Tag: Frances McDormand

Nomadland (2020, Chloé Zhao)

Nomadland becomes even more of an achievement when you find out the supporting cast is entirely amateur. The film’s a character study of lead Frances McDormand as she adjusts to her life as a modern nomad, traveling the country in her van (where she also lives), working seasonal jobs, and coming across a variety of people. All those people—with the exception of David Strathairn—are amateurs. Their effectiveness (or the outright quality of their performances) is stunning; because while McDormand is potentially an eccentric—the film takes a while giving that information—none of the folks she meets on the road come off as quirky Americana tropes. Director, screenwriter, and editor Zhao hones in on their humanity immediately.

The film takes place in 2011, after tragedy and the recession has ravaged McDormand’s life; after losing her home (she lived in a company town), she moves into her van while working a seasonal job at Amazon. She’s got a good friend at that job, Linda May (starring Linda May as Linda May, as it were). Zhao introduces the nomad lifestyle initially through May, before they both end up at a nomad retreat led by Bob Wells. That retreat might be the longest McDormand stays in one place, long enough to meet Strathairn, who’s immediately smitten with her, deepen her friendship with May, and meet a new good friend in Charlene Swankie.

Those four—May, Swankie, Strathairn, and Wells—will be the supporting cast, even though Nomadland never settles long enough for it to seem like a firm commitment. Zhao employs a lyrical structure to the film overall, with McDormand leading the film into excursions into the wilderness around her, but there’s some epical drama involving Strathairn, where the film—quite frankly—comes the closest to derailing. Zhao pulls it all together again and pushes up and over, saving the best for last as far as character revelation goes on McDormand. During her travels, we find out more and more of her backstory, with sister Melissa Smith doing one of the great character study monologues to explain their relationship, but Zhao and McDormand resist any actual reveals on the character until the very end. Then they knock it out of the park with a perfect finish.

I had been expecting Nomadland to be a depressing piece about the ravages of the Great Recession, but Zhao finds an entirely different story. Not one of resilience or survival but of contentment and wonderment. The way Zhao and McDormand do the nature scenes, when McDormand takes a walk off the beaten path, is divine. Zhao isn’t showing the world through McDormand’s eyes, rather McDormand’s eyes on the world and then McDormand carries through with showing her experience of those sights. It’s breathtaking.

And gets added heft thanks to some of the choice exposition throughout the film, all building—not epically but in energy—towards the conclusion. McDormand’s got an arc, the film hasn’t. If there’s a third act, it’s where Zhao figures out how to delineate between the two. Not because she’s been avoiding it, but because there’s an end to the film even though the entire picture’s about how there isn’t an end. It’s got to be done.

The film identifies some of the locales McDormand ends up, like Wall Drug (dollar ice creams are not a plot point, however), but not expressly. The Where isn’t important, rather the What, and how Zhao showcases that What. Nomadland showcases its scenery separately from how McDormand observes it, with Joshua James Richards’s gorgeous, lush photography—the stuff he and Zhao do with foreground and background is glorious—Ludovico Einaudi’s music, and then Zhao’s exceptional cutting. It’s in the first twenty minutes or so it becomes clear how good the editing is going to be throughout Nomadland; the photography’s the photography, it’s an obvious success, but the editing is simultaneously sublime and bombastic. Zhao does superior work, so even when it seems like they’re going to take an easy route to a traditional narrative in the second half, the editing’s still superb.

But then, of course, Zhao and McDormand figure out how to make that seeming short cut to didacticism into just another place where McDormand wanders off the path to look around on her own.

McDormand’s performance is singular. Nomadland is all her (or her van). The character reveals late in the film line up with the performance we’ve already seen; they don’t inform because it’d be too intentional and Nomadland takes wandering approach; McDormand doesn’t respond well to being constrained. It all comes together in that exceptional finish.

In the supporting cast, while Strathairn’s excellent, Swankie’s the best. She’s prickly as opposed to May, who’s all heart. Swankie’s prickle provides an excellent contrast to McDormand, who’s muted. Swankie challenges McDormand, while May reinforces her. And Strathairn (tries to) tempt her.

