Every year Variety asks playwrights, authors and songwriters to weigh in on screenplays and scripters in the Oscar race. Their insights are as fascinating as the pictures they write about.
Rarely, in a lifetime of endless filmgoing and decades of serious cinema criticism, is one honored, privileged, rewarded by having seen a motion picture that is memorable down to one’s core. Having seen “12 Years a Slave,” I cannot remember being as mesmerized, as touched, as stopped stock-still since the night I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war film “Paths of Glory.” It is that nonpareil a film.
Even the dullest among us, chained to jobs and lives we detest, cherish the word and the evanescent concept of freedom. Above all else, what “12 Years a Slave” burns into our awareness — as no other film has achieved — is the absolute power of the slavemaster over every moment of the blacks’ existence. It is a tyrannical and capricious power greater than any monarch’s. For these yearning, brutalized chattel, freedom is a goal that will never be reached: Pain and death stand in the portal.
This is a superbly reenacted chapter of a 200-year-long stain on American honor. Today’s celebrity-drunk culture of bitch-ho rap and wannabe gangsta homies not only do not comprehend that stain, but disgrace the courage of their forbears when they pull it as “the card.” It miraculously manages to combine the “Gone With the Wind” pastel mendacity still extant in parts of our land, with the shocking Grand Guignol gruesomeness of reality.
The direction, by Englishman Steve McQueen (whose previous films frankly gave me the creeps) is a bit finicky. But such carps are beyond notice in a film as praiseworthy and memorable as “12 Years a Slave.”
Fantasist Harlan Ellison has written or edited 75 books; more than 1,700 stories, essays, articles and newspaper columns; two dozen teleplays and a dozen movies. His best-known works include “Deathbird Stories,” “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” and “Memos From Purgatory.”
What are the elements of a great suspense story? First you need a compelling crime to drive it, something that makes your heart beat fast, an intolerable transgression that cries out for rectification. Then, that story needs to transcend the crime by entering the hearts and minds of the victims, perpetrators, investigators, and (most importantly), the audience. That is to say: in the unfolding of the tale we learn more about ourselves.
“Prisoners” does all that. There’s the working class Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his commitment, not necessarily to justice, but to solving the crime. There’s the question, what will a father do when his child is in mortal jeopardy? And then there is our fascination with the origins and consequences of evil.
In the best crime stories you see the villain up front not suspecting them at all. And so, when identity of the culprit is revealed, this knowledge is accompanied by a feeling of revelation. One of the things about the hard-boiled genre is that you can’t trust anyone. You can’t assume that you know, because in that way you will always defeat yourself.
The solution of the crime in “Prisoners” also was interesting. You have flawed characters in both the father (Hugh Jackman) and the detective. The father takes a suspect and tortures him, but you feel that the person being tortured is innocent. And indeed he is. But the father taking that guy and torturing him actually helps solve the crime. At the same time the detective was doing solid, and indispensable, police work; so two people, who seem to be working at cross-purposes, come together unconsciously to solve the crime. This unspoken resolution is some kind of wonderful.
Walter Mosley is the author of more than 43 books, including the bestselling Easy Rawlins mysteries. He is the winner of numerous laurels, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
In “Captain Phillips,” screenwriter Billy Ray has turned the story of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama off the Horn of Africa into a parable of modern life, a violent collision between the world’s poorest country with the world’s richest. It contrasts the desperation, dearth
of opportunity and powerlessness of Somalia with the enormous wealth and power of the Western world — cutting back and forth between the battered skiffs on a Somali beach where young men vie eagerly to join a pirate mission, and the vast acreage of containers laden with cargo at a rich port in Oman, with its queue of Goliathan vessels piled high with goods.
Inside this stark contrast, Ray and director Paul Greengrass manage to draw a sustained and meaningful parallel between the story’s two “captains,” the middle-aged, wily merchant ship Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks), and the daring young captain of the Somali pirates Muse (Barkhad Abdi). Both are left to fend for themselves on the high seas. Both are brave, serious and smart, and both are ultimately humane.
