Cafe Society

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Woody Allen/Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll, Sari Lennick, Ken Stott, Parker Posey and Jeannie Berlin

These days, I'm always prepared to write Woody off, particularly after his last two forgettable efforts; Magic in the Moonlight and Irrational Man. But with Woody, consigning him to oblivion is always a mistake, for he can still surprise, as with Blue Jasmine. I'm happy to say he has done so again with Cafe Society; his new story about ideal love and its emotional pitfalls. Though some scenes and plot points resemble moments from his cinematic past, he shows he can still write terrific dialogue and give his characters dimension and depth. In his latest, we see his characteristic charm, wit and his romantic pessimism about love but also present is his irrepressible romanticism, particularly for the city he loves most. Cafe Society is fun, funny and is irresistibly charming.

Set in 1930s', Woody narrates his own story about a young man; Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), who leaves Brooklyn for the sunny coast of southern California. Hoping to find a job with his wildly successful Uncle; Phil Stern (a terrific Steve Carell) in his casting agency, he stakes out temporary digs in a hotel and waits for a meeting. Lonely and hungry for female companionship, Bobby arranges for a call girl to visit his hotel room, but finds he is her very first customer. The failed encounter yields funny results.

In another scene, we see Phil hosting a swank Hollywood party in his home. Sitting poolside, Phil talks with all manner of movie industry people, dropping names of stars in nearly all his conversations.

As the story moves forward, Woody's narration remains steady, embellishing the story and providing insightful comments about the characters. We meet others, like Bobby's older brother Ben (excellent Corey Stoll), whose life in organized crime troubles his mother Rose (Jeannie Berlin). Though Rose's relationship with her husband Marty (Ken Stott) is contentious; their arguments contain some of the film's funniest lines. Another character is Bobby and Ben's sister, Evelyn (Sari Lennick), who stays in touch with her little brother via letters, which, when read; provide the film supplementary narration.

Bobby is finally granted a few minutes with his Uncle and after a what-are-you-doing-out-here probing overture, he explains his want of a change of scenery and a job in the agency. Although Phil initially mentions the mail-room, he suggests Bobby run errands for him. He then introduces Bobby to one of his secretaries; an lovely young woman named Veronica (a luminous Kristen Stewart, made more so by soft focus), or Vonnie. As Vonnie shows Bobby around, sparks crackle and glow between them. Before long, Vonnie and Bobby enjoy lunches and drinks together until one day he feels confident enough to ask her out. She tells him she is seeing someone but enjoys his friendship, which continues in spite of his rejection. Bobby (and we) learn Vonnie is one of the many young women who migrated to Tinseltown hoping to make it in the movies before becoming disillusioned.
The conversations between Vonnie and Bobby are often magical. Woody shows he can still craft intelligent dialogue that is also pleasing to the ear. Some of the best moments in the film are Bobby and Vonnie's tete a tetes.

In time, Bobby finds himself meeting his Uncle's big name associates, who bandy the names of stars and starlets about, which becomes a source of annoyance to both he and Vonnie. But life in Hollywood has a way of working on those most resistant to its charms. Vonnie herself shares an anecdote about Samuel Goldwyn and his peculiar voice.

The visuals in the Hollywood party scenes are particularly intriguing. In nearly every scene featuring an industry soiree, we see the guests dressed uniformly in khaki-color clothes. Woody's cinematographer; the famed Vittorio Storaro, casts everything in soft, golden light, as if to compete with the soft hues of khaki. The effect leaves us with something fairy-talish; a heady foray into the unreal.
Hollywood's seductive but shallow charms begin to wear on Bobby. He finds the beautiful women, stars and the lush mansions to be a fascinating curiosity but they eventually lose their charm. He begins to miss New York. Before long, he plans his return home. But complicating his idea is his relationship with Vonnie, which takes a dramatic leap from the platonic to romantic. In love and happy, Bobby plans for their marriage and their move to New York, where his brother Ben has offered him a job running his nightclub. But before Bobby's plans are consummated, the plot takes a startling twist when Bobby discovers the man Vonnie has been seeing is none other than Phil, who plans to leave his wife for her. Phil later tells her he is unable to walk away from his 25-year marriage, only to experience yet another change of heart. The situation becomes stickier when Phil and Bobby become aware of the other's interest in Vonnie. Faced with a painful decision, Vonnie chooses Phil, leaving Bobby to return to New York, alone and crestfallen.

