Photo caption: Maya Hawke in WILDCAT. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Wildcat braids together the sad life of writer Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke) with several of her iconoclastic stories. Director Ethan Hawke starts Wildcat with a faux trailer for a lurid movie based on O’Connor’s short story The Comforts of Home. Then he depicts O’Connor thinking up one of her stories and then suddenly shifts from O’Connor’s real life by bringing an O’Connor story to life. Maya Hawke and Laura Linney, who also plays Flannery’s mother Regina, play various fictional characters in the O’Connor stories.
O’Connor herself described writing, not as an escape, but as a “plunge into reality”, a reality many would prefer not to face.
Flannery was trapped in a cultural wasteland where no one understood her work (Milledgeville, Georgia), trapped in the body of an invalid (lupus) and trapped in profound loneliness. Flannery took herself and everything so seriously and made no concession to the social niceties. At a cocktail party, Flannery could be an epic Debbie Downer. Flannery’s mother (Laura Linney) – so often wrongheaded – is absolutely correct when she suggests, “you might want to consider being a little more friendly “.
Wildcat is a showcase for Maya Hawke’s chameleonic performance as Flannery and as several of O’Connor’s fictional characters. Laura Linney is brilliant, too, both as Flannery’s mother and as several characters in O’Connor short stories (and is unrecognizable in the first vignette).
Poor Liam Neeson – he’s a fine actor who has become so iconic a movie star that, when he appears here as an Irish priest, you can’t help crying, “Hey – that’s Liam Neeson”.
Here’s my bottom line on Wildcat. Ethan Hawke’s direction is imaginative. Maya Hawke’s and Laura Linney’s acting are superb. The core story is one of an unhappy and often unpleasant person. Wanna sign up for this?
We revel in the art produced by the anguished artist, but would not enjoy being in the company of said artist and her anguish. The best parts of Wildcat are the staging of O’Connor stories. The least enjoyable are the scenes with O’Connor herself.
In Vincent D’Onofrio’s western The Kid, a boy (Jake Schur) escapes with his sister from a murderous uncle, but runs right into the Billy the Kid-Pat Garrett finale. The core is the lesson that the boy learns from his relationships with both Western icons – Billy (Dane DeHaan) and Pat (Ethan Hawke).
I recommend this Vincent D’Onofrio /Film interview, in which he discusses how the boy’s relationships with Billy and Pat echo the male role models from his own childhood.
The fine actor Dane DeHaan is the first movie Billy the Kid that I’ve seen who actually looks like Billy the Kid; he also behaves as I imagine the real Billy the Kid to behave – as a charismatic but psychopathic punk. No handsome, sardonic Kris Kristoffersson or misunderstood Paul Newman here. Ethan Hawke, of course, is excellent as a man imparting an important truth to a boy – that life may be complicated, but that reliability is always damn important.
The Kid is a little movie that works, chiefly because of DeHaan’s performance, for fans of Westerns. The Kid can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Ethan Hawke, Rose Byrne and Chris Dowd in JULIET, NAKED
Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd sparkle in the affable romantic comedy Juliet, Naked. This rom com has a fresh premise – boy loses girl and finds her pursued instead by his lifelong idol. But the core of the film is, is it ever too late to jump start your life?
Annie (Byrne) lives what has become a very unsatisfying life in a British beach resort. Upon her father’s death, she returned to her hometown to help raise her little sister and the take over her father’s tiny museum. She fell in love with the local professor Duncan (O’Dowd), and they’ve been living together for over a decade. But now the sister is grown, she’s outgrown the museum, and the self-absorbed Duncan just doesn’t care about her opinions or her wants. She’s very unhappy – and it’s all sneaked up on her.
Duncan, on the other hand, is completely fulfilled by his obsessive fandom for the pop singer-songwriter Tucker Crow, who disappeared into seclusion twenty years ago. He’s filled a room of their apartment with Tucker Crowe memorabilia, and lives for the online discussions that he moderates discussions on his Tucker Crowe website. He derives status and gratification from being the world’s leading self-appointed authority on Tucker Crowe. He is a major league bloviator. In the movies, O’Dowd always seems so lovable; here, he;s successful in stretching himself into an unsympathetic character.
