Hayek & Lithgow shine in Miguel Arteta & Mike White's timely triumph, BEATRIZ AT DINNER

Maybe it's simply a matter of these deadly and trying times, but so many movies suddenly seem to address this era of our would-be dictator Donald Trump and his slovenly, bought-out Congress -- either obliquely, in tales that deal with how the refusal to take responsibility for one's actions results in terrible pain and tragedy for others, as in the film I covered this past Saturday (Moka) and the one I will cover tomorrow (Harmonium), or directly, as with the documentary my colleague Lee Liberman posted on yesterday (Get Me Roger Stone) and today's dynamite offering, BEATRIZ AT DINNER, brought to us by a continually expansive and growing pair of filmmakers, director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White (shown below, with White on the left, Arteta at center, and the star of their new film, Salma Hayek, on the right).

Mr. Arteta has given us so many good and interesting movies and television work -- from Chuck & Buck through The Good Girl and Getting On -- while White continues to amaze via his own deceptively deep and not-so-easy-to-pigeonhole humor, versatility and commitment (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, School of Rock, and especially that amazing HBO series, Enlightened). With Beatriz at Dinner, which has not a little in common with Enlightened, the two come together with one of their finest, most elegant and on-the-nose collaborations yet.

What White and Arteta have done is to set up a near-perfect situation involving -- if you chose to see it this way -- class, race, economics and politics, resulting in an, again, near-perfect showdown of, well, good versus evil. Good comes in the form of our heroine, Beatriz, played with such clear-hearted concern for humanity together with quiet fire and determination by Ms Hayek, that her character becomes instantly classic. When the name Beatriz is uttered henceforth, it'll be of this character that most moviegoers will immediately think. (For a quick but surprisingly full look at the versatility, not to mention beauty and talent, of Ms Hayek, I'd recommend a viewing of this film, together with Everly and As Luck Would Have It: two movies that show quite different sides of this actress.

Once the filmmakers set up their situation -- a dinner party whose wealthy, entitled guests include the kind of genuinely successful and powerful businessman that Donald Trump has long aspired (but failed utterly) to be. That's right: No bankruptcies and consistent loses for this guy. And yet, this powerhouse, quite properly named Doug Strutt, has also consistently despoiled the environment and caused various unwelcome diasporas around the globe. Strutt is played by John Lithgow (above), giving yet another of this actor's remarkable performances, and he is a fine and uber-nasty/intelligent example of major evil in today's world, as well as exactly the right foil for Hayek's Beatriz

How these two meet, match and go at it is set up so efficiently, cleverly and quickly that before we know it, we're neck-deep in the kind of situation and question that is on the mind of anyone who has considered the world at large, the haves and have-nots, climate change, and the continuing polarization of wealth and poverty in the western countries (it's always been there in those third-world spots).

The dinner party's host and hostess (David Warshofsky and Connie Britton, above, left and right, respectively) are initially welcoming (she much more than he) but as tempers rise and truth faces down power, they must honor their own needs above all else. Also present is the developer (Jay Duplass, below, center, right) who has put together an important project that Strutt is bankrolling, his date (a high-level PR person played by Chloë Sevigny), and Strutt's current significant other (Amy Landecker). Plus, of course, the hired help on the host/hostesses' staff.

Each actor has the chance to shine a bit, given White' cleverly unshowy but pungent dialog that never stoops to the kind of cheap and obvious laughs in which another recent popular and critically acclaimed rich-white-people-as-hosts movie, Get Out, indulges. And while the filmmakers hand us their situation all wrapped in a beautiful box with ribbon and bow, they choose not to solve this great world problem for us.

Oh, they certainly offer a couple of options, one of which you will not be able to nay-say too strongly, given how the movie develops. They make that particular option seems awfully inviting and, in fact, maybe the only legitimate way to proceed. Or not. One of the frustrating strengths of Beatriz at Dinner is that it forces us to consider all this in a manner that proves much more than mere "movie fodder." The film brings us face to face with a question most of us would prefer not to have to answer: What responsibility do we have as individuals for what is happening to our country and to our world?

