's character -- an ex-high-school football star now involved in less "manly" pursuits like writing, relaxation classes and therapy sessions -- is an interesting one. Someone who appears to have always taken the easier option, this guy must at last actively pursue something. Or someone:  maybe his relaxation instructor, played with verve and charm by Alexie Gilmore (below). These two make quite a pair.

In the roles of the older generation, Maryann Plunkett and Phyllis Kay do well as, respectively, Jon's and Dave's moms; and especially good and so interesting in a quiet, nurturing way is Donna O'Brien as Jon's therapist and Paul O'Brien as Jon's boat captain/boss. Technically, the movie is more than up-to-snuff, and the locations -- the film was shot in the actual Fairhaven and in New Bedford, Massachusetts -- are well-used.

The downside of nice little movies is that there is usually nothing really new involved, and that is true in the care of Fairhaven, too. If you must have new and exciting, look elsewhere. But for a good, solid ensemble dramedy, this one brings home the bacon. It opens theatrically this Friday, January 11, in New York City at the Cinema Village and in Boston at the Sommerville Theater. Beginning Tuesday, January 15, the film will be available via VOD -- and pretty much everywhere across the USA.