Nomadland’s a singular picture, exploring a very specific character in a very specific—albeit wandering—setting. Zhao and McDormand (and the cast and crew) make a very special and decidedly outstanding film.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017, Martin McDonagh)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri needs a lot of passes. On one hand, writer and director McDonagh writes really shallow female characters outside protagonist Frances McDormand (well, part-time protagonist). On the other, he’s got a really shallow way of characterizing racists—they’re literally too dumb to know better. And then he’s got this weird way of writing Black characters, only two of whom exist in the aforementioned town. Given they immediately hit it off romantically, it’s weird they never met each other. There’s a third Black character–played by Clarke Peters—but he’s from out of town. And he’s got a way of getting the crackers in line.

There have got to be TV movies from the eighties and nineties with more depth, but not with the caliber of the cast. McDonagh gets a bunch of great performances out of his cast, who have mostly easy parts. Like Sam Rockwell as the numbskull racist stormtrooper deputy? Rockwell can do it. He can do it well. But it also doesn’t take much, which is why the performances seems less impressive after Caleb Landry Jones is able to run their scenes together. Or Zeljko Ivanek. Or Peter Dinklage. Or Lucas Hedges.

Wait, Hedges doesn’t have a scene with Rockwell, but Hedges is great and would be able to run the scene. Because Rockwell’s a victim of sorts too. His momma—Sandy Martin in an odd performance—raised him bad because she’s a numbskull racist too, what else would happen. And if it weren’t for sheriff Woody Harrelson’s terminal cancer, he might have a chance to teach Rockwell to stop torturing Black people in custody–which is a running “joke” for the first act and a bit of the second. Apparently McDonagh wanted to go for the audience who’d laugh at everyone repeatedly talking about torturing Black people but know it’s wrong. The torturing, not the laughing. His audience is very much the people who want to defend the laughing.

Harrelson gives an incredibly phoned in performance as the sheriff, who’s unable to solve the murder of McDormand’s teenage daughter (a good Kathryn Newton in flashback), so McDormand takes out three billboards drawing attention to that inability. Harrelson’s got the cancer subplot, he’s got the wife and kids subplot (though no one in the film is less important than Harrelson’s wife, Abbie Cornish, whose personality is her Australian accent), he’s too busy for a crime solving subplot.

McDonagh works a compelling enough melodrama—though, again, it’s frequently cringe-y and not just because all the guys are with women twenty years their junior and said women are just dehumanized ditz jokes—through the second act, but then fizzles when he tries to make it about the mystery. And the redemption arcs. So much redemption, so many abandoned characters.

If it were better, it’d be a mess, but McDonagh’s never able to pull it off after his first big twist. He’s only got two; neither are good. But the second one is at least in the finale, where there ought to be a big twist. The other one is where there shouldn’t be one so it draws attention and McDonagh never recovers from it.

Technically good performance from John Hawkes as McDormand’s abusive ex-husband who regularly beats her in front of their kids, which the kids have normalized and turned into a joke. Does Hawkes make the situation believable? No. But he’s good. Samara Weaving’s good as his nineteen year-old girlfriend who apparently supports him on her wages at a petting zoo or something.

Brendan Sexton III has an appropriate cameo, but it’d have worked better if I’d known it was him. Nick Searcy has a good cameo, but his name’s not on the movie because I think it came out he was too racist even for a vaguely edgy production like this one to promote. It’s in the first act when McDonagh’s writing for McDormand is best. Great scene.

Ben Davis’s photography is fine. McDonagh shoots it Panavision and can’t fill the frame, which is a bummer. Carter Burwell’s there to remind you Frances McDormand was in a Coen Brothers movie once so if you watch through half-closed eyes it seems like a Coen riff on a redneck gothic melodrama character piece. Only the movie ditches McDormand and switches to Rockwell in the third act to give it a very literal ending for the people in the audience who weren’t paying enough attention.

Otherwise, McDonagh’s direction is good. He’s very good with the cast. The problem’s his lack of insight.