Tucker Crowe (Hawke), is living in an exile of self-loathing. Whereas Annie has settled for a life she no longer wants, Tucker has blown his life up with bad choices. After fathering several kids with several mothers – and abandoning them – he is now trying for redemption as the stay-at-home dad for his youngest, an eight-year-old boy. It turns out that one act of bad behavior in particular has – to him – discredited all his hit songs.
Rose Byrne and Chris Dowd in JULIET, NAKED
A turn of events lead to Annie kicking out Duncan, and Annie and Tucker – two unhappy and lonely people – meet online. Comedy and romance ensues. Among the funnier moments are when Duncan meets Tucker in real life, when Tucker stumbles into Duncan’s Tucker Crowe shrine and when all of Tucker’s exes and progeny descend on Tucker and Annie in a hospital room.
Ethan Hawke, who is a fair musician, nails a sweet cover of The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset. Hawke also performs many of the songs on the soundtrack, including a very fun punk anthem during the closing credits.
Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke in JULIET, NAKED
Overall, I liked Juliet, Naked as an agreeable romp. The Wife recommends it as a home video watch, not for a special trip to the theater.
The Wife also said she was distracted by all the clumsy efforts to hide Rose Byrne’s pregnancy – extra-roomy dresses and Byrne’s awkwardly front-carrying duffels and all manner of objects. I didn’t notice, but Byrne did gave birth in November 2017, so I assume that The Wife was once, again, far more observant than I.
In the emotionally bleak psychological drama First Reformed, Ethan Hawke plays Toller, the clergyman in charge of a historic church with about ten parishioners. The church survives as the museum-and-gift-shop arm of a modern megachurch helmed by Reverend Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer billed as Cedric Kyles). Toller is a very troubled guy, who is consumed by a journalling project, which he says brings him no peace, but only self-pity. Toller is content to perform a weekly service and guide the odd tourist through the church. That is all about to be disrupted by the church’s upcoming 250-year anniversary celebration, which Toller dreads.
Toller is asked by one of his tiny flock (Amanda Seyfried) to counsel her very depressed husband (Phillip Ettinger). Few understand depression as well as Toller, who, we learn, has joined the church because of a grievous family loss. He is also obsessively thinking and over-thinking a crisis, not so much of faith, but of purpose. And, it is revealed that Toller is in physical pain from a very menacing medical condition.
Toller tells the young husband that balancing hope and despair is life itself. Indeed, most of First Reformed focuses on the despair. As First Reformed gets darker and darker, it become more and more intense, all the way up to a ticking bomb of a thriller ending. The ending is such a squirm-in-your-seat nail-biter that it’s hard to watch, but the payoff is worth it.
Amanda Seyfried in FIRST REFORMED
Writer-director Paul Schrader, has created a serious work of art in First Reformed. It is a very still movie with a very spare soundtrack. The aspect of the frame is squarish and sometimes square. Everything about First Reformed is distilled down to its concentrated core. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver,Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ, and directed Affliction and Auto Focus. So he is no stranger to plumbing the depths of human internal crises.
Ethan Hawke is excellent as Toller. Hawke’s performances are usually fidgety. Not here. Hawke is notable for his stillness as he plays a man who flings himself into reflection and away from social entanglements.
The supporting performances are superb: Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer, Bill Hoag as Toller’s lay assistant and Victoria Hill as the woman who wants to rekindle a connection that Toller doesn’t have the emotional capacity for. All are suitably understated; this movie is so stripped-down to concentrate on the profound, there’s just no room for a Big Performance.
Phillip Ettinger is wonderful as the depressed young husband. This is a smart, committed and sensitive character who isn’t at all wrong – he’s just obsessing and going off the rails.
Who can be saved from despairing at the human condition? And what does it take? First Reformed provides an answer in its exceptionally powerful ending.
Writer-director Ti West brings some new touches to the spaghetti western in his mostly successful In a Valley of Violence. Ethan Hawke plays Paul the drifter, passing through town with his fly-catching dog Abbie. He runs afoul of the local bully, which unleashes bloody (and, in one instance, gruesome) revenge.
Right away, the music and the opening titles tell us that we’re watching a spaghetti western. The dramatic rock formations and thirsty scrub of New Mexico work, too. But this is a 21st Century take on the genre, with a protagonist suffering from PTSD. Guilt-wracked, he becomes bent on revenge but remains ambivalent about the killing that his vengeance will require. There’s also a bad guy with a conscience (but not enough of one). And the superb final shootout is unlike any that you seen in another dusty street.