Bobby's east-coast homecoming serves as a transition to Part II, as he leaves his Los Angeles experiences behind for his brother's nightclub, which he helps christen The Cafe Society. Bobby becomes popular with the nightclub set, which is a colorful mix of the city's upper crust society and members of New York's active social scene. Excelling at his job and taking to the club's giddy atmosphere, Bobby is able to put Los Angeles behind him.

One evening, he meets a beautiful blonde, whose name also happens to be Veronica (Blake Lively, who was kicking shark butt the last time we saw her onscreen). I found this contrivance to be a little too convenient but oh well. The two quickly fall in love, which leads to a happy courtship and marriage; helped along with a surprise pregnancy.

Of course Woody won't let us forget Vonnie, who happens to drop back into his life one evening when she and Phil appear at the nightclub. The scene where Bobby stands before their table; staring dumbstruck at Vonnie, may remind one of the scene in Crimes and Misdemeanors where Woody's character happens upon Mia Farrow's at a wedding where she is embraced by his rival. Dismayed at seeing Phil and Vonnie together, Bobby reluctantly sits down to chat but excuses himself after she tries to regale the table with a long-winded, gossipy Hollywood story; the type he and she once loathed. It isn't long before the two meet for coffee, which reawakens their latent love for one another. One knows how it will play out if one has seen enough Woody Allen films. The key word is melancholy.
A significant subplot unfolds; involving Ben and his violent, criminal past, which has a grim but almost inevitable outcome.

Woody manages his multi-character story with aplomb and like his best work, makes us care about them. He has helped create one of the movie industry's emerging great couples in Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, whose onscreen romance marks their third together. How and why such an offbeat pairing works so well can be chalked up to the mysteries of chemistry but they are magical together; particularly in a scene where the two share an intimate moment on a Central Park bridge; the skyline a romantic tableau. Woody's other characters are wonderful, particularly Corey Stoll as Bobby's thuggish brother and Jeannie Berlin, who is quite amusing as Bobby's mother.

Woody still has it. He is still capable of making good films. Everything that characterizes his best films is conspicuous here. Terrific camera work, beautiful cinematography and brilliant performances. Let's not forget witty dialogue and great lines. My favorite: live every day as if it were the last and one day it will be true.

Cafe Society isn't a Woody masterpiece but it redeems his last two efforts and it is done well. It might not set the world of cinema alight but it is a mild intoxicant. In summers, bad Hollywood is the occupying force, but films like Woody's always come along to give us respite from the drek. Let's hope he has more of these films in his bag.

American Ultra

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Nima Nourizadeh/Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Connie Britton, Topher Grace, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman and Walton Goggins

American Ultra is a movie that adopts a personality that is all wrong for its premise then tries to sell that shortcoming as a strength. Said premise; a stoner convenience store clerk who realizes he was actually once a highly-trained CIA operative could have been quite funny if Director Nima Nourizadeh and writer Max Landis (yes, son of director John Landis) had run wild with the comedic aspects of the story rather than veering into a serious, hyper-violent, narrative cul-de-sac. I was looking for the Jeff Lebowski-as-government-contract-killer character the trailer promised but got another Jason Bourne instead. What has become a stock character in CIA agent movies; I-guess-I-forgot-I'm-a-CIA-trained-lethal-field-operative; is ripe for comic plunder. Unfortunately Nourizadeh's film loses its way early on; settling for violence and a self-serious story rather than following a more humorous course. The story did occasionally threaten to be loopy but again, earnestness won out.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Mike Howell, a long-haired slacker who spends his days smoking weed and maintaining the sorriest convenience store you ever seen in a sorrier-looking town in West Virginia. When not manning the counter in the store, Mike co-habits with his girlfriend Phoebe Larson (the lovely Kristen Stewart); a she-slacker who works in a bail bonds office. Their shabby existence is redeemed not only by their mutual love and affection but Mike's cartooning, which he works on at all hours of the day; at work and at home. Drawings and storyboards of his astronaut gorilla character decorate the walls of their bedroom and in one scene, the two lay in bed while Mike tells Phoebe about his character's latest development.