As Phillips struggles to survive, he also struggles increasingly to save his overmatched young captors from the approaching doom. The U.S. Navy looms as a coldly efficient machine, one of the most stirring dramatizations of overwhelming power I’ve ever seen. The film simplifies the options available to young men in Somalia, but not by much. It succeeds, amazingly, at making us admire the courage of the young pirates, whose resentment of America competes with genuine awe and admiration.
Mark Bowden is the author of 11 books, including “Black Hawk Down” and “Guests of the Ayatollah.”
I left Vietnam in March 1973. I had not been back since — until the other day. The forbidding jungles were gone, though, replaced by the unyielding mountains of Afghanistan. The distinctive chattering of the AK-47 was the same — as were the sickening thuds of the rounds hitting home. Pain from a wound I had not felt in 40 years tore through me and hot tears welled up. I could not move. I could not breathe. I was experiencing “Lone Survivor.”
After the backstory mercifully exhausted its usefulness, the combat sequences began. They were jarring, powerful, shattering and unrelenting. I can attest that only the best and the bravest endure this type of warfare without breaking down completely. Only the toughest of men could absorb the punishment rendered herein and still function. I had a few minor quibbles with the action — such as one of the SEALs sighting his weapon with a damaged eye swollen tightly shut — but what director Peter Berg has delivered is mostly on the mark.
To the uninitiated, the dynamic between the four central characters could seem farfetched; but, in truth, it is the SEAL credo personified. Each warrior, who quickly realizes he is going to die, pushes his bravado to the max, not only to quell his own fears, but to give each comrade the hope that he might be a “lone survivor.”
I came back from Vietnam without demons. I’m still in Afghanistan and I won’t be back for a while.
Former naval aviator Philip Keith’s decorations include the Air Medal for Gallantry, the Presidential Unit Citation and the Navy Commendation Medal. He is the author of two novels and two nonfiction books. His most recent book is “Fire Base Illingworth: An Epic True Story of Remarkable Courage Against Staggering Odds.”
Asghar Farhadi may be the most powerfully expressive auteur in contemporary film. In his latest film, “The Past,” he once again mines the very depths of human emotions, exploring the ways in which we cope with love and loss, and the cruel ways in which the two so often intersect in relationships. The film is part love story, part mystery, as each character’s past is slowly and methodically revealed until, in the end, every word and action carries with it the unbearable weight of a lifetime of poor decisions and unmet expectations.
Like most of his Iranian contemporaries, Farhadi has honed his craft hampered by a set of draconian censorship laws that are so opaque, so arbitrarily applied that they make Hollywood’s MPAA rating system seem downright transparent.
These limitations have forced Farhadi to develop a highly symbolic cinematic language, a kind of visual poetry that permeates all of his films. A sidelong glance; the slight furrow of a brow; the deliberate way in which one character hands a teapot to another — these subtle actions reveal more about his characters’ emotions than anything they could ever say.
Indeed, we are as drawn in by the conversations we are not privy to — the characters separated by a glass partition or hidden away in another room, their whispers inaudible to the audience — as we are by the dialogue we hear onscreen. We find ourselves leaning forward in our seats, straining to hear what’s being said. We wait for the barrier that keeps us from his characters to be lifted, so we can sneak in on their conversations. We are forever waiting. For what? We are not even sure. Right to the last minute — right up the very last frame of the film — we are waiting. Then the film ends and we discover that what we were waiting for is life — that life itself, for so many of us, is little more than waiting.
Iranian-American author and scholar Reza Aslan is the author of bestsellers “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” and “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.”
Here’s the thing about long-term couples: We fight differently than new couples because we’ve resigned ourselves to accept each other’s faults, and just move on. But do we move on? No. Never. Because people are fickle and crazy and selfish and resentment grows when you can’t put yourself first all the time.
Obviously children complicate all of this. Because, first of all, you sacrificed for your partner, as everyone always does in being with someone else. Then, second, you made these new human beings, and you can’t help but put them first-first. So where does that leave selfish old you and your whiny needs? It leaves you wondering what happened to your romantic notions about life and people and what we are capable of.