John Travolta is exceptional as the town marshal, burdened by wisdom enough to know that he is surrounded by idiots and perhaps to be entangled in their fates. The marshal is well-seasoned and perceptive. He reads every character with pinpoint accuracy. He is one tough, crafty and ruthless hombre, but his actions are motivated by what must be done, not by empty machismo.
As befits a spaghetti western, the end of In a Valley of Violence (including the really violent parts) are filled with dark humor. James Ransome is very funny as the compulsively foolish town bully, springing relentlessly from one bad choice to another. One of the bad guys picks the most nail-biting moment to resist fat-shaming: “Don’t call me Tubby – my name is Lawrence”. The film’s highlight may be the LOL dialogue between Hawke and Travolta as they try to navigate not killing each other, all while stalking each other through the back streets.
Abbie the dog (played by Jumpy) is especially endearing and fun to watch. She even rolls herself up in her blanket by the campfire. In a Valley of Violence’s credits include the Dog Trainer, three Animal Wranglers and a Vulture Handler
In a Valley of Violence isn’t a perfect film. The event that motivates the vengeful onslaught is predictable and upsetting to dog lovers. And, other than Travolta and Hawke, the actors seem like they are modern folks dragged out of a Starbucks and dressed up in cowboy gear.
For what it’s worth, In a Valley of Violence’s climactic gunfight is historically consistent. Contrary to the tradition in movie Westerns, very few of the Old West gunfights were of the “quick draw” variety. The real cowboys, outlaws and lawmen tended to sneak up on each other and fire from cover. When they did approach each other in the street (as here), their guns were usually already drawn.
I’ll watch ANY spaghetti western, but I found In a Valley of Violence to be a particularly successful one. The dark humor and the performances by Hawke, Travolta and Jumpy are plenty reason to see In a Valley of Violence.
In Born to Be Blue, Ethan Hawke plays jazzman Chet Baker as he seeks to overcome his heroin addiction and mount an artistic comeback.
Writer-director Robert Budreau made the successful choice to start the story when Baker had hit bottom in the mid-1960s. Baker is relearning how to play the trumpet after his teeth were smashed by an angry creditor. Now he’s living in his girlfriend’s VW van and playing for free in a pizza joint, trying to work his way back up to a marquee venue and a recording deal. We see his 1950s glory days in flashback.
In a typically outstanding performance, Ethan Hawke makes us root for this guy, even as we cringe at the likelihood that his disease is going to find a way to destroy him. If you’ve seen Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, you know that Hawke is a master at playing unreliable characters – which makes him a perfect choice for a junkie like Chet Baker. Still, in a bowling alley scene, we glimpse the Chet Baker charm that could attract a woman who certainly knew better. Hawke convincingly fingers the horn as we hear the real Chet Baker play; Hawke himself sings on Baker’s signature vocal numbers Over the Rainbow and My Funny Valentine.
Carmen Ejogo (Coretta Scott King in Selma) is also excellent as two of the women in Baker’s life.
This movie’s elephant in the room is Baker’s addiction to heroin, about which he says, “It makes me happy”. Some very incisive scenes with his father hint at the roots of Baker’s disquiet. The people closest to Baker want him to kick the habit, but, unfortunately, more than he wants to himself. As he clings on with his fingerprints, Born to Be Blue is achingly effective.
Seymour Bernstein and Ethan Hawke in SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION
As Seymour: An Introduction opens, we see an elderly man giving piano lessons to VERY talented pianists. His gentle instructions address tiny details in the performances that we in the audience can’t notice – such as how deeply to press the piano key. Each of his tips is constructive and easy to understand As exacting as his corrections are, his overall demeanor never fluctuates from entirely supportive. This extraordinary teacher is the concert pianist Seymour Bernstein.
Bernstein long ago abandoned a career in the spotlight. We’re meeting Bernstein only because the actor Ethan Hawke met him by chance and benefited from his life advice. Hawke directed this film.
Thank you, Ethan. It’s a deep privilege to meet this gifted and kind man, and spend an hour-an-a-half watching him treat others as he does. When the Wife and I caught a screening, no one left the theater until the end credits were completed.
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Boyhood is a profoundly moving film – and I’m still trying to figure out why. It’s a family drama without a drop of emotional manipulation – there’s no big moment of redemption and no puppies are saved. It’s just about a boy growing up in a family that we all can recognize and going through a series of moments that all of us have gone through. Still, I found myself responding very emotionally and, hardass as I may be, I had a lump in my throat and moist eyes during the last half hour or so.
