Robot and Frank (2012): Loving Larcenous Langela

Frank Langella is simply amazing. Two newcomers, first time feature director Jake Schreier and screenwriter Christopher Ford, have hit the big time with this thoroughly entertaining little flick, but they couldn’t have done it without Frank. I haven’t seen a lot of his movies – perhaps because most of Langella’s career has been as a stage actor – but he was transcendent as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon (2008), not least because he was so damned convincing playing a very public guy to whom he bore little physical resemblance. He is completely different, but every bit as good in this comic film, playing an older man with a strong ego, whose mind is starting to slip away from him.

If Langella’s mind were actually slipping (which, appearances in this film notwithstanding, it isn’t), it would be convenient that his character shares his given name; and it’s certainly convenient for me here. Frank is a guy who wants to live life his own way.  But his former vitality is ebbing, and modern life and technology are passing him by, not that he’d admit it. When his hotshot lawyer son, Hunter (James Marsden), tries to convince him to move into an assisted living community, he angrily refuses. This being the future, albeit a not too distant one, Hunter buys Frank a new robot to serve as valet, housekeeper, cook and companion. “Give it a try,” he pleads.

There is, of course, an amusing period of adjustment, which is cleverly wrought. Robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) is small, cute, and low tech in appearance (of necessity, given the picture’s shoestring budget), although quite capable of adroitly handling its assignment. Conveniently for Frank, Robot’s highly advanced programming does not include a morality module, and when Frank recognizes this, he starts scheming about a return to his former trade, burglary, with an accomplice who will leave no prints.  Soon, what started as an arrangement turns into a relationship, and the movie takes an odd and comedic twist into a buddy film, of sorts. I needn’t spoil the story by further plot description, but can say that funny stuff ensues. Much of this is predictable stuff, but it is well played.

Which brings me back to Langella. For much of this picture he’s conversing one-on-one with Robot. Most likely, someone off screen is simply reading Robot’s lines. The actual ‘robot’ has no facial expression and little body language to respond to. It’s all Frank. And he makes it work - brilliantly, naturalistically, believably – in a warm, nuanced and deadpan comic performance, that allows any disbelief to be easily suspended. Although not a particularly likeable man, Langella’s Frank stirs our empathy, and provides a little window into what it might be like to experience the onset of Alzheimers – all the while sustaining what is essentially a comedy.

Frank’s interactions with son Hunter, his daughter Madison (Liv Tyler), his eventual nemesis (Jeremy Strong), and the town librarian, Jennifer (Susan Sarandon) are fine. Sarandon, in particular, is quite good, as usual, although her character’s role in the story lies somewhere between superfluous and ridiculous. Strong lives up to his name playing a wonderfully smug and weaselly rich guy. I fear Tyler may never figure out the acting thing, but her stiff discomfort before the camera is thankfully brief. But ‘frankly’, it’s all about Robot and Frank. 

Ford, the writer of this tale, tries to throw in some intellectual meat and social comment about aging, etc, but this is pretty light stuff. There’s also a bit of a twist at the end, which makes little sense, but fails to mar the overall project. What Ford does pretty well is set up funny situations and provide comfortable, witty dialogue. Langella does the rest.

In sum, this is a pretty good, pretty funny movie. See it for Frank.

 In current release

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012): Wild and Wonderful

It ain’t easy growing up in the bayou, ‘specially if Mama is long gone (but not forgotten), Daddy leaves you alone for long stretches, there’s no money, no guvment, and the levee’s about to break. Oh, and global warming. And did I mention monstrous Aurochs on the loose?

That’s pretty much the situation for a little six year old girl called Hushpuppy, living in a wild, gypsy-ish community called the Bathtub, on the wrong side of the levee in the Southern Louisiana delta, at the outer fringe of so-called civilization. Hushpuppy is an intrepid kid, though, a survivor, booned with a vivid imagination, filling in for her limited knowledge and understanding of the big, grown-up world.  As played by newcomer (what else could she be at that age) Quvenzhané Wallis – great name, by the way - Hushpuppy is also a mesmerizingly real character in this unusual indie movie. She’s in pretty much every scene, and that is a very good thing. A pint-size kid with an amazing shock of bushy, unruly hair and wide-set eyes, alternately inquiring and knowing, she takes everything in, searching for meaning and for connection. There’s a bit of Ole Huck Finn in her. As Hushpuppy might tell you, she da man!

The other thing really striking about this film is its ability to take us into this place, the Bathtub, and as we become comfortable with its humid, ad hoc, libertarian style, into the life and worldview of its residents, a motley crew if ever there was one, as they come together to help and protect Hushpuppy and pull together through extreme adversity.  They live in shacks, thrown together from whatever scraps they can find, amidst an exhilaratingly random  jumble of stuff; and are sustained by a cornucopian abundance of crawfish, shrimp, fish and you-name-it,  the fruits of the bayou and nearby lake – not to mention considerable amounts of beer and booze, provenance unknown.  Despite what appears to be a near absence of  money and what we would consider normal creature comforts, the world of these Bathtub  folk comes across as rich and convivial.