To me, this is “Before Midnight.” Linklater, Delpy and Hawke do a tremendous job portraying a few hours of a building argument between a couple.
The third act fight begins early on, with Jesse expressing to Celine that he’d like to be closer to the son he had with his ex-wife. Celine’s response is immediate: This is the end of our relationship. We then watch a full day of Celine sneakily and repeatedly taking swings of all sizes at Jesse’s ego. She’s trying to start the fight. She eventually succeeds and all of the built-up resentment comes out, as it always does. And then it blows over with a few gentle words, as it always does.
“Before Midnight” leaves everyone siding with a different character, and everyone agreeing, “Crap, yes this is what we do.” Without a hint of falsity.
Kelly Oxford is a blogger, screenwriter and author of the New York Times bestseller “Everything Is Perfect When You’re a Liar.”
This movie is described as a woman who loses everything and has to find her way? I would say to her as I would say to you, you cannot lose what you do not have.
One question that is always being asked of me is, why do some people have money yet others who are just as bright if not brighter have none? One answer to that question is: Lack of self-worth equals lack of net worth. From the moment Jasmine appears on the screen it is more than obvious she is a woman who has no self-worth. Her inability to define herself by who she is vs. what she has was her downfall to losing it all.
Many of you reading this are not a lot different than Jasmine. The degree of delusion may not be as over the top. But if you are maxed out on your credit cards or you have nothing in savings yet you never pass up a chance to go out with friends, you’ve got a lot of Jasmine in you. Simply put, you are spending money you don’t have to impress people you don’t even know or like.
You need to stop and take a good look in the financial mirror. Stand in the truth … and stop fooling yourself. You really need to go within to see why you are doing without. This is where the movie comparison ends and your life has to begin.
Financial guru Suze Orman has written seven consecutive New York Times bestsellers and has written, co-produced and hosted six PBS specials based on her books. She is the host of the award-winning “The Suze Orman Show,” which airs on CNBC and XM and Sirius radio, and a contributing editor to O, the Oprah Magazine.
Through the contrast of several extremes Woody Allen creates balance in this compelling narrative on a timeless theme. Contrasting her stable and decadent past in New York with her uncertain and dejected outlook on the future in San Francisco, Allen balances the extremes of Jasmine’s existence by utilizing two of the most geographically and culturally polarizing locations in the USA. These settings are a modern hybrid of the old and the new just as this film is, in its own right.
Sharp present-day visuals are paired with a soundtrack of timeless American repertoire of the past. The tone is set at the opening of the film by the clarion call of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet blaring the blues in the most unequivocal manner possible. This tone is sustained throughout the film by an expertly curated soundtrack, featuring Jimmie Noone, Barney Bigard, King Oliver, Lizzie Miles and others, that gives the film a depth and melancholy weight. The distinct cast of characters Allen has conjured is entertaining to watch and showcase the depth of his imagination. The ensemble is akin to a great jazz band where each of the musicians has a unique and individual approach. Collectively the ensemble delivers a profound and satirical commentary on human frailty.
Greed, dishonesty, egotism and addiction; societal elite vs. working class; selfish ambition vs. humble realization, and more — the movement back and forth between all of these elements creates a balance that sets the stage for the narrative to unfold in an artfully unpredictable way.
At the end of the day, it’s all the blues.
Jon Batiste is a musician, songwriter and leader of the band Stay Human. Originally from New Orleans, where he came from a long line of musicians, he is also the associate artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. His latest album, “Social Music,” was released in October.
“Fruitvale Station” shattered a myth, actually two myths. One was the myth that young African-American males are eternally violent and crime-prone. That powerful stereotype is deeply embedded in much of the public, and fed by warped media depictions of black males. The deadly result is that far too many police officers buy into it and act, often violently accordingly. This was certainly the heart-wrenching case in the gunning down of “Fruitvale Station’s” centerpiece character, Oscar Grant Jr.