McDormand’s good enough to carry it too, so when he shifts it to Rockwell, who can’t because it’s a nothing arc, way too little, way too late, Ebbing takes a big third act stumble.

It’s fine, actually. If it had a good finish with all the icky bad asterisks on it, it’d be worse. Once it’s clear McDormand and Rockwell don’t have great parts and Harrelson’s out of it… it’s fine. Just with a bunch of asterisks.

Darkman (1990, Sam Raimi)

The last twenty or so minutes of Darkman are when director Raimi finally lets loose. He’s been building to it, hinting at how wacky the movie’s going to get, but it doesn’t all come together until the end. And the end is when Darkman has the most standard action sequences. There are big set pieces. Before, it’s all very constrained. It all looks great–probably better than those last twenty minutes, when composite shots kind of do in Raimi’s imagination–but it’s limited.

The end is exciting, imaginative madness.

Darkman’s problem throughout is the script, but more because the movie’s too short for the story it needs to tell than anything the five screenwriters do wrong. Until the end of the second act, the movie hops and skips through its present action. There are way too many MacGuffins, way too many contrivances; Raimi’s fidgety and he creates momentum and Darkman needs it for those script lulls. Almost nothing in the middle of the movie actually matters by the end. The movie’s killing time before the set pieces.

More so the beginning of the second act than the end of it, but still… it’s too short.

So Liam Neeson is a scientist who is working on fake skin for burn victims. It disintegrates after ninety-nine minutes. Unless it’s in the dark, which you’d think might have something to do with the title, Darkman, because after Neeson is horribly burned and the doctors cut off his nerve receptors so he can’t feel pain (or any touch sensation) and he becomes super-strong, he needs the fake skin to exact vengeance. But he never uses it for extended periods of time in the dark.

He apparently uses the dark thing for storage purposes, but even the storage thing is just a sight gag.

Neeson’s girlfriend, Frances McDormand, is a lawyer who comes across a document bad guy Larry Drake wants. And he kills Neeson for it. Or so he thinks. Drake and his band of ultra-violent, but darkly comical goons blow up Neeson’s lab. His lab is also his apartment, which seems like a zoning problem, but whatever.

Added to the convolution is Colin Friels as McDormand’s… client? It’s unclear the professional relationship, but after Neeson “dies,” Friels puts the moves on McDormand. Though mostly offscreen apparently. Because McDormand disappears once Neeson starts his vengeance mission. Most of that mission is just killing off Drake’s goons. It seems like there might have been a plan in some cut scenes or a different draft of the script. It’s okay, eventually, because once McDormand comes back, Neeson’s character arc is more about how he’s going crazy from not having any touch sensation. And inventively and graphically killing the bad guys.

The visuals on Neeson losing his self-control are these fantastic montage sequences. There’s some montage to summarize his attempts at making his fake skin work too, but it’s function, not fervent. The madness montages are awesome. Inexplicably the last one, when Neeson needs to power up his adrenalin (he also has uncontrollable adrenalin for super-Darkman strength), is super short. It’s restrained, while everything else in the finale is outrageous. Raimi’s able to get away with a lot of bad composite shots just because the action’s so excessive. Not that montage, however.

But Neeson’s not just making fake skin faces of himself, he’s doing it of the bad guys to fool the other bad guys. So while Neeson’s performance is getting loopier and loopier, it only plays out when he’s opposite McDormand, which really isn’t much. They have three scenes together after she finds out he’s alive. Two of them really short. Otherwise, it’s Drake pretending he’s Neeson pretending his Drake or Nicholas Worth pretending he’s Neeson pretending he’s Nicholas Worth. There’s actually not a lot of the impersonation so Raimi never really figures out how to do them. The movie’s too short.

The movie dawdles through its first half, finally picking up in the second, and then getting really good in the finale. Only it’s too late. It’s not too little–there’s some awesome stuff in the third act–but it’s definitely too late.

