The Young Pope – New HBO Limited Series

HBO rolled out its new limited series The Young Pope on Sunday night (January 15th). Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, the series opening episode is nothing if not shocking.

Sorrentino, as we saw in both The Great Beauty (2013) and Youth (2015), is a master of both the beautiful as well as the grotesque. His compositional skills have produced some of the most visually arresting and stunning scenes in both of the above named films. Be sure and confident that this will continue in this limited TV series.

To simplify the story we have Lenny Belardo (played by Jude Law) as the just elected new Pope, and the first ever American Pope and is about to be introduced to the world. Or as the Italian press and media must have gushed out again and again – Habemus Papam – which is Latin for We Have a Pope. This is usually uttered by the Cardinal Protodeacon, who is the most senior of the Cardinal Deacons. This is announced from the Central Balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, and what follows is the new Pope gives his Urbi et Orbi – To the City [of Rome] and to the World address.

While that may be how a new Pope is introduced to the world, along with the white smoke. it is not how the series begins. Rather we see Judy Law emerging from under a huge pile of sleeping babies. But it is only a dream.

Law, as Pius XIII, then proceeds to shower and dress (yes, there’s a back view quick shot of a nude Pope about to enter his shower). What follows is a long sequence of the Pope heading to the Central Balcony. Think of Scorsese’s classic Goodfellas scene when Henry Hill and his date make their way through the underbelly of New York’s Copacabana Club. Only this time it is not a continuous or single tracking take. We have a number of cuts to the reactions of the Cardinals, and Monsignors, and other Vatican staff, as well as the faces of many in the huge throng below in St. Peter’s Square who blissfully await their first view of the new Pope.

To be certain as well as specific,  it was splendidly shot and edited.

Sorrentino still has more than a few cards left to play. The day of the new Pope’s introduction is  in the midst of a rain shower. We see literally thousands of umbrellas in the huge crowd. Before saying even a single word, Lenny opens his arms wide and leans back gazing to the heavens – and, as if on cue, the rains stop.

He then launches his Urbi et Orbi speech, and for a while it sounds like the standard Pope speak (aside from the English). But then midway, Sorrentino turns the speech inside out, and instead of papal good wishes and niceties, we get the complete opposite.

This Pope is winging it, and making it up as he goes. He has no intention of following the rules or traditions. He’s like no other Pope of all that came before him.

He’s a conservative and he is going to bring the Church into line with what he wants rather than the way it has always been. He will later say, And this is only the beginning.

He has a one on one conference with Cardinal Voiello (Silvio Orlando above) who is in charge of Finances, Politics, and almost everything that isn’t theological. When he tells the new Pope that he is basically going to run the business and political side of the Church, the new Pope demurs and announces that his Senior Advisor will be Sister Mary, who rescued the young Lenny from an orphanage in California when he was just a boy. Diane Keaton has the role.

Humbled and despondent, Cardinal Voiello has been placed in a position of having to slink away. Lenny has already pressed the secret and silent buzzer beneath the desk that will summon a nun who will spin a lie (example – your 2:30 appointment is waiting in the anteroom).  How obliterating for this Cardinal to be dismissed so easily, and this is only their first meeting.

This new Pope is going shake things up, change the rules as he sees fit, and he could not care less about traditions of being nice to the staff. There was a terrific scene when Cardinal Voiello attempts to challenge the new Pope.

Voiello: Pardon me Holy Father, but you may not smoke in this room.

Belardo: Who made that rule?

Voielle: Your predecessor…

Belardo: Well, there’s a new Pope in town.

That’s our boy Lenny Belardo. He’s not concerned about being nice to anyone for any reason. He doesn’t tweet – he says it right to someone’s face. He doesn’t say it, but you can see the similarities between this Pope and the new President Elect.

Jude Law Stars as Dom Hemingway – Day Two at the Sarasota Film Festival

Long ago, a bloke named Alfie wowed international film audiences. Alfie tells the story of a young womanizing cad who leads a self-centered life, purely for his own pleasures, and answering to no one. But circumstances, or events, make him take stock of his situation, so he begins to question his uncaring attitude and notice his loneliness. As part of his daily routine, he cheats on numerous women, and despite his natural charms which women found irresistible, he treats them with disrespect using them for mostly for sex and infrequently for domestic purposes. This was 1966, and Alfie was a huge hit with Michael Caine who played Alfie receiving an Oscar Nomination for Best Actor.