The other myth is less deadly, but equally corrosive: that many young blacks don’t have dreams, aspirations and a longing to be good men — even when the odds are heavily stacked against them. “Fruitvale Station” depicted Grant as one such young man, who despite a troubled past, still had aspirations to be a good father, role model and find success in life.
The film succeeded on yet another level. It did not romanticize Grant, and bestow the mantle of tragic victimhood on him. He was neither hero nor villain. Rather he was a young man who desperately groped to find his niche in society and who displayed all the frailties, vulnerabilities, internal conflicts, even demons that confront so many young men and women in society no matter their color. In short, Grant came off as the proverbial Everyman, who in the end became yet another American tragedy.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of “The Al Sharpton Show” on American Urban Radio Network and host of the weekly “Hutchinson Report” on the Pacifica Network.
Last year, I was one the judges for the Man Booker literary prize. It didn’t matter that I am not a novelist. The experience of great writing is a universal pleasure. All writers feel a thrill when they encounter a work that has been beautifully crafted. I felt it while watching “Philomena.”
On one level the story is a straightforward biopic: a working-class woman spends a lifetime looking for the son she was forced to give up for adoption. Yet, behind the apparent simplicity of the film lies a rich layer of theatrical craft. The writers took two potential problems — the circuitous nature of the story and the missing voice of the son — and turned them into virtues.
For the first, the device of repetition in all its guises is employed to powerful effect. Sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly, phrases are repeated, patterns are followed and locations are revisited. The accumulative result is a heightened sense of nostalgia, as though we are listening to an old folk tale where the story is but a mechanism for exploring the darker recesses of human experience. In conceiving the second, the writers allowed the absent son a starring role, but confined him to a series of wordless pictures in old family videos and photographs. Like Banquo’s ghost, the image cries out to us precisely because an injustice has rendered it silent.
“Philomena” reminds me in the best way that for all writers, the quest for authenticity demands the highest form of artistry.
Amanda Foreman is a historian and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. She is writing “The World Made by Women: A History of Women From the Age of Cleopatra to the Era of Clinton.”
“Lee Daniels’ The Butler” helps to share the stories of a people who through courage and their own genius contributed greatly to this country. These stories must be told. We can’t just sweep them under the rug.
The film does a good job of telling the story of the civil rights movement during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson years. So many aspects of my own life were depicted: picking cotton in the South; the fear that gripped us all because of the brutality and hatred we faced; Rosa Parks and the first sit-in in Greensboro, N.C. I remember when Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. I was only 15 years old and just about his age. I was very moved to see these events on the screen.
And many of us who joined the movement did lose our connection with our families for a time, because they didn’t understand what we were doing. I enjoyed seeing a very important leader, Rev. Jim Lawson, brought to life beautifully, through some of the things he said during the nonviolence workshops — and through his glasses. Lawson is too often overlooked by writers and some historians, but it was his leadership and development of the non-violence workshop, as portrayed in this film, that was the key to our ability to stage peaceful protests.
The difference between the personal and professional lives of the butlers was believable. The butler had a job uptown, and he had to play a role. Many of us played roles. We knew when to say yes and when to say no. We knew when to laugh even when nothing was funny. But when we were in our own personal space, we were real with each other.
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) is the last survivor of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement. He has been a member of Congress since 1987. He is a recipient of the the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. His most recent book, the graphic novel memoir trilogy “March,” is a New York Times bestseller.
Good writing will eventually find its way, an axiom that has often sustained us during our inevitable challenges as writers in Hollywood. For Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack’s superb screenplay for “Dallas Buyers Club,” that eventuality took nearly 20 years. It was rejected 87 times, not for the writing, which is powerful and near perfect, but for the subject matter: the two leads, one straight and one transgender, die of AIDS.
Sometimes an actor from whom one hopes for mere competence brings to a role greatness, thus Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar in “Brokeback Mountain.” Maybe the genius is there, but only the right material — in this case, the whip-smart script for “Dallas Buyers Club” — ignites it. Matthew McConaughey must have recognized on the page this role of a lifetime, and so we witnessed his scorching performance as Ron Woodroof: an electrician, a Texan, a rodeo fan/wannabe bullrider, and when we first encounter him, a raging homophobe. Then Woodroof learns he is HIV-positive.