Neeson’s good. He needs about ten more minutes to play the character after the “recovery” arc completes. Instead he basically gets a scene; it’s too bad, because his performance gets much more interesting as it goes along. McDormand’s fine. Her arc is similarly underwhelming. She does get a great visual cue for development in the first act, which Raimi sadly drops. The film’s not confident enough with his extravagances. Or more like the studio isn’t confident enough with his extravagances.

Drake’s good. He’s maybe in the movie too much. Friels’s isn’t in it enough, especially not after he gets to let loose. Friels and Neeson, who only have a scene together, both find ways to match the film’s peculiar intensities.

The goons are all fine. Though Rafael H. Robledo is in the film the most and has the least to do. Like, he’s just a goon. He’s not weird like the rest of them. He’s just got a scar and a ponytail.

Bill Pope’s photography, composites aside, is excellent. So is the editing–from Bud S. Smith and David Stiven.

Danny Elfman’s score is fine. It’s basically his Batman score from the year before, but it’s fine. It’s effective without being distinctive.

Darkman is seventy exceptionally competent, enthusiastic minutes before twenty minutes of sublime madness. It’s a shame Raimi couldn’t get the finale’s intensity through the whole thing. There are plenty of real, practical reasons he couldn’t, but he does hint at that intensity to come, so it’s still a damned shame.

Fargo (1996, Joel Coen)

Much–probably most–of Fargo is exceptional. The Coens take over half an hour to bring their protagonist into the movie. They spend that first half hour with the villains, even having time to make said villains simultaneously lovable and even more dangerous. William H. Macy isn’t just some loser who schemes to rip off his father-in-law, he’s a dangerous sociopath. It’s amazing what the Coens can fit behind those goofy accents and the folky talk.

And those levels of Fargo are what make it so fantastic. Frances McDormand isn’t playing a silly sheriff, she’s playing this incredible investigator who just happens to sound like she lives in a waffle commercial. All of the police work in the film is thoroughly executed; the cops aren’t of the Keystone variety.

But the Coens don’t engage with this situation. They don’t force the viewer. They don’t even acknowledge it. They’re playing it straight.

Until the end. McDormand stumbles across the bad guys by accident. Even worse, there was a plot point earlier to set up an actual investigatory discovery of the bad guys and the Coens skip it. Very disappointing.

Otherwise, the film is fantastic. Great photography from Roger Deakins, wonderful score from Carter Burwell. Fargo speeds along too. There’s never a slow moment.

The supporting cast–Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare, John Carroll Lynch–is great. Buscemi has some exceptional rants throughout.

McDormand and Macy are both excellent. McDormand even manages to sell the questionable stuff at the end.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson)

With Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson has finally put his directing craft so far ahead of his narrative, the narrative doesn’t matter. Neither, in Moonrise‘s case, do the actors. There isn’t a single outstanding performance in the film… maybe because Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola don’t write one. They’re to the point of using Jason Schwartzman as a gag cameo.

Moonrise is purposefully, aggressively artificial–Bob Balaban plays an omnipotent, future narrator who interacts with the characters. But it doesn’t really matter because Anderson’s craft is outstanding and the writing is still decent. A lot of the scenes between preteen outcasts Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward are lovely.

Anderson shoots as much of the film as he can in profile; the camera pans to introduce new action instead of cutting. Partially due to the film’s artificiality–partially to Anderson and cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman’s photography–it works. Moonrise isn’t supposed to be real. For instance, Tilda Swinton’s reduced to her job title.

Swinton’s no great shakes in the picture, but she’s not supposed to be. She’s gag casting, much like Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel. Keitel’s the best of those three. Bruce Willis and Edward Norton both do pretty well, though neither have enough material. Anderson and Coppola give Bill Murray absolutely nothing–he doesn’t even interact with his kids in the film, just barks near them. As his wife, Frances McDormand is better.

Moonrise Kingdom‘s a masterfully produced film. It’s just pointless, save demonstrating Anderson’s abilities as a director.

