Screen capture from Asghar Farhadi’s brilliant, lacerating Iranian dram “The Past,” one of the best films of 2013.
Timeless classic “The Wizard of Oz” is a visual stunner in 3D.
by Sam Juliano
This week’s Monday Morning Diary falls in the time frame between Christmas and New Year’s, so as such it considers a period of time when many have enjoyed some vintage entertainment time. Its been cold for the most part in the NYC area, but not at all unbearably so, and at the moment this post is being prepared an all-day rain is apparently drawing to a close. Today marked the conclusion of the National Football League regular season, with the local Giants and Jets both gaining wins to allow them to finish 7-9 and 8-8 respectively, though obviously they were shut out of the playoffs. Otherwise it’s mostly a time for people to descend on crowded, sold-out multiplexes and to sit home compiling their own best-of-the-year lists. Right? Ha! I’m sure most have far better to do with their time, like relaxing and taking in some great music and/or reading some good literature. Christmas Day made for a marvelously fun time for the family, as we spent it over my youngest brother-his wife-and two young daughters’ home with my other brother and my sister and their families and my 83 year-old father, who cooked up his usual killer eggplant parmigiana. I hope everyone had special days and would love to hear the reports!
I want to thank Dee Dee once again for all the time and effort she expended in keeping the site wonderfully adorned and attuned to the holiday season. She has faithfully completed this time-consuming task for the past four years running, and I remained overwhelmed by her incomparable generosity of spirit. She is truly a one-of-a-kind human being.
The family enjoyed a week at movie theaters (some in NYC) and though our wallet survived the time much lighter, everyone had a great time.
The Past **** 1/2 (Saturday night) Film Forum
August: Osage County **** (Friday night) Union Square
The Wolf on Wall Street **** (Christmas Day) Starplex
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom *** (Thursday) Edgewater
The Wizard of Oz (1939; 3D) ***** (Sunday) Film Forum
For the second time in three years with THE PAST gifted Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has served up a transformative and universally profound study of marital discord, crafted through intricate character development and the shattering force of strife-ridden drama. The film is mainly about the near-impossible task of maintaining stability in the face of rapid change. Again the director pulls stupendous performances from his lead players in a film that surely should land on everyone’s ten-best list.
At times cinematically delirious and almost always wild and amoral, Martin Scorsese’s exhilarating three-hour THE WOLF ON WALL STREET disturbs, revolts and shocks in equal measure, yet the cast -especially the oft-electrifying Leonardo Di Caprio – is impressive and the film has many funny moments that make it all irresistibly entertaining.
Tracy Letts’s Tony Award winning play AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is one of a line of plays about dysfunctional families who fight their demons, which translates to drugs, booze, adultery, guilt and severe depression. Eugene O Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into Night comes to mind first, but Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? also deal with these issues most compellingly. The film version, adapted from his play by Mr. Letts, is carried by some raw and funny dialogue, some corrosive characterizations and some bare-boned emotional battles among family members. The scene stealer as expected is Meryl Streep as the neurotic, pill-popping, chain-smoking matriarch of the Weston family who is suffering from throat cancer. The play brings together three generations of the dysfunctional family, who are gathered in Oklahoma. The pathologies present in the characters are exposed, and it becomes abundantly clear that these afflictions are what both brought the these people together and drove them apart. The snobs out there will be looking for fault with film as adapted from play, but as ever its the drama that makes it all work. The director does force the issues at times with close-ups and pull backs, but I think this was done as well as it could have been all things considered. Dealing in good measure with pain and resentment that bubbles over the surface, the film and play before it is set in a country house in Osage County, Oklahoma never the Kansas border. Of the supporting players Julia Roberts as the daughter Barbara is especially excellent. I reviewed the Broadway play back on November 21, 2008 at the site:
MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM could not have been released at a better time. Its serviceable for sure, and has its moments, but its more measured and sedate than it should have been. The film is more simplified and dutiful than it is illuminating or inspired, but Idris Elba gives a commanding performance.
THE WIZARD OF OZ in 3D was pure holiday week bliss, and it’s hard to imagine this timeless classic looking any better. The 3D works as an enhancer more than a technical revelation, but it works spectacularly well. The film (shown on Sunday morning as part of their ‘Film Forum Jr.” series) has been given the red (and yellow!) carpet at this site many times over the years. Here’s what I said as part of my review of it for the musical countdown two years ago:
It is arguably the most beloved film ever made in this country. It was based on one of the most venerated children’s stories ever written. It launched the career of the greatest female thespian to ever appear in a musical film, and it remains the one film she is most reverentially identified with. The movie’s celebrated score is woven into our popular culture, and it’s unforgettable screenplay has produced lines of dialogue that are ingrained into the consciousness of anyone and everyone who has watched the film countless times, and have come to value it’s themes of home, family and friendship as cinematically conclusive. The film’s most coveted song is probably the most popular number ever written during the twentieth century, and has been covered time and again by renowned artists. The story of it’s changing directors and cast auditions remain as fascinating to movie lovers as anything else about the film, and more has been written on the making of the picture than any other in history. The story of the little people who appear early in the film in one of it’s most celebrated sequences, remains a stand alone curiosity for many to this very day, with the old age passings of this unique fraternity a major news item. Every supporting member of the film’s distinguished cast will eternally be remembered firstly for the role they played in this film, even with exceptional careers to their credit. No film has been more referenced in other movies, and the final black-and-white sequence set in the bedroom of a Kansas farmhouse may well be the most emotionally moving scene in the history of American cinema. With the advent of home video in the late 70′s the film became an incomparable favorite, and to this day has been released more often on the many video formats up to a recently-released blu-ray box set. The smash Broadway hit Wicked is hugely indebted to the 1939 film. While it has come to represent homespun family values and the most vivid realization of one’s dreams, The Wizard of Oz is imbued with humor and humanity, two qualities that more than any other have contributed to it’s enduring, even spectacular appeal over decades all around the world. Much like the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the day astronauts first stepped foot on the moon, many Americans will never forget the day, the month and the year they first remembered watching the film, and in whose company they were with. Just two years ago, the seventieth anniversary of the film’s opening was celebrated to national fan-fare, with the original city of it’s first appearance being honored – Oconomwoc, Wisconsin.
For baby-boomers like myself The Wizard of Oz first took hold during the famous run of CBS holiday showings, which initially were offered around Easter time in the 60′s and early 70′s. In those exceedingly impressionable days watching The Wizard of Oz was the highlight of my week, month and year. It was a time when I was frightened by the wicked witch, the haunted castle and the winged monkeys, was reassured by the dismissals of the good witch Glinda, and was intrigued by the bizarre appearance of the Munchkins, whom had me asking question after question about. When Toto escaped over the draw bridge, when Glinda provided a snow panacea for the poppies that felled our beloved brood, when the tin man used his axe to help free Dorothy from her prison and drop a chandelier on her pursuers, when the witch -made of sugar- is destroyed by a bucket of water, and when Toto unmasks the well intentioned but weak-willed charlatan, by pulling open a curtain, I was exhilarated and relieved, even though I knew what would happen. Like so many other kids I took an immediate liking to the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, all who added to the security of our young heroin, who was in this seemingly unsolvable dilemma from the beginning. I always shed tears -even to this very day in fact- when the Cowardly Lion wrenchingly tells Dorothy that although she is stranded on Oz, he and the others didn’t want her to go anyway. And the final scene is a sure-firer tear-jerker, broaching the concepts of home, love of family and the idea that happiness can be realized within your own borders.
Family dysfunction: August: Osage County
Leonardo Di Caprio in Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf on Wall Street’