E.M. Forster wrote that death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him: Ron’s homophobia soon gives way to a more compassionate view, as he becomes a smuggler and dealer in the black-market drugs that can prolong his and fellow AIDS sufferers’ lives.
Craig and Melisa’s spot-on dialogue, and their unsentimental but humanistic storytelling reaffirmed for us why we write. And their inspired composites of real people from Woodroof’s time and place reminded us, once again, of E.M. Forster’s wise counsel: “Only connect!”
Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, writing partners since 1992, co-wrote the novels “Pretty Boy Floyd” and “Zeke and Ned.” They also co-wrote the screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain.” Separately, they are both successful novelists. McMurtry’s solo novels include “The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment” and the Pulitzer Prize winning“Lonesome Dove.”
“August: Osage County” does an amazing job portraying people who have come to the end of their lives having lost all hope and are searching desperately for an escape from pain and even a reason to live. Tracy Letts wrote to “the bone,” pulling no punches, capturing this family’s dysfunction. The rage and the pain come through, as does the contempt for family and its “skeletons in the closet.”
Violet’s behavior may seem “over-the-top” but as the many layers of her pathology unfold as it’s clear that Letts and Meryl Streep have captured it spot-on. She is vulnerable and evil at the same time, and her self-destruction, and the destruction she wreaks on others, are profound.
In the chaos, daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts) has become “the parent.” She’s trying to walk away from the craziness but can never seem to cut herself loose. I was struck by her desperation as she tries to keep her sister Ivy from revealing that she is romantically involved with “Little Charles.” She fights in that moment with life-and-death intensity. Then a stand-up-and-cheer moment came for me when the elder Charles (Chris Cooper) stands up to wife Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale) to say if she couldn’t find it in her heart to say something positive about their son, their long marriage wouldn’t make it through another year. Finally, a man with some healthy values and the conviction to express them amidst the chaos and toxicity.
“August: Osage County” captures the reality of a family in pain. It’s a gripping drama, and yet it’s a dark comedy, too, with some genuinely funny moments that make you feel guilty for laughing. Most comedy comes from pain and here is a perfect example of that truth.
Actually, between you and me, it felt a little bit like a McGraw family reunion, the people were just prettier!
Psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw is the host of syndicated TV’s No. 1 rated talkshow “Dr. Phil” and the author of seven No. 1 New York Times bestsellers including “Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World” and “Family First: Your Step-by-Step Plan for Creating a Phenomenal Family.”
Bob Nelson’s story for “Nebraska” isn’t complicated, built on a road trip to claim a million-dollar price that a deluded old man thinks he has won. His son drives, hoping both to protect his father and finally get through to him. Yes, things happen.
The tragic mental fading of Alzheimer’s has become a disease of choice among filmmakers aiming for the grown-up audience. To avoid the merely sentimental or maudlin is a test for writers, directors and actors. The team that made “Nebraska,” and especially Nelson (previously a comedy sketch writer), pass the test brilliantly, with an original perspective that continually finds absurdity in the catastrophes of aging and loss. Nelson is no longer a “promising new writer to watch”; he has wrestled successfully with the intricacies of long marriage, inevitable troubles, the dignity of holding on and loyalty. Dramatizing these matters comes from talent, not research. And he has made it all funny.
Staring at the gravestone of a relative who died young, the son asks his mother, a woman of industrial-weight crotchetiness, why did she die? “She looked in the mirror,” his mother snaps.
“Nebraska” is either a sad portrait of human and Midwestern decline in a wrapping of sly comedy or a comic portrait rising from a foundation of grief, take your pick. The film is affectionate and gives pleasure, and the yearning for family reconciliation makes it a near universal experience. There are no car crashes or zombies. Instead, for me, there was both laughter and occasional wincing.
Of course, I too was raised in the Midwest.