The most vividly depicted of these folks is Hushpuppy’s Daddy, Wink (Dwight Henry), a moody and troubled man, trying to protect Hushpuppy and trying to save himself, two goals in seeming conflict. He is alternately violently exasperated with his little daughter and warmly tender. We eventually learn why this is so, but I won’t spoil the story. Let’s just say they have quite an interesting relationship. Dwight Henry’s performance is down and dirty and thoroughly convincing (as are all of them).

Hushpuppy believes that everything in the world is interconnected, from the polar ice caps to the sweaty Bathtub, from the prehistoric to the modern, and that what she does in her life can have profound and far-reaching effects.   As it turns out, when some of these connections are sundered, Hushpuppy’s world threatens to come apart at the seams, and this child’s philosophy is put to the test.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is beautifully shot, sometimes achingly so, and it is a sensory joy to watch. If you can see it on the big screen, you should.  The product of a first time director and production company, working with non-professional actors on a shoestring budget, this marvelous, human  movie   is a remarkable achievement.  It is funny, profound and quirky. Ultimately, it is about (among other things) civilization and community, innocence and its absence, family, death  and life. You will not quickly forget it.

Currently in theaters

The Roaring Twenties (1939): A Classic Classic (and Cagney’s Best?)

James Cagney started out in Vaudeville as a song and dance man. Through his thirty year career in movies he played all kinds of roles, from George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) to Lon Chaney in  Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). He’s been a boxer, a soldier, a taxi driver, a Coca Cola executive, and a spymaster; but he is most remembered as a tough guy gangster. That image was distilled in a score of pictures, including his breakout role as Tom Powers in The Public Enemy (1931) in which he famously shoves a half grapefruit into the face of Mae Clark, and his memorable portrayal of the psychopath Cody Jarrett in the amazing White Heat (1949), going out in a blaze of gangster glory (“Top of the World, Ma!”). Yet his best, most nuanced picture, might just be director Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties (1939).

The Roaring Twenties, like most of the other gangster pictures of the 1930’s, is about bootleggers, speakeasies, and organized crime. The picture follows three World War I vets - George (Humphrey Bogart), Lloyd (Jeffrey Lynn) and  Eddie Bartlett (Cagney) -   who meet in a shell crater in the midst of battle, and become buddies of sorts. After the war, prohibition sets in, and bathtub gin and organized crime follow in short order.

Cagney's character returns from the war to find that his job as an auto mechanic has been filled by a civilian, and nobody else is hiring either. He makes the acquaintance of a tough gal saloon keeper named Panama Smith, who helps him get started in the underground liquor business, and pretty soon Eddie Bartlett is doing pretty well for himself.  His war buddy Lloyd, an honest guy,  has gone to law school, and (holding his nose)  goes to work for Eddie. By contrast, George (Bogart) has no regard for the law; in fact, he has little regard for anyone or anything besides himself. When Eddie accepts him as a business partner,  we’re pretty sure  bad things will follow. Eddie is basically a decent guy, caught up in the circumstances of the times.  He's not so straight or idealistic as Lloyd, nor as mean and self-centered as George.  Eddie sees himself as a realist, and he  likes being a big shot. But he’s also a dreamer, aspiring to be a good guy. These qualities make him a great protagonist.

Cagney is brilliant as Eddie Bartlett, smart, brash,  funny, clever, tough, quick-witted, and, when circumstances warrant, wistful, loyal, thoughtful, and sympathetic. He is mercurial, sure, but never mean-spirited. Whether he’s wooing or fighting, he’s believable, and sincere. He just gives a great, nuanced, charismatic performance. Bogart had played the role of the dark, amoral, ultimately spineless bad guy for most of the thirties, and is quite good at it.  His breakout roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon (1941) are still a couple years away. Priscilla Lane, a star for a few years but now largely forgotten,  is fine as the sweet, pure girl for whom Cagney carries a torch; and Gladys George is terrific as Panama Smith, who carries a torch for Cagney.

Raoul Walsh had been directing films for nearly twenty-five years at this point (and would go on for another twenty-five years) and he knew how to keep the story and the action moving along. The screenplay is intelligent, sensitive, and  loaded with great lines.  Like when George says ( after laying a trap for a rival): “I always say, when you got a job to do, get somebody else to do it.” It was based on an original story by Mark Hellinger (himself a fascinating character), with the feel of a newsreel, complete with a terse, melodramatic voiceover setting the scene.  The movie was made ten years after the devastation of “Black Tuesday”,  and six years after the end of prohibition, at a time when those bootlegging  speakeasy days seemed long gone, and it’s structured as a kind of retrospective of that bygone era. This rich film winds up being the story about a time as well as about a character.

 The cinematography by the estimable Ernie Haller (Dark Victory, Gone With the Wind, Mildred Pearce, Rebel Without A Cause) couldn’t be better ; it includes a great, iconic final scene,  not to be missed.

When the proverbial lights came on, I didn’t want this movie to be over. I felt enriched, exhilarated.  I wanted to devour the extras on the dvd immediately (rare for me). But then, the Roaring Twenties is a rare treat.

Available on DVD, including from Netflix, or streaming from Amazon Instant Video or Xfinity OnDemand