Fast forward to 2013 and Fox Searchlight Films opens Dom Hemingway at the Toronto Film Festival last September. In 2014, the film played at SXSW (South By Southwest) in Austin Texas before coming to Sarasota.

I’M DOM HEMINGWAY!!!

Dom Hemingway is a British black comedy/crime drama. Starring Jude Law as Dom Hemingway. He is a modern version of Alfie – only cruder, ruder, and lewder. And without any of the charm as well. Or you could say that Dom Hemingway is the British version of The Wolf of Wall Street – only without Wall Street.

As the Film opens Hemingway is performing a topless soliloquy about his cock, which was – in Dom’s words – a tireless soldier always at the ready, a gift to the ladies as valuable as a Renoir painting, and if there had been a Nobel Peace Prize for such things, his stalwart champion would run away with the prize. As the camera pulls back, we realize that while Dom was paying verbal homage to his appendage, some one else was paying oral homage. The scene concluded with Dom completing the act – only with out the explosion of lava that he had just told us about. All off-screen of course.

Dom walks out of his home for the last twelve years – prison

Post opening credits, Dom is about to be granted his freedom after spending the last dozen years of his life in a British jail. He’s missed his own divorce, his wife’s death, his daughter’s growth into adulthood, and his payday for the bank heist that he kept his trap shut about for the double six stretch.

Nobody call me – for THREE DAYS!

Dom is a tough guy, a hooligan actually, with as foul a mouth on him as you’ve ever seen. This is not the Jude Law who played Dr. Watson in the Holmes films, nor is he the Dr. Jonathan Banks from Side Effects. In fact, Dom is more objectionable and more obnoxious than any film character in recent memory. It’s hard to like the character – but… yet, with Law working as hard as possible, he breathes life into this loathsome person.

It is as if Law unleashed his inner Cockney. Actually Law is from Lewisham, a South London neighborhood which is not really London’s East End, home of the true Cockneys. He’s foul-mouthed, and beats up a guy who lived with his ex-wife, trots around naked in the woods in the South of France, and he never met any one he couldn’t and wouldn’t insult, and I mean grossly insult, with in moments after meeting.

Okay, as I mentioned, Dom and his bbf and mate, Dickie Black, played by Richard Grant

who comes off as a younger Christopher Walken, head down to St. Tropez in the south of France to meet Mr. Fontaine played by Demian Bichir,

who Dom had kept silent about, and did the time rather than rat his partner out. Dom is in line for a big payday. Now Fontaine is a reasonable guy, and recognizes that Dom did him a big favor, and so he owes Dom big-time.

But Dom can’t keep his trap under controls. He tells, sorry – make that screams to Fontaine that he wants everything that is owed to him PLUS interest PLUS a present. Dom makes it known to everyone on-screen and in the audience as well, that he has designs on Fontaine’s girl friend Paolina played by Madalina Ghenea (above and below).

The 2014 Sarasota Film Festival Begins Tomorrow

I’ve just returned from picking up my press credentials and screening passes for the 16th Annual Sarasota Film Festival April 4th – 13th, 2014. The tagline for this year’s festival is One Festival – Infinite Possibilities. Let’s have a look at a few of the films I will be covering:

Opening Night, April 4th at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall – Last Days in Vietnam

A documentary directed by Rory Kennedy, the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy. As the final weeks of the Vietnam War were winding down chaotically, the North Vietnamese Army was closing in on Saigon, and the U.S. government remained in Congressional gridlock.

With the clock ticking and the city under fire, American soldiers and diplomats on the ground, were facing a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate U.S. citizens only–or to risk treason and save the lives of as many South Vietnamese citizens as they can. LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM is an unforgettable story of heroism and compromise in the face of impossible odds, a film that is at once profoundly moving and an indispensable chronicle of the end of the Vietnam War. 

Rory Kennedy was only seven years old at the time the events happened.