Beat-generation writer Herbert Gold’s numerous books include “Fathers: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir” and “Still Alive! A Temporary Condition: A Memoir.”
While most romantic comedies really belong in the fantasy sections of your iTunes or Netflix queue with their far-fetched scenarios and random third act horse chase sequences, it’s refreshing if not completely incredible to see a movie that could be called How People Would Really Act in This Situation.
Divorced single mom Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is dating her favorite new client’s ex-husband (James Gandolfini) and chooses not to extract herself from said conundrum, instead using the human Yelp review to glean the possible pitfalls of her budding relationship.
Nicole Holofcener has exploded the daily anxieties of grown-up insecurities and the concept of relationship risk management through questionable behavior. Eva knows she’s doing something wrong but can’t control the impulse to continue doing it. This lack of personal control in dating is a theme that comes up repeatedly for us in the relationship books we’ve written and the corners we’ve been cornered into by distressed out-of-control singles. The idea of who someone is in relation to you and who they were when they were with someone else is a Pandora’s box. Relationship puzzle pieces often stop fitting together with no satisfying explanation.
Holofcener’s dialogue is relaxed, insightful, funny and absurd the way life genuinely is. She has observed life and reported it back to us with two of the most interesting, complex and unusual romantic leads in recent history. We’ll never be able to thank her enough for not ruining the film with an “impromptu” dance sequence in the kitchen singing into wooden spoons.
Greg Behrendt is the author of several relationship books, including “He’s Just Not That Into You.” He and Amiira Ruotola co-wrote “It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy,” which they are adapting into a screenplay, and “It’s Just a F***ing Date: Some Sort of Book About Dating.” They are married to each other.
“Happiness writes white,” Henry de Montherlant said. It’s easy enough, artistically, to demonstrate why we should feel fearful and despairing — to show the wolves at the door. But it’s harder — technically harder — to show that we have resources that might help us drive the wolves away.
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a beautiful fable about positive human qualities (aspiration, persistence, friendship, being fully present in — and accepting of — the actual) that manages its earnest, hopeful stance without swerving into the sentimental. It does this by being new. The writing is fast, witty, continually surprising. The script swaggeringly mixes high and low and is punctuated by virtuosic fantasy sequences and joyful po-mo genre quotations (a Spider-Man-flavored chase scene through NYC; a bold “Benjamin Button” drop-in). Can you have a classic love story and a running joke re Papa John’s? You can.
The panache of the telling destabilizes us and (as Chekhov once described the function of art) “prepares us for tenderness.” The most powerful weapon a storyteller has is exuberance; in “Walter Mitty,” this exuberance exists symbiotically with structural discipline. For all of its surface dazzle, the script is about classic storytelling business: (1) telling us something true about human beings, that, in turn (2) helps us see ourselves anew. “Mitty” tells us we are not trapped in who we happen to be at the moment. Self-expansion is not only possible, it’s our nature. And the way to self-expansion (as well as its happy result) is through genuine connection — with others and the world.
George Saunders is the author, most recently, of “Tenth of December,” a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award. A MacArthur Fellow, he was recently awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story.
Astonishingly powerful and poignant, “Gravity” is the rarest of rares: a space survival film informed by a genuine reverence for the awe-inspiring cosmos we inhabit.
“Life in space is impossible,” we’re warned, and amidst the hypnotic beauty of these heavens, we become painfully aware of what a hostile environment space is, how unforgiving, how unsympathetic to human desires.
Bringing the astronaut’s nightmare to life so vividly is a remarkable accomplishment but Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron want more than just the adrenaline ride — they’re feeding our wonder and inviting us to think deeply about profound questions of existence.
Stirring up these questions is the protagonist of the Cuarons’ brilliant, minimalist screenplay: Dr. Ryan Stone, who comes pre-damaged, still grieving for her daughter. By the third act, Stone has “let go,” accepting misfortune and making peace with her own possible demise, yet wanting her departed little girl to know she’s “not quitting” no matter what. This journey to acceptance hits with real force, a moving performance from a gifted actress.