Via the character of Beatriz, together with Ms Hayek's fine performance, we get a strong glimpse of believable and genuine spirituality of the sort seldom encountered on screen. (How White & Arteta set up Beatriz's character so eloquently and immediately in the movie's initial scene is exemplary.) Yet it this very spirituality that, in the end, probably prevents the kind of action necessary to counter the evil on display. As my friend and co-writer Lee Liberman asked at the end of yesterday's post:
Other suggestions? 

From Roadside Attractions and running a sleek and highly serviceable 83 minutes, the movie, after opening last weekend in our nation's cultural/entertainment centers, hits others cities in the days to come. Here in the South Florida area, it will open in the Miami areas at Regal's South Beach 18, the Landmark at Merrick Park 7, AMC's Aventura Mall 24 and Sunset Place 24; in  Ft. Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway; and in Boca Raton at the Cinemark Palace 20 and Regal Shadowood 16. On Friday, June 23, it will hit Miami's O Cinema. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and then click on GET TICKETS.

Does the real Puerto Rico appear in Angel Manuel Soto's LA GRANJA? Well, sort of...

Purporting to give us "the real thing" -- Puerto Rico as it was and still is post-economic collapse -- the 2015 film from Angel Manuel Soto entitled LA GRANJA (The Farm) turns out to be way too interested in the sex and drug life of its protagonists than it is of much else (except for the film's exceedingly ugly violence). While the filmmaker may be telling us that, sure, sex and violence are what are left behind after most else is taken away from a destitute population, he demonstrates this a little too often and with a little too much sheer enjoyment not to make us feel creeped out in the process of viewing his often horrifying work.

Señor Soto, shown at left, offers up a handful of characters and events that are co-joined by blood -- meaning both family and that red. oozing stuff -- in a time frame that circles back on itself so that what we might imagine is taking place afterward is actually occurring beforehand (or simultaneously). None of this will seem new to die-hard moviegoers (especially those who've viewed Amores Perros), but Soto serves it up well enough and draws persuasive performances from most of his cast.

His characters includes a tubby adolescent, a midwife who works in the local hospital and desperately wants to conceive a child (below), a teenage boxer with some talent who doubles as a murderer (further below), his father (three photos down) and the gangster/drug lord who controls them all (shown at bottom).

While things have certainly grown much worse since the economic meltdown, nothing in the film -- not the characters nor the events -- would seem to indicate that any of these are newly minted. They clearly predated the collapse but certainly have grown worse since then.

In the lengthy pre-credit sequence alone, we begin with that sex and drug use, combined with voyeurism and a rather philosophic narrative that turns out to be something less that we first imagine. We then move on to what is, I think, one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever witnessed on film in which a young boy is taken from his father's car at gunpoint and literally beaten to death in front of his father, even as he keeps calling out for his daddy to help him.

The reason for all this is presumably the usual -- money and power, drugs and sex -- but the how and why appears so arbitrary and almost simple (hasn't anyone thought of "offing" the lead gangster, who seems relatively henchmen-free?) that one can't help wondering about what kind of power structure is in place here.

There is clearly a political crackdown-on-drugs afoot, and at the finale this plays into events. Along the way we get another murder or two (one of a hospitalized, drug-addicted new mother by our infertile nurse), the possible conscription into whoring of a group of schoolgirls (below), our tubby teen's use as a drug mule, homemade sex videos via camera, and, gosh, I've lost count.

The sad little "unincorporated territory" of The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has seldom looked less attractive or more disgusting, with the huge gap between the wealthy and the rest of the country about as pronounced as anywhere in the western world. La Granja is said to have taken a full four years to complete because it was condemned by the Puerto Rican government film establishment, and while one can understand why (a tourism generator, the film is not) and condemn this condemnation, one can also wish that this were a better film than it is.