A trip to Hawaii, where Mike was to present Phoebe with an engagement ring, is aborted when his gripping phobia of flying leaves him self-imprisoned inside a bathroom stall. Disappointed, Phoebe manages to forgive him though not without a little resentment.

One day, while behind the counter, Mike sees a woman (Connie Britton) in a trench-coat and sunglasses meandering about the aisles. She approaches the counter and utters what sounds like spy patter, which Mike's stoner mind fails to understand and grasp. The scene should be more amusing than it plays but it isn't bad.

Not knowing what the woman is on about, she leaves the store. Later, Mike sees two men messing with his car in the parking lot. When he approaches them and asks them to stop, they attack him, but not before Mike inexplicably unleashes a violent defense; utilizing impressive martial arts skills. He stabs one in the neck with a spoon, then dispatches the other. Dumbfounded by what he's done, he calls Phoebe for help. She arrives shortly thereafter but both are arrested when the police show up.

We learned in an earlier scene that the woman in the trench-coat; Victoria Lasseter, is a top-ranked CIA agent and Mike is a former operative who was trained years before in a program called Wise-Men. The program entailed giving repeat criminals opportunities to be trained as field operatives, of which Mike was a participant. We also learn his memory of his service was wiped clean while he was placed in an area of the country he might do little harm. It comes to light that Mike is Victoria's project but she discovers he is slated for liquidation by an agent who usurped her named Adrian Yates (Topher Grace, as a jerk he is peerless at playing). Unable to deter Adrian from pursuing Mike's life, she shows up at the convenience store to warn him. Hell-bent on killing Mike, Adrian mobilizes a team of assassins.

After the assassins arrive at the county jail where Mike and Phoebe are being held in a cell, they set about killing police officers. Mike and Phoebe manage to escape and in time they discover the plot against him and his past as an operative.

Again, humor should be liberally sprinkled about the story but oddly enough, this doesn't happen. Gruesome violence abounds; Mike manages to fend off assassins with all manner of creative lethality and with all manner of weapons, including a shovel and a frying pan.

As Victoria defies Adrian and the agency by aiding Mike, Phoebe's former involvement as a CIA operative comes to light. The revelation; an absurd twist that should be plumbed for all its comedic potential, is played straight. The news causes a rift between she and Mike. When Mike proves to be highly capable of resisting the assassins, Adrian captures Phoebe, thereby removing his partner.

Because the filmmaker's are unaware that the movie is and should be a comedy, the movie rushes headlong toward a conventional showdown that isn't played for laughs or a wink.

Though multiplexes hardly need another movie with covert intelligence agents running about (Mission Impossible and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. are both in theaters right now), the screens suddenly have space for one more. Sometimes the actors are unaware they are in a movie that is essentially a comedy, in spite of itself. Someone forgot to tell Kristen Stewart not to take the material too seriously; her explosive performance seems wildly at odds with the premise. Jesse Eisenberg plays his character with some sense of silliness but not enough. The same can be said for Connie Britton, Topher Grace and Bill Pullman. John Leguizamo is the only actor in the film who interpreted his character with a light spirit.

I wouldn't say American Ultra is tiresome but its like being in the company of someone who doesn't have a sense of humor and won't go along with a gag. What is particularly frustrating about it is its stubborn refusal to be funny when it should. It hardly works as an action thriller so where does that leave us as an audience? Twelve bucks poorer and 95 minutes older, I suppose. Let my impression of the movie spare you both. Can't you feel yourself a slightly bit richer and more youthful already?

Clouds of Sils Maria

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Olivier Assayas/Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lars Eidinger and Johnny Flynn

Clouds of Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas' exploration of an aging actresses anxieties and insecurities, is intellectually satisfying and symbolically rich and though not a great film, it commits to stimulating our minds and features some terrific performances.

Assayas' film is a story within a story and his deliberate attempt to dissolve the barrier between the two leaves us wondering if an actress' life and a role for which she is famous have coalesced to form a powerful but disturbing reality.

Inhabiting this role is the venerable Juliette Binoche, an actress with limitless talent who proves to be the most appropriate casting choice; her real-life acting career is also subject to the unforgiving ticking clock the film industry creates for actresses who face obscurity or oblivion in middle-age.