For me, watching Stone’s transformation brought back what my father wrote in “Contact” about the enormity of space and its many challenges: “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”
Author of the “Idlewild” series and producer of Science Channel’s “Alien Encounters,” Nick Sagan voiced the English-language greeting for the Voyager I and II spacecraft, which are now the most distant human-made objects in the universe.
I grew up across the river from Braddock, the nose-to-the-grind location for “Out of the Furnace.” My father and six millworker siblings died of cancer, collateral from years of breathing red soot from Dorothy 6, the world’s largest blast furnace, daily coating our cars and hair. What oppressed me was not the boarded-house paralysis of home-front poverty, but the survival mentality of a steel-town culture, at war with itself.
Money was the war’s prize, always short, borrowed, bartered or lost in bookie pools on Steeler Sunday or in steelyard brawls fueled by ethnic enmity. And always the soot blinding us to upward mobility and the promised exodus from the Furnace.
Brad Ingelsby and Scott Cooper’s script bites with documentarian teeth. Back-dropped by Cooper’s own family tragedies in Virginia’s Rust Belt, it is a poignant study of loss, with images so visceral; the ensemble of miscreants and fallen angels mirror the dysfunction of America with its heart broken — fighting two wars, a broken economy, broken health care, broken gun laws and its most virulent indictment, a broken moral compass.
The poetic transitions are evocatively powerful — a deer, spared Russell’s blood-letting as Rodney spills blood in a fight ring; meth pouring into a spoon, juxtaposed to smelting ore in a cauldron. The Furnace melts a community’s heart and soul.
Not all is loss on the dead-end road to vengeance. Russell’s ex-girlfriend Lena’s pregnancy inspires hope with Sheriff Barnes’ admonishment, “let’s make this right,” providing the script its re-tooled moral compass and in Russell’s final mind-imprisonment, a glimmer of redemption.
James Ragan is the winner of the Emerson Poetry Prize and is the author of eight books including “The World Shouldering I.” He is the subject of a documentary “Flowers and Roots” (Arina Films, 2013).
The first thing we see David O. Russell’s epic comedy about the Abscam sting operation of the late 1970s is the protagonist, a con artist named Irving Rosenfeld, carefully, lovingly and artfully arranging a comb-over on his bald pate. It is an image of a man in the throes of real-life stagecraft, and it sets the film’s delicate tone of humor laced with angst — not an easy thing for a script to pull off. But if the comb-over sets the film’s tone, it also provides Russell’s method.
His script, revised from an original by Eric Warren Singer, who also receives screen credit, has rich characters, sharp dialogue and vivid scenes. It bubbles with life. Its real achievements, however, may be in how it uses its details not only to draw us into a fascinating, if somewhat cockamamie, world, but also in how it uses them effortlessly and unpretentiously to convey ideas. Rosenfeld’s comb-over sets up the idea of how much we are devoted to appearance and deception. Similarly, his wife’s comments about her fragrant nail polish and the nasty things that went into it to get that aroma sets up a dialectic between the sublime and quotidian. William Carlos Williams once wrote: No ideas but in things. Russell’s script is a brilliant demonstration. He is a thinking man’s realist.
Neal Gabler’s first book, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Theatre Library Assn. Award. His second, “Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity,” was named nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine. His latest book is “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.”
This is probably not the venue for such a confession, but I don’t much enjoy reading screenplays, even great ones. I rarely find myself truly immersed in a script, because you can usually see the strings (character development, three-act structure, a recognition and reversal) moving the puppets. As well you should, I suppose, since everyone actually making a movie needs to know what strings to pull and when to pull them.
The astonishing genius of Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter’s “The Spectacular Now” is that it manages both to be a great blueprint for a film and a great read. In Aimee Finecky and Sutter Keely, we have two of the most complex and nuanced teen characters the movies have seen in decades, kids whose mixed-up fears and desires propel them through a story that in lesser hands might’ve been too quiet or too melodramatic. “The Spectacular Now” is neither: It refuses to flinch and it refuses to judge. The dialogue is precise and compelling, with each character’s voice fully realized, and it’s the kind of loving and generous adaptation that novelists never even dare to wish for.