Released here in the USA via Breaking Glass Pictures and running 100 minutes, La Granja opens this Friday, June 9, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Monica Film Center and in San Diego at the Digital Gym/Media Arts Center.

Rediscovered (again!) cult classic, Leslie Stevens' PRIVATE PROPERTY hits Blu-ray/DVD

Much is being made of the recent theatrical (and now available on DVD and Blu-ray) release of PRIVATE PROPERTY, the 1960 cult classic written and directed by Leslie Stevens, and starring his then-wife Kate Manx, in her movie debut, alongside two better-known actors Corey Allen (from Rebel Without a Cause) and Warren Oates (who was yet to come into full prominence). Supposedly lost and out of circulation for more than 50 years, the film was seen by TrustMovies when it was first released, and then again when it was re-released, either in theaters or maybe on videotape or DVD, at least decade or more back in time.

I cannot recall exactly how or when this earlier re-discovery happened, but I am certain that it did. (Might it have come from a European DVD brought to us via the now defunct Greencine?) Consequently, I greatly question the claim that this is the first time the film will have been seen in all those many years since its debut.

Mr. Stevens (shown at right), whose credits include even more writing than directing, was onto something -- several somethings, actually -- with this film, the first of these being how empty seems the wealthy lifestyle inhabited by the married couple we see here: he, forever trying to make a further buck, and she, so unsatisfied at his constant inattention and patronization. The movie also offers a look at the haves against the have-nots, some of the most voyeuristic scenes seen in a movie up to this time, as well as an enormous undercurrent of homoeroticism that keeping threatening to bubble over into overt homosexuality.

Into the lives of this "model" twosome comes another twosome, a couple of hunky and somewhat frightening drifter buddies -- Duke (Mr. Allen) and Boots (Mr. Oates), who first threaten a gas station attendant to get some free food and drink and then quietly highjack a car and its driver (very well-played by Jerome Cowan) in order to follow another car and its driver, Ann (the lovely Ms Manx) on whom the guys have designs.

For nearly a full hour of its hour-and-twenty-minute running time, Private Property is a slow burner full of longing and hesitation, as Duke comes on to Ann, supposedly setting her up for a sexual rendez-vous with Boots, but also seeming to want to her for himself. All the while, the two men appear awfully close to each other, with Duke joking about Boots just wanting a sugar daddy (which he may, in fact, have already found in Duke). All of this is handled extremely well by both Stevens and his excellent cast, which includes Robert Ward as Ann's thoughtless, thankless hubby.

Although three-quarters of the film is first-rate, the finale descends into full-blown melodramatic-thriller mode, with all the usual conventions and nonsense the genre often includes. While the ending offers a kind of release from what's been building up, it is hugely second-rate compared to the build-up itself. Still, the 4K restoration look great; the jazz score, very "of its time," is appropriate; and Ms Manx (above and further above) looks simply great in her fashions of the day and also does a creditable acting job. (The actress sadly ended her own life just four years later, after making one other movie and three TV appearances.)

The talented Mr. Allen (above) gave probably his best performance in this film -- sexy, scary, charming and even, at times, vulnerable and hopeful -- while Oates (below and on poster, top), in the smaller role, shows plenty of that understated charisma he would demonstrate in many movies to come. With Ted McCord as cinematographer and Conrad Hall on camera, the movie had plenty of talent behind that camera, as well as in front.

This re-release is yet another gift from Cineliciouspics and, having just completed its theatrical run as of tomorrow (you can click here and scroll down to see where it has played), the movie is available now on DVD and Blu-ray, for purchase and/or rental. There is a terrific extra here, too, in the form of a current-day interview with Alexander Singer, the movie's still photographer and technical consultant, who talks about the filming and what went on personally and professionally at the time. It's all fascinating stuff, as is the film itself.