There’s a sense of fundamental human truth in Boyhood that comes from the amazing, risky and groundbreaking way that writer-director Richard Linklater made this movie. Boyhood traces the story of Mason (Eller Coltrane), his big sister (Lorelei Linklater) and their divorced parents (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke) from the time when Mason was six-years-old to when he is going off to college at age 18. Linklater and the cast shot the movie in 39 days over a TWELVE YEAR PERIOD. So the cast members actually aged twelve years without the need for creating that effect with makeup or by switching the child actors. Other than Linklater’s own Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight series of romances spaced nine years apart, he only movies that have used this technique of aging-in-real-time have been documentaries, most notably the 7 Up series and Hoop Dreams.
Besides the authenticity that comes from the aging-in-real-time, the key to Boyhood is the reality of each moment. Each scene in the film is universal. Every kid has had to suffer the consequences of the life decisions made by his/her parents. Every kid has felt disrespected by a parental edict or disappointed when a parent has failed to come through. Everybody has been bullied in the school bathroom. Everybody has felt the excitement of connecting with a first love – and then the shock/humiliation/heartbreak of getting dumped. No scene individually moves the plot forward. But each scene helps complete our picture of who Mason is and how he is being shaped by his experiences.
Of course, when parents divorce and when a kid’s family is blended with that of a step-parent’s, those are especially big deals. All those things happen to Mason in Boyhood; he has control over none of them, but they all have a lasting impact on his life and development. And when his mom decides to better herself by working her way through college and grad school to become a college instructor, her self-improvement makes her less available to her kids – and that’s a big deal, too. (This part of Linklater’s story is autobiographical.)
As we trace Mason’s early years, we relate to these universal experiences and, without noticing it, start rooting for him and his sister. By the time he is 15, we are hooked and so seriously invested in him that it’s easy to feel as much pride in his high school graduation as do his fictional parents.
The actors who begin as children and age into young adults – Eller Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) – are very good. Arquette and Hawke are also excellent in playing warts-and-all parents; each parent grows (in different ways) over the twelve years as much as do their kids.
So what’s it all about – as in, what’s life all about? That question is addressed explicitly by four characters in separate scenes in the final 35 minutes of the movie – by Mason as a brash and cynical, bullshitting 17-year-old, by his mom in a self-reflective meltdown, by his dad in a moment of truthful humility and by a potential girlfriend wise beyond her years. Whether any one of them is right and whether any one of them speaks for the filmmaker – that’s up to you.
Linklater has made other films that are exceptional and groundbreaking, most notably the Before series. His indie breakthrough Slacker followed a series of characters, handing off the audience to one conversation to another – a structure seemingly without structure. He followed that his Waking Life, another random series of conversations with his live actors were animated by rotoscope. Even his recent dark comedy Bernie is offbeat – a sympathetic take on a real life murderer (who is now out of prison and living in Linklater’s garage apartment). But Boyhood is Linklater’s least talky movie – and his masterpiece.
Boyhood is an important film – a milestone in the history of cinema. (I sure didn’t expect that I would ever write that sentence.) It may turn out to be the best film of the decade. It’s a Must See. Boyhood is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video. Settle in and turn off all distractions for the next two hours and forty minutes – you’ll be glad that you did.
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Boyhood is a profoundly moving film – and I’m still trying to figure out why. It’s a family drama without a drop of emotional manipulation – there’s no big moment of redemption and no puppies are saved. It’s just about a boy growing up in a family that we all can recognize and going through a series of moments that all of us have gone through. Still, I found myself responding very emotionally and, hardass as I may be, I had a lump in my throat and moist eyes during the last half hour or so.
There’s a sense of fundamental human truth in Boyhood that comes from the amazing, risky and groundbreaking way that writer-director Richard Linklater made this movie. Boyhood traces the story of Mason (Eller Coltrane), his big sister (Lorelei Linklater) and their divorced parents (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke) from the time when Mason was six-years-old to when he is going off to college at age 18. Linklater and the cast shot the movie in 39 days over a TWELVE YEAR PERIOD. So the cast members actually aged twelve years without the need for creating that effect with makeup or by switching the child actors. Other than Linklater’s own Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight series of romances spaced nine years apart, he only movies that have used this technique of aging-in-real-time have been documentaries, most notably the 7 Up series and Hoop Dreams.