It’s easy enough to shout carpe diem from the rooftops, but with “The Spectacular Now,” Weber and Neustadter show us what it actually means to live only for the day.
Young adult author John Green won the Michael L. Printz Award for his first novel, “Looking for Alaska.” His book “The Fault in Our Stars” reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
“All Is Lost” takes place inside of you.
We all contain an ocean. We often dream of it. The sea is a peculiar place. It is as alive as we. Robert Redford, freed at last from words, can face, on our behalf, the basic struggle we all know. You have to fight to live, and life is worth the fight.
There isn’t a moment in this story where the protagonist, this lone figure, gives up or even questions if life is worth the often awful price circumstances demand. Each of us, on some inner plain, stands silent and panting, contending with the sky itself. Ultimately, we will lose that contest. There are often no witnesses to the greatest acts of heroism, and yet I and many believe courage is a virtue.
Humanity is mortal. Life is precious and fleeting. This film makes you feel it. What a screenplay. What a film.
John Patrick Shanley won the Academy Award for original screenplay for “Moonstruck,” and the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for best play for “Doubt.”
“Kill Your Darlings” is an authentic portrait of the literary rebellion of the l950s, which was a prelude to the radical ’60s, and the end of the historical era summed up by such phrases as: “I like Ike.” This wonderful film evokes the spirit of the post-war generation “Beat” movement — a time of ill-tempered response among young people to the complaisance of their elders, and it introduced poetry into politics and left an imprint that still resounds today.
Allen Ginsberg was a giant-in-the-making on the campus of Columbia, and as portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe he comes to life on the screen in way recognizable to those who knew Ginsberg (as I did, personally having him at my home many times during the ’60s and ’70s) and appreciated his lyrical, if lacerating, way with words.
I was a young man myself during the l950s, and this film reminded me of how it was and how our nation remains as an ever-lasting component, of remembrance and adventure and an antidote to stagnation.
Journalist and author Gay Talese is the winner of the Norman Mailer prize for distinguished journalism.
I got the idea for my first bestseller, “Gone But Not Forgotten,” three years before I started writing because it took me three years to think up an ending that was as clever as the idea that inspired me to write. I don’t believe that the quality of writing or the depth of characterization in a screenplay excuses a writer who does not give the viewer a satisfying ending.
In “The Counselor,” Cormac McCarthy sets up an intense situation: a naive young attorney gets in over his head with an evil, ultraviolent drug cartel. We keep watching the movie because we want to know how he is going to get out of this scrape. In real life the cartel would eat him alive — but we expect a movie to be different from real life. But the cartel does everything we expect: (SPOILERS FOLLOW) The young man is crushed like a bug, his girlfriend is slaughtered, all his co-conspirators die. Here logic tells us at the outset the lawyer will be destroyed. And he is destroyed. So why waste two hours?
There are some excellent scenes and some terrific dialogue, including Brad Pitt discussing a snuff film to explain the morality — or lack thereof — of a drug cartel. Javier Bardem describing Cameron Diaz’s sexual adventure with a car is weird and funny. But the film is so unrelentingly grim and the characters so despicable that I felt like taking a bath to scrape off the dirt when I left the theater. I’m not squeamish — as a criminal defense attorney I handled 30 homicides — but even though I would award three stars to this film because of excellent direction and acting and the general quality of the writing, I would also tell viewers to avoid it.
Attorney Phillip Margolin has written 19 books, including 17 New York Times bestsellers, most of them legal thrillers.
In the screenplay for “Saving Mr. Banks,” Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith very casually — and elegantly — let the audience in on the big secret of artists and writers, in the middle of a key conversation between Walt Disney and P.L. Travers. Disney, in trying to convince Travers to trust him with “Mary Poppins,” says: “We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again.” That took my breath away.
For those of us whose childhoods have a crack down the center, and who have made our life’s work in both the playgrounds and the dark caverns of the imagination, those two sentences are more than a wise reflection on creativity, they are a mission statement.