Saturday April 5th – Dom Hemingway

Dom Hemingway stars Jude Law as a crook who kept his mouth shut while doing 12 years in a British jail. Now he wants to collect his cut.

Is the new version of Alfie, a role made famous by Michael Caine nearly 50 years ago (1966). Or is it more like Law as a loud mouthed hooligan?

Monday April 7th – Coherence

On the night of an astrological anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events.

Part cerebral sci-fi and part relationship drama, Coherence is a tightly focused, intimately shot film that quickly ratchets up with tension and mystery. Might we have a new version of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise? Or Close Encounters of the Third Kind – or something else? Check out the trailer:

Tuesday April 8th – Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

A lonely Japanese woman becomes convinced that a satchel of money buried and lost in a fictional film (Fargo), is in fact, real. With a crudely drawn treasure map and limited preparation, she escapes her structured life in Tokyo and embarks on a foolhardy quest across the frozen tundra of Minnesota in search of her mythical fortune.

The film stars Rinko Kikuchi who has appeared in Pacific Rim, The Brothers Bloom, 47 Ronin, and Norwegian Wood.

Wednesday April 9th – Words and Pictures

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important. A witty romance-com edy with Clive Owen as the English teacher and Juliette Binoche as the art instructor. Let the battle begin… but check out the trailer first:

Side Effects

Steven Soderbergh and his screenwriter Scott Z. Burns have crafted a psychological thriller which stars Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Channing Tatum. It is a gripping and involving drama made all the more interesting due to the lack of the usual overload of explosions, gun fire, and car chases that we get in movies these days. Simply, this is a fine film that makes you think.

Rooney Mara has never looked better on-screen, and she commands most of the screen time. Jude Law also gets a bear’s portion of face time as well, and his performance is well done.

The film has a good many twists and turns, and even the trailer keeps some secrets. The trailer is at the end of my review which I’ve done my best to keep it spoiler free, so feel free to skip watching the trailer. The title of the film is Side Effects. Which leads you to the thought that this is about a big pharmaceutical company fending off a law suit.

That’s been done before, only with a big Agro-Chemical firm. That film starred George Clooney, and was called Michael Clayton. Side Effects is just kind of similar. The difference between Michael Clayton and Side Effects is that the battle lines are much fuzzier and we watch but not from an attorney’s perspective.

At times, we aren’t sure that what we saw was real or a hallucination. At other times the we lose track of who are the victims and who are the perpetrators. The film will keep you guessing, and things change-up time and time again, and as you watch, you’ll find that you’ll need to go back and re-work your theories.

Of course none of this is rocket science. But you will need to pay attention as there are clues – some of which are important and telling, and others are  false clues. And I think that’s what makes the film worthwhile.

I almost said ‘fun’ rather than worthwhile. This is not a fun film. But this isn’t a morose affair either. The fun is that you do become involved. You do try to figure out stuff. I’m not sorry to say that my conclusion as I walked out, was that I was impressed, and I enjoyed the 105 minutes.

Rooney Mara is a tiny woman and here she’s been given a huge role in this film. We only got a brief glimpses of her in a few scenes in The Social Network and she sparkled. From there, she got a star’s turn, and definitely a major career boost, when she was signed to appear in the David Fincher version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the sequels.

While Mara was superb as Lisbeth, the role was a distance from most of us. I’m not talking about the film being set in Sweden. Instead I mean that, while most of us were rooting for Lisbeth, there was no doubt that she was a strange woman. It wasn’t that she was admirable, but rather that she was scary.

Here, in Side Effects, Rooney plays a character, Emily Taylor, that is much easier for us to identify with. I found her performance mesmerizing.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes 2 opened today. The full title is Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. While I won’t call this one a flop – disappointing comes to mind. Everything we loved about Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) & Dr. Watson (Jude Law) in the 2009 film – seems a tad stale when we see it yet again.

It’s all there – the banter, the stop-action aka slow-fast-slow action sequences, the gritty and sooty London, Irene Adler (briefly), Inspector Lestrade (he’s there but not so you’d notice) and Holmes’ keen eye (I see everything!, he tell us), plus the mandatory arch villain.