Aeon Flux (2005, Karyn Kusama)

Karyn Kusama can’t direct action, which hurts Aeon Flux a little bit, but she also can’t keep up the pace of her film. It should be a literal roller coaster–there’s some establishing material, which is nonsense, then the film drops Charlize Theron (as the titular character) in a mission. The mission runs the length of the film.

The film’s constantly stopping and starting. Instead of being a problem, Flux‘s pacing is one of its strongest elements. Well, until the third act.

Really awful narration opens and closes Flux. It’s like no one realized the film actually has a lot of good things about it. Kusama has zero confidence as a director.

In the lead role, Theron’s excellent most of the time. When she’s walking around the cheap sets or acting in front of a blue screen, not so much. The budget apparently didn’t go towards competent CG renderers. But she’s believable and sympathetic, even if Kusama can’t direct her fight scenes.

Marton Csokas’s excellent as the bad guy–and Theron’s love interest. Also good is Sophie Okonedo as her sidekick.

Both Jonny Lee Miller and Frances McDormand are awful.

When he’s not shooting CG, Stuart Dryburgh’s photography is good. Graeme Revell’s score has its moments.

Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi’s script is terribly affected in the dialogue department. But they get a lot of credit for laying groundwork on their revelation moments.

While it could’ve been far better, Flux is reasonably compelling. If one ignores the terrible opening narration.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Karyn Kusama; screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, based the television series created by Peter Chung; director of photography, Stuart Dryburgh; edited by Jeff Gullo, Peter Honness and Plummy Tucker; music by Graeme Revell; production designer, Andrew McAlpine; produced by David Gale, Gregory Goodman, Martin Griffin, Gale Anne Hurd and Gary Lucchesi; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Charlize Theron (Aeon Flux), Marton Csokas (Trevor Goodchild), Jonny Lee Miller (Oren Goodchild), Sophie Okonedo (Sithandra), Frances McDormand (Handler), Amelia Warner (Una Flux), Caroline Chikezie (Freya), Nikolai Kinski (Claudius) and Pete Postlethwaite (Keeper).

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Burn After Reading (2008, Joel and Ethan Coen)

The Coens usually write tight scripts. Burn After Reading doesn’t have a particularly tight script. Instead, it’s got a bunch of great performances and funny scenes–astoundingly good dialogue (their use of curse words for humorous effect is noteworthy)–and some great details. But the film isn’t really much of a story. Literally speaking, it’s about what happens after the CIA decides to transfer John Malkovich over to the State Department for no specified reason. In the film’s first uproarious exchange, Malkovich objects to being classified an alcoholic by a Mormon (Burn came before Prop 8, so there–unfortunately–isn’t any mention of alien planets). But the film isn’t really about Malkovich. He’s in quite a bit of it–and is excellent in the film in ways he hasn’t gotten to be excellent in quite a while–but he’s not the lead by any means.

Burn distracts from its lack of protagonist or tight plotting with the funny business. There’s a reasonably traditional first act with Malkovich, but only until it introduces Tilda Swinton (as Malkovich’s wife) and George Clooney (as her lover). Swinton turns in the film’s only bad performance and it isn’t really her fault, it’s the Coen’s. She plays a pediatrician who’s cruel to kids (in front of their parents). Doesn’t seem like she’d make it long in that professional. But it gets a little worse–I don’t think the Coens even bother to name her well in the film. I’m seeing her character’s name in the credits and it’s something of a surprise… like I only would have figured it out through process of elimination.

Anyway, once they show up, it’s not long before Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt arrive. McDormand and Pitt have lots of the film’s best scenes. Pitt shows off why he’s such a great comic actor–they’re both playing dopes, with McDormand a little smarter (only a little). As far as the performances go, Clooney probably comes in second behind Malkovich. While Malkovich gives this great performance, it’s just this technically excellent actor with good material. Clooney–in his Coen Brothers mode–creates this wonderful character, full of tics and idiosyncrasies. Much like the film itself, he exists to amuse.