Besides the authenticity that comes from the aging-in-real-time, the key to Boyhood is the reality of each moment. Each scene in the film is universal. Every kid has had to suffer the consequences of the life decisions made by his/her parents. Every kid has felt disrespected by a parental edict or disappointed when a parent has failed to come through. Everybody has been bullied in the school bathroom. Everybody has felt the excitement of connecting with a first love – and then the shock/humiliation/heartbreak of getting dumped. No scene individually moves the plot forward. But each scene helps complete our picture of who Mason is and how he is being shaped by his experiences.
Of course, when parents divorce and when a kid’s family is blended with that of a step-parent’s, those are especially big deals. All those things happen to Mason in Boyhood; he has control over none of them, but they all have a lasting impact on his life and development. And when his mom decides to better herself by working her way through college and grad school to become a college instructor, her self-improvement makes her less available to her kids – and that’s a big deal, too. (This part of Linklater’s story is autobiographical.)
As we trace Mason’s early years, we relate to these universal experiences and, without noticing it, start rooting for him and his sister. By the time he is 15, we are hooked and so seriously invested in him that it’s easy to feel as much pride in his high school graduation as do his fictional parents.
The actors who begin as children and age into young adults – Eller Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) – are very good. Arquette and Hawke are also excellent in playing warts-and-all parents; each parent grows (in different ways) over the twelve years as much as do their kids.
So what’s it all about – as in, what’s life all about? That question is addressed explicitly by four characters in separate scenes in the final 35 minutes of the movie – by Mason as a brash and cynical, bullshitting 17-year-old, by his mom in a self-reflective meltdown, by his dad in a moment of truthful humility and by a potential girlfriend wise beyond her years. Whether any one of them is right and whether any one of them speaks for the filmmaker – that’s up to you.
Linklater has made other films that are exceptional and groundbreaking, most notably the Before series. His indie breakthrough Slacker followed a series of characters, handing off the audience to one conversation to another – a structure seemingly without structure. He followed that his Waking Life, another random series of conversations with his live actors were animated by rotoscope. Even his recent dark comedy Bernie is offbeat – a sympathetic take on a real life murderer (who is now out of prison and living in Linklater’s garage apartment). But Boyhood is Linklater’s least talky movie – and his masterpiece.
Boyhood is an important film – a milestone in the history of cinema. (I sure didn’t expect that I would ever write that sentence.) It tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far and it may turn out to be the best film of the decade. It’s a Must See.
In 1995’s Before Sunrise, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is an American writer in his early twenties who meets a French woman, Celine (Julie Delpy), on a train and talks her into walking around Vienna with him before his early morning flight back home. They banter and flirt, sparks fly and they agree to meet in six months. We find out what happened nine years later when they encounter each other again in Paris in Before Sunset. Now, in Before Midnight, it’s been another nine years and Jesse and Celine are 41. Their journeys have reached another stage, and we meet them in a Greek coastal resort.
In the first two movies, we were rooting for them to get together, but didn’t know whether it would happen. Now we know – they are a couple. The arcs of their careers have intersected, they face the roles of parent and step-parent and their attraction and feelings for each other have matured. As do all couples, they must negotiate each other’s expectations, desires, temperaments and quirks – with a combination of deliberation, accommodation, manipulation and argument.
All three movies in the series are deeply affecting because they are unusually authentic movie romances. The tension in the first two movies is what will happen when they fall in love. The tension in Before Midnight is whether – and how – they will stay in love. Jesse and Celine are perfect for each other – but is that enough?
Before Midnight is co-written by director Richard Linklater and stars Hawke and Delpy. Once again, we have a movie romance without the tired conventions of more superficial romantic comedies; in this series, there are no goofy best friends/roommates, obnoxiously intrusive parents – and no weddings. Instead, we have two attractive, intelligent and very verbal people who are very funny, and have potentially conflicting needs.
The series, which develops the same characters over eighteen years, is a very impressive work and Before Midnight is the year’s best romance (and one of the year’s best movies).
Before Midnight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other VOD outlets. I recommend that you watch the prequels first. Both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on VOD from Amazon , iTunes, Vudu and other VOD outlets. Before Sunrise is free with Amazon Prime.