Binoche plays Maria Enders, an actress of international renown who has been offered a part in famed playwright Wilhelm Melchior's play; Maloja Snake. En route to a tribute honoring the literary figure, she learns of his sudden death, which occurred while hiking near his retreat in the Tyrolean Alps.

Maria earned a measure of fame for having played a character in Melchior's famous work; a play (and subsequently a film) about a middle-age female executive who falls in love with a young woman employed in her company. The relationship becomes a psychological melee as the younger woman indulges in manipulative head-games. As her middle-age anxieties leave her emotionally vulnerable, the older woman becomes the younger woman's pawn, which ultimately leads to her suicide.

Maria's performance as the younger woman became a touchstone for other actresses taking on the role. The new production calls for her to play the older woman's part, which she approaches with trepidation. And like the fictitious, mature woman in Maloja Snake, she is feeling acutely aware of her age and is fearful of the role, which she sees as a confirmation of her worst fears.

Maria's personal assistant/friend Valentine (Kristen Stewart), is with her at all hours of the day, reading lines and attending high-profile functions. As the two women rehearse Maloja Snake dialogue, their relationship begins to mirror the play. Assayas ensures the play's dialogue and Maria and Valentine's conversations become almost indistinguishable, thereby creating a continuum where fiction and reality co-exist.

And as the women become emotionally involved in the play-reading, Maria sees Valentine's interpretations of the characters as callow ravings while Valentine begins to reel from Maria's oppressive anxieties.

The title of Melchior's play refers to an uncommon meteorological phenomenon whereby clouds creep through a mountainous Alpine pass like a snake, hence its name. The peculiarity serves as a metaphor (in my interpretation) for the stealthy advance of old age; how it happens upon one like a slithering reptile. To witness the phenomenon is a figurative acceptance of one's mortality.

While the production approaches, Maria and Valentine watch films of the play's co-star, Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz) in preparation. Jo-Ann is a young star who draws tabloidy attention and who sometimes stars in bloated Hollywood blockbusters. Maria and Valentine attend a screening that stars Jo-Ann in her latest movie; a silly super-hero genre flick that may resemble something Maria once performed in in her younger years but now mockingly scorns. While Maria scoffs, Valentine is aware of Jo-Ann's widespread popularity and reminds her that the young actress is now the reality that won't go away.

The film is essentially is three parts. In the first, we see Maria as media darling, her feminine sex appeal still volcanic and vital. In the second, we see her undergoing a physical transformation; she is shorn of her pretty locks; a cosmetic harbinger of sexual decline and a prelude to a literal and metaphorical menopause. And the third, we see Jo-Ann subjected to fierce media attention; fleeing paparazzi and maneuvering her way through a scandal involving her new boyfriend. While the young actress' life is of keen interest to the media, Maria finds herself to be a marginal figure in Jo-Ann's dramas. As we watch the two women seek refuge from paparazzi in an escaping limousine, Maria is almost left behind. The scene is an effective depiction of Maria's inevitable obsolescence as a star and her imminent exile from the media epicenter she once occupied.

Assayas' film is about the terror of growing old and the film industry's low regard for actresses who have reached the middle-age ceiling. It is interesting that Maria isn't able to see the Snake until later in the film, when she finally accepts the wrenching reality of aging.

As the film captures Maria in different stages of aging, the characters themselves represent women in the respective stages: Jo-Ann is as Maria once was; a confident, cocky ingenue maybe slightly contemptuous of her elders; Valentine is the middle-ground between the young and old; one too old to be young and too young to perceive the metaphorical Snake while Maria's middle-age is the final stage; the accelerated slide to dotage.

Binoche is no stranger to nuanced material and she handles it with consummate skill, as we might expect. It is a delightful surprise to see Stewart and Moretz in an Assayas film; their presence shows both actresses are eager to take on more challenging roles and they acquit themselves quite well.

Assayas' narrative structure is compelling and clever; the play within a play within a movie works famously and manages to sustain its coherence.

Though the film is pleasing to the mind, I didn't find it absorbing. It should be seen for Binoche's performance and the interplay between she and Stewart and its astute commentary on the film industry's attitudes about women. The film works but falls well short of greatness, in spite of its ambitions. If nothing else, Assayas can be commended for engaging our minds, if not entirely our hearts.