The only other supporting roles of note are Richard Jenkins, David Rasche and J.K. Simmons. Jenkins does very well–but he always does very well–even if he doesn’t have much to work with. Rasche and Simmons have these fantastic scenes together, which is where Burn After Reading is so frustrating. Their scenes together–two of them–are comic gold, but the scenes’ presence in the film itself is what works against Burn After Reading as a solid narrative.

It’s the Coen Brothers making a movie to get belly laughs and not taking anything else into account. I’m sure one could argue the lunacy of the plot is some kind of post-modern spy movie, but it’d be inaccurate. Burn After Reading is a really funny movie. It probably ought to be something more, given the numerous excellent performances (McDormand, who I didn’t mention before, only creates a caricature, but it’s a good one). But its failing in that department actually doesn’t feel like much of a failure.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen; director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki; edited by Roderick Jaynes; music by Carter Burwell; production designer, Jess Gonchor; produced by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner; released by Focus Features.

Starring George Clooney (Harry Pfarrer), Frances McDormand (Linda Litzke), John Malkovich (Osbourne Cox), Tilda Swinton (Katie Cox), Brad Pitt (Chad Feldheimer), Richard Jenkins (Ted Treffon), Elizabeth Marvel (Sandy Pfarrer), David Rasche (CIA Officer), J.K. Simmons (CIA Superior) and Olek Krupa (Krapotkin).

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Blood Simple (1984, Joel Coen)

I’m pretty sure I saw the Blood Simple director’s cut twice in the theater. Seems like I did. The second time I helped a couple underage Coen fans get in, and I already knew the recut was a disappointment. I got the original cut from the UK, where it used to be available and might still be found, and waited almost ten years to watch it. I’m glad I did. I can appreciate it more.

What Joel Coen does in Blood Simple is adapt the Western for interiors, visually speaking. There are sweeping camera movements more at home in Monument Valley than in a loft, but there’s Coen using them anyway. It’s impossible to identify every moment of greatness in Blood Simple‘s filmmaking, because it’s probably every frame. From thirty-five seconds in to the film, I was already stuffed–it’s a sumptuous (or decadent, the word the wife prefers–in general, not specifically for the film) experience. Every scene is a wonder. It’s not just the sound, editing, music, cinematography, composition, dialogue–which is the best they’ve ever written–it’s everything together; it’s the experience of watching an endlessly brilliant film. It’s one of the best films of the 1980s, like a combination of late 1970s John Carpenter and early 1980s John Sayles. The tone of both those filmmakers fuses in Blood Simple, creating something different and singular.

Blood Simple is free of the Coen Brothers brand–starting with The Hudsucker Proxy, but almost with Raising Arizona, part of a Coen Brothers film is acknowledging it’s a Coen Brothers film. Except Blood Simple isn’t a Coen Brothers film in that sense. The silliness isn’t there. Usually, the silliness is only absent in their non-beloved films (with recent exceptions), but there’s no fluff on Blood Simple, no fat. It’s a Coen Brothers film about real people, not their standard caricatures. The acting and writing really come together to make something different. She’s the least assuming, but Frances McDormand turns in a great performance. I didn’t even realize, until about half-way in to the film, McDormand’s developed an on-screen persona these days. It’s nice to see her without. Dan Hedaya plays the second most sympathetic character in the film and he’s a complete terror. When the bad guy gets sympathy, somebody’s doing something right. M. Emmet Walsh is good as the villain, John Getz is good as the lover who gets between husband and wife Hedaya and McDormand. The other really great performance, which I did remember from the last two times, is Samm-Art Williams, who’s done little other acting work, but he’s fantastic.

Blood Simple is filled with an energy it’d be hard for the Coen Brothers to keep up these days (they aren’t hungry anymore and haven’t been for at least fifteen years), but what’s so telling is how much they disrespected their first film when they went back to recut it. Either they’d forgotten what made it great, or they hated it and wanted the film to somehow “fit” better with their modern successes. Unfortunately, I suspect it’s the latter. Otherwise, they’d have made some more films approaching this one’s caliber. But seriously, it’d be impossible to surpass it. Blood Simple is stunning… and it’s a tragedy they’ve never made this version available–readily available–on DVD.