What’s not there is a lot of laughs.

The plot is the hackneyed ‘war profiteering’. Yes, Professor Moriarty is reduced to this banality. But it does take a while for him to tell us as much. Which leaves plenty of time for Holmes and Watson to travel from London to Dover where they board a steamer to cross the channel, then on to Paris, and ultimately Switzerland.

Along the way, Irene Adler, who once again is played by Rachel McAdams (above), comes and goes. Paving the way for Noomi Rapace to enter as the gypsy woman, Madam Simza, a role which garnered her lots of screen time, a few movie posters, and third billing behind only Downey and Law. But sadly, she was far more interesting as Lisbeth Salander.  As Simza, Noomi displayed a fabulous appearance but with a decidedly small range of facial expressions.

Contagion

After seeing Contagion today, I thought long and hard about the peanuts sitting in a bowl on the bar next to my drink. This new film directed by Steven Soderbergh, and written by Scott Z. Burns is described as an action thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly virus and a team of doctors contracted by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to deal with the outbreak. If you think that this film might remind you of the 1995 film called Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Renee Russo, and  Morgan Freeman – you’d be correct.

I think the term action thriller is a little misleading. There’s not really a lot of action and it isn’t really a thrill ride either. What it really is a horror story that could become true tomorrow or at any other time in the future. Only in this horror story, the monsters aren’t visible.

In fact, there already have been plagues, and diseases that have spread rapidly. The horror is that it can come at any time, and in anyplace on the globe. That is what is so frightening.

The film tells us that an average person touches their own face 2 or 3 times a minute all day. That’s 2-3 thousand times a day. Every day. The film tells us that every day contacts with other people like shaking hands, picking up a glass, handling a door knob, or a pole on a subway train or a bus, or even handing someone a file, or money, or a credit card then receiving it back might result in the transmittal of a disease.

Gwyneth Paltro as Beth Emhoff calling a friend in Chicago. She's just got off the plane from HK.

The film opens at Day 2. Someone we know (the actress – not the character) has contracted the disease. She’s unaware – but we know. Part of the reason is that this film’s title is Contagion, and she looks and acts sick, and the other reason we know is that the blasted trailer told us as much. This is Beth Emhoff played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Within a few minutes of film time, she’s weakened, collapsed, rushed to a hospital, then dies.

Repo Men

Repo Men, which opened today, gives new meaning to the term “dead-beat client”. Back in the day, say 1984,when Emilio Estevez was making a name for himself as an up-and-coming actor, he starred with Harry Dean Stanton in the classic film, Repo Man. When Estevez and Stanton did their jobs as auto repossessors, the dead-beat client likely woke up the next morning and said something along the lines of, “Geezus, my car’s gone!”

The main difference between then and now is that once the new Repo Men have done their thing, the dead-beat clients simply don’t wake up.

Many of you who will want to see this movie are quite likely familiar with the CSI TV show, both the original, set in Las Vegas, and the spin-offs located in New York and Miami. Imagine then this exchange between CSI Lt. Horatio Caine and his Medical Examiner, Dr. Alexx Woods,

“So Alexx, you’re saying our friend here bled out?”
“That’s right Horatio – but exsanguination is only a part of it…”
‘Why is that Alexx, I was told there was a huge wound to his chest. What did the vic’s heart tell you?”
“That’s just it H, there was no heart – there’s just an open, empty space where it should have been.”

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes – now there’s a name that has been around for ages. The famous series of detective novels and stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle more than a hundred years ago are still being read and what’s more, are still being made into films.

The most recent of which is called Sherlock Holmes and was released a little more than a week ago on Christmas Day, 2009. This film, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Dr. Watson. is doing quite well at the box office and has an excellent chance to be nominated for some Oscars.

The film takes place in London. This is not the light and airy London that we recently saw in Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Or the London we saw in Woody Allen’s Match Point – those settings were sunny and beautiful and romantic. No, this is the London of the late Victorian 1890’s – a London that is dark, gloomy, overcast, and foreboding. This is the London where the common man in the street usually needed a shave, a bath, and most likely used a tooth-brush only on rare occasions.