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American Tragedy on Film

January 14, 2017 in Book Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Film Matters, Reviews

I’ve been trying to figure out why I love “Patriots Day” so much. Though I moved to New York City from Greater Boston decades ago, it’s a fact that you can take the girl out of Massachusetts, but you can’t take the Massachusetts out of a girl. And “Patriots Day,” Peter Berg’s adaptation of the book Boston Strong by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, is one of the most Massachusetts-proud movies ever made. But I also love this docu-drama because it has enough heart and brains to help heal its audience.

The United States always has had a hard time navigating tragedy. Perhaps this is because, in the grand scale of world civilizations, we are a very young nation. When it comes to boundless optimism, this often works to our advantage. Even today, Americans tend to believe that a good attitude and persistence can change the most direst of circumstances. It is the backbone of our founding story – how we scrappy mavericks defeated the Brits – and certainly the classic Hollywood premise. But the downside of our youthfulness is a widespread, culturally reinforced immaturity. This translates into an immunity to critical thought and an inability to process complex emotions. So when confronted with trauma, we are uniquely ill-equipped to grieve without resorting to finger-pointing or dissociation. To the degree that we address our pain, we do so through the arts – especially film and television, which, even more than sports, is our common denominator. Continue Reading →

‘Live by Night,’ Dead on Arrival

January 13, 2017 in Book Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

Once again awards season is rolling around, and a person named Affleck is reaping accolades. But this is 2016, the topsy-turviest year on recent record, so the Affleck who’ll likely score an Academy Award nod is not Ben Affleck but younger brother Casey. (Sexual harassment accusations notwithstanding, he is unreasonably good in “Manchester-by-the-Sea.”) The irony, of course, is that the older Affleck is also releasing a film this season: “Live by Night,” an adaptation of the 2012 eponymous Dennis Lehane novel. That Big Ben’s first directorial effort since 2012’s Oscar-winning “Argo” is receiving very little publicity is surprising – at least, unless you’ve seen it.

To be fair, this Prohibition-era drama is not exactly bad. Set in a crime underbelly of Massachusetts, it’s tried-and-true territory for the native Bostonian, who in 2007 adapted Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone and has set two other films in the region. But the whole endeavor feels disappointingly by the numbers, perhaps because Ben (Casey is not associated with the film) seems intent on creating an instant classic, a period picture with “Scarface” grit and golden Hollywood glamour, complete with speakeasies, flappers, and Tommy guns. The result feels more like a facsimile of a facsimile – blurry and haplessly un-emphatic. Continue Reading →

Debbie and Carrie: Literary Grey Gardeners

January 7, 2017 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Film Matters

2016 took far more than its fair share of entertainment icons, and we’re still reeling from the late-December twin deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Though the women’s dual departure was devastating, it was hardly shocking to anyone familiar with their powerful entwinement; the two Hollywood royals even lived on the same compound at the time of their deaths. In their wake, they leave an extraordinary body of work – not just on celluloid but in print. (Fisher’s The Princess Diarist, an account of her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” movie, was published only a week before she died.) Here’s a rundown of their three best tomes.

Unsinkable-Debbie Reynolds
Published in 2013, this memoir picks up where Reynolds’s first memoir, Debbie: My Life, leaves off. I’m a fan of that 1988 book; in it, she dishes hard about how ex-husband, crooner Eddie Fisher, famously left her with two young kids for Elizabeth Taylor after the death of Taylor’s husband Mike Todd, also Fisher’s best friend. (The two couples were so close that Carrie’s brother Todd is named after the late movie producer.) But Unsinkable is even juicier, and, given that it achieves the same breathless candor as its predecessor (which was co-written with David P. Columbia), I suspect Debbie merely relied on ghostwriters to organize her thoughts. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy