Movie review by Greg Carlson

If one believes the assessment of Scott Foundas in his apologetic “Variety” essay, Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor” is a slept-on and misunderstood near-masterpiece on par with “Blade Runner” and not the ridiculous, cringe-worthy embarrassment described by many other critics. For those keeping track, Metacritic’s page for “The Counselor” averages fifteen positive reviews, thirteen mixed reviews, and twelve negative reviews to come up with a score of 49 on a hundred point scale. Foundas discloses his role as the organizer of the “first complete North American retrospective of Scott’s films,” and the critic’s feelings extend to the eyebrow-raising claim that “The Counselor” is “bold and thrilling in ways that mainstream American movies rarely are, and its rejection suggests what little appetite there is for real daring at the multiplex nowadays.”

Familiar generalizations about the public’s lack of taste and intelligence aside, the first part of that claim is dubious. Directed by Scott from novelist Cormac McCarthy’s first script produced originally for the screen, “The Counselor” is a cryptic neo-noir crammed with the most familiar tropes and expectations of the style. Contrary to Foundas’ opinion, the movie ventures nothing and gains even less, unfolding with a solemn pomposity that will delight only those viewers who believe they are in on the joke as opposed to being the butt of it.

Take, for example, the spectacle of Cameron Diaz’s cheetah-stroking femme fatale replicant Malkina grinding and squeaking her mons pubis on the windshield of Reiner’s (Javier Bardem) Ferrari. Apart from the scene’s flirtations with outright misogyny, amplified by Reiner coarsely likening Malkina’s vagina to a “catfish thing” and a “bottom feeder,” McCarthy appears to reveal a disappointingly regressive embrace of masculine fears regarding “repulsive” female sexuality. Whether or not one finds the scene liberating or debasing (see Tracy Moore’s “Jezebel” column for a more detailed discussion), the moment typifies the film’s anything goes desperation to rise above the forgettable banality of its plot.

While “The Counselor” is not exactly a bore, Scott’s phony gravitas and McCarthy’s drug trade philosophy-lite conspire against the efforts of the game stars. Along with Bardem and Diaz, the principal cast includes Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz, and, in the title role, Michael Fassbender. A few arresting visuals, including the high-speed clothesline decapitation of a motorcyclist, must compete with secretive conversations too dutiful in their elisions. Further, the pace of the film oozes like the fecal sludge that hides the narrative’s MacGuffin-esque drug shipment in a disguised septic truck bound for Chicago.

Along the way, Scott indulges plenty of McCarthy’s signature bloodletting, including the sight of the nightmarish “bolito,” a kind of motorized piano wire garrote/noose that cuts through the neck of any victim unlucky enough to have it slipped over his head. Death comes for the guilty and the innocent alike, but aside from brief glimpses of Cruz’s naïve and underdeveloped Laura, Scott and McCarthy have no interest in exploring a point of view alternative to the twisted lawbreakers whose moral failures lead to unspeakable outcomes. Only time will tell if Foundas made the right call on “The Counselor,” but unless the movie gets embraced as camp, it is unlikely to ever attain the status of Scott’s better films.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A disappointing and unnecessary remake of Stephen King’s first major success, Kimberly Peirce’s take on “Carrie” almost slavishly follows the rhythm and pace of Brian De Palma’s 1976 classic. The rehashed script, credited to Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and original screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, fails to turn up anything new and significant from the source material despite filmmaker claims to the contrary. Indiewire’s Drew Taylor has suggested that the late addition of Cohen’s name to the official credit list is a legal development born of Aguirre-Sacasa’s sometimes word-for-word and scene-for-scene reliance on Cohen’s adaptation.

King’s conceptual tour de force continues to hold a magnetic appeal for audiences of many ages. Drawing on the primal fears that accompany the physical and emotional changes of adolescence and placing them in close quarters with the tension between religious fanaticism and the strong pull of normalcy and conformity, King tapped into the insecurities that go hand in hand with rites of passage. The greatest fright of “Carrie” arises from the inversion of the Cinderella story: an unthinkable scenario in which a mother seeks to murder her own flesh and blood. Peirce boldly affixes a messy, opening flashback to Carrie’s birth that flirts with infanticide by scissors, but the prologue detracts somewhat from the punch of De Palma’s charged shower room spectacle and its mix of eroticism and revulsion associated with Carrie’s menstruation.

Like some of the self-referential elements of the 2002 TV movie version of “Carrie,” the new edition slips in a few convenient updates, including an underdeveloped cyberbullying thread surrounding a YouTube upload of Carrie’s humiliation. Less competently, a throwaway reference to Tim Tebow will date faster than William Katt’s ruffled, powder blue tuxedo shirt. Surprisingly, very little attention is paid to the discovery of Carrie’s telekinetic super-powers, a thematic component ripe for reconsideration in the context of titles like “X-Men: First Class.” Aguirre-Sacasa’s experience as a Marvel Comics writer makes the missed opportunity especially vexing.

Peirce, whose blistering “Boys Don’t Cry” explored a world filled with inexplicable horror, seems like a strong choice to tackle “Carrie,” but the raw verisimilitude of her 1999 feature debut is conspicuously absent in the new movie. The director struggles with tone, especially when it comes to the handling of the high schoolers who make Carrie’s life hell. Peirce does clarify Sue Snell’s (Gabriella Wilde) sense of regret and guilt, restoring both the character’s pregnancy and her “psychic connection” to Carrie that manifests most directly in the climactic house destruction scene. The rest of the tormentors, especially Portia Doubleday’s exceedingly cruel, one-note Chris Hargensen, dart toward parody and cartoon.

While there is nothing wrong with the casting of talented performers like Chloe Grace Moretz (in her first leading role) and Julianne Moore, Peirce provides few opportunities for the principal actors to distance and distinguish themselves from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. Spacek and Laurie both earned Oscar nominations for their portrayals in the De Palma film, and that feat most certainly will not be repeated by Moretz and Moore. Peirce works hard on the development and clarification of the twisted, abusive, and operatic mother-daughter dynamics, but Moretz never quite accesses the fragile vulnerability of Carrie with the same degree of credibility demonstrated by the unforgettable Spacek.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Probably the weirdest and most disappointing thing about Shane Salerno’s documentary “Salinger” is the lack of interest shown in the words and ideas of the popular author’s literary output. Sure, the movie follows a familiar script that makes connections between “real life” sources and inspirations for well-loved characters and events, but the desperate autobiographical sleuthing does its enigmatic subject no favors, focusing on the “mystery” of J.D. Salinger instead of anything resembling a thoughtful consideration of the man’s talents. The movie is enough to send disciples back to their dog-eared paperbacks. I daresay “old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it.”

If the superficial treatment of Salinger’s oeuvre fizzles, so too does Salerno’s ill-advised decision to stage reenactments of Salinger pounding away at a typewriter, often in front of a huge movie screen filled with images that speculate on everything from post-traumatic stress disorder to the failure of Salinger’s marriage to Claire Douglas. The effect is cheap, disheartening, and, if you’ll pardon the easy swipe, phony as hell. The use of a mute actor impersonating Salinger distances us from the charm, warmth, and humor of the fiction, stirring up instead the uglier tendencies toward the writer’s irritability, paranoia, and seclusion.

While some of the talking heads are people who knew and interacted with Salinger, too many of the interview subjects belong in the desperate stalker or eager opportunist categories. Salerno gives Joyce Maynard way more screen time than necessary to articulate her points about Salinger’s pattern of fixating on very young women and girls. A grim section highlighting the ghastly crimes of Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley Jr., and Robert Bardo would be more at home on an episode of some lurid true crime cable series. In contrast, a too-brief discussion about William Shawn’s decision to overrule the “New Yorker” fiction editors who rejected “Zooey” hints at a more insightful and discerning narrative.

Salinger fanatics and completists will discover a handful of titillating material, including a very short, previously private motion picture film clip of the author made during his World War 2 service, several rarely-seen photographs including the only known image of Salinger at work on “The Catcher in the Rye,” and a final revelatory coda outlining the possibility of forthcoming publications. Claiming that “information was provided, documented, and verified by two independent and separate sources” (whatever that means), Salerno describes a novella informed by Salinger’s work as a counter-intelligence agent, a love story based on Salinger’s relationship with his first wife, a treatise on the Vedanta religion, and a full account of the Caulfields, including a retooled version of “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.”

Most tantalizing of all: five new Glass stories, purportedly focused on Seymour, and a “detailed genealogy” of the family. Salerno claims the first of the tales sees Seymour and Buddy “recruited at a party in 1926 for the children’s quiz show ‘It’s a Wise Child’.” Less hopeful is the note that these stories are “saturated in the teachings of the Vedanta religion,” a deep fear long held by Salinger followers disillusioned by the author’s later tendency toward theological didacticism at the expense of rich and involving storytelling. Salinger biographer Paul Alexander summarizes this shift, saying of “Hapworth 16, 1924,” “It’s long on tone and absolutely devoid of plot.” Salerno’s movie doesn’t have much of either, so here’s hoping that we might get to read some new Salinger in the near future.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A hair-raising survivor thriller, Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” imagines the deadly consequences of the Kessler effect on a shuttle mission spacewalk endangered by projectile debris. At the risk of drawing fire from the enthusiastic moviegoers who made “Gravity” the most successful October film opening to date, the movie does not surpass the intellectual and emotional engagement of Cuaron’s brilliant, blistering “Children of Men,” although for many, the fierce determination and will to live expressed by stranded astronaut Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) will sets heart to pounding. “Gravity” is still better than good. Along with Emmanuel Lubezki’s phenomenal work as director of photography, the visual design certainly heralds another milestone in the development of photorealistic CGI.

“Gravity” is so direct, so focused on the life-sustaining importance of critical tasks performed step by detailed step, one wonders whether or how philosopher and Cuaron fan Slavoj Zizek will apply the “paradox of anamorphosis” to the new film. Zizek’s fascination with the idea that meaning in “Children of Men” can be derived only from examining the background and the margins – as opposed to the principal elements of plot that dominate the foreground and the action – invites a kind of discourse that must be altered for discussions of “Gravity.” Of course, it is entirely possible that Zizek could surprise us all with a claim that the chasm of space functions in a manner parallel to Cuaron’s previous efforts, but I for one see the filmmaker’s latest as a canny, calculating blend of technological experimentation and classic Hollywood formalism, the latter most disappointingly embodied by Steven Price’s often-standard issue score.

As one of the biggest movie stories of 2013, “Gravity” has already generated a metanarrative constructed by people interested in the intricacies of the production process as much as the drama of Dr. Stone’s predicament (the last time this happened on a similar scale may have been “Avatar”). Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson posted a series of comments on Twitter popping a few holes in the movie’s logic balloon. The items called out ranged from minor, possibly aesthetic issues (why Bullock’s hair didn’t float in zero-G) to questions of positioning (Hubble, the International Space Station and a Chinese rig are “all in sight lines of one another”) to several other matters of plausibility. From a storytelling standpoint, one can chalk the entire lot of Tyson’s observations up to the most basic rights of artistic license. The popular scientist also made sure to note that he enjoyed the film “very much.”

No potentially groundbreaking movie dealing with space exploration can escape the inevitable comparison to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and “Gravity” reviewers have lined up to pay their respects to Stanley Kubrick’s landmark. Kubrick’s film, no less meticulous in its own approach to orbital verisimilitude, was sui generis in a way that “Gravity” cannot claim. Andrew O’Hehir even suggests that “Gravity” is like a “secular equivalent to the spiritual or supernatural dimension found in Kubrick’s and Tarkovsky’s great space movies.” Both “Gravity” and “2001” have a way of defining the terrifying immediacy of an astronaut’s fragile tightrope walk between life and death, but Cuaron – with one notable exception – chooses not to float toward the metaphysical phantasmagoria so indelibly conjured by Kubrick.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In a famous line in Laura Mulvey’s influential “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” the film theorist writes, “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the onetime child performer turned serious and sought-after actor, makes his feature writing and directing debut with “Don Jon,” a loaded, comic spin on the prerogatives and expectations of masculinity and femininity in the age of ubiquitous Internet pornography and media-constructed messages selling us the just-out-of-reach good life. Gordon-Levitt’s decision to situate his characters within the world of working-class New Jersey Italian-Americans is simultaneously the movie’s strongest asset and greatest liability.

As swaggering bartender “Don” Jon Martello, Jr., Gordon-Levitt adopts the hairstyle, wardrobe, and thick accent necessary to distance key elements of his more contemplative public persona and previous role choices from the broader exaggerations of his priapic new character. The tactic, underscored in one of the movie’s effective trailers, serves as a reminder that Jon derives pleasure from a particular set of basic offerings. Possibly in ascending order of importance, Jon cites “my body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls, and my porn” as the few things that he really cares about. The central conundrum for the young man, then, is outlined by Jon’s perceived failure of real life to recreate the same thrills offered to him by the fantasy world of pornography.

Jon is accustomed, night after night, to alcohol-fueled club hookups that rarely extend beyond one-night stands. When he spots perfect “dime” Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), Jon has no clue that his predictable pattern of predatory conquest will be challenged, upended, and torched. Gordon-Levitt suggests that Barbara’s own sense of entitlement is driven by a no-less damaging enslavement to the happily-ever-after mirages served up in countless big screen romantic comedies. Johansson’s extraordinary physicality coincides with Mulvey’s claim that the viewer takes scopophilic pleasure in “using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight” (Gordon-Levitt was enthusiastically praised by Reddit users for his “genius” casting) and her character is decidedly situated within the “language of the dominant patriarchal order” to which Mulvey refers.

Strictly from a narrative standpoint, the inclusion of Julianne Moore’s older woman, a grieving widow named Esther who teaches Jon that “real” sex is a “two-way thing,” softens and subdues the movie’s flirtation with chauvinistic brutishness. The revelation of Barbara as a manipulative, demanding, castrating princess, rather cleverly communicated in the only dialogue spoken by Jon’s otherwise silent, eye-rolling, constantly texting sister Monica (Brie Larson), gives off the slight whiff of sour stereotype. Moore’s worldly, mature guide contrasts efficiently with the high-maintenance Barbara, allowing Gordon-Levitt to investigate a mother-whore equation and let his character off the hook.

When the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published in May, some mainstream press articles and essays fixated on the tricky terminology of sexual “addiction” by noting the convoluted history of hypersexuality in the DSM and the ongoing question of whether compulsive use of sex and porn is more than a “condition” in need of additional study and research. In spite of the graphic descriptions of sexuality and the inclusion of lurid but carefully edited clips of well-known “adult” industry veterans like Alexis Texas and Tori Black, it might be a stretch to describe “Don Jon” as edgy and challenging when the movie’s conclusion hews to Jon’s description of the pretty woman and pretty man who drive off into the sunset even though “everyone knows it’s fake.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Like Baran bo Odar’s “The Silence,” theatrically released this year in the United States, Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” deploys a large ensemble cast and interwoven plot threads involving victims, police detectives, perpetrators, and the bereaved to examine moral relativism in a stomach-turning crime involving children. Both movies follow the rules of the procedural, but “The Silence” emerges as the superior film based on its director’s deliberate objectivity in exploring the range of individual motives and personalities. Villeneuve, whose previous feature “Incendies” was selected to represent Canada as an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, struggles to find much room for nuance in Aaron Guzikowski’s sprawling screenplay.

In a weird inversion of the typical direction of the biblical allusion, Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, a struggling carpenter whose love for his daughter is so great, he is willing to do harm to an individual the police have questioned and released. On a crisp Thanksgiving Day, Dover’s young child disappears from her own neighborhood along with the daughter of family friends. The chief suspect, a creepy, monosyllabic manchild named Alex Jones (Paul Dano), drives an old RV that the girls were seen climbing on, but following a dramatic arrest, no trace of the missing children can be found in the vehicle or the home of Alex’s grim aunt, Holly Jones (Melissa Leo, distractingly made up to look heavier and older).

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Detective Loki is assigned to handle the case, but the absence of any forensic link between Jones and the lost girls forces the officer to pursue other leads. Unsatisfied with Loki and driven by a sense of urgency, Dover takes matters into his own hands, abducting and imprisoning Jones, the single action that should drive the story’s thorniest dilemma: would you become a monster to stop a monster? That’s a question addressed in many movies – see Ji-woon Kim’s “I Saw the Devil” for a particularly riveting and graphic example – but “Prisoners” can’t quite rise to the challenge. One scene with Viola Davis alludes to a deeper exploration of thought experiments on the ethics of torture, but the direction it points toward is not pursued.

While the levels of contemplative sophistication are running on empty, “Prisoners” is still worth seeing for the remarkable cinematography by superb image-maker Roger Deakins. The longtime collaborator of the Coens has been Oscar-nominated without a win a staggering ten times, but his work is always award worthy. In “Prisoners,” the texture and sense of scale in composition rendered by Deakins transcend the shortcomings of the drama’s pretend thoughtfulness, and the movie is a visual feast of practical lighting that caresses the outdoors and imagines the boundaries of asphalt and woods and daytime and nighttime with startling clarity.

The outlandish twists and turns in “Prisoners” include a crimson herring so red it’s positively bloody, and Villeneuve wastes far too much time digging in that particular rabbit hole. Gyllenhaal’s Loki is deprived of any meaningful explanation of his pained demeanor. His policeman is a blank page and we are given no glimpse into any kind of life outside his relentless quest to maintain a perfect record of solutions. The potential of seeing Jackman, Maria Bello, Viola Davis, and Terrence Howard process their walking nightmare is a promise unfulfilled, as Bello disappears into catatonia and Jackman takes center stage.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Observant and sincere, James Ponsoldt’s adaptation of Tim Tharp’s “The Spectacular Now” is quieter and more naturalistic than the recent version of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower, another novel-to-film coming of age story willing and eager to treat its teenage characters with sensitivity and respect. Both stories deal substantially with the encroachment of the unwelcome responsibilities of adulthood, and Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley are perfect as young people negotiating the rapid approach of life after high school. A worthy addition to the canon of serious-minded teen movies, “The Spectacular Now” could mark breakthrough turning points for the talented young leads, both of whom showcase their finest screen performances to date.

The plot is as easygoing as protagonist Sutter Keely (Teller), a quick-witted high school senior interested in the Spicoli-esque pursuit of a good time, all the time. Sutter is the kind of kid who outwardly makes it all look so easy, even if his borderline math grades pose a minor threat to graduation. Behind the smiling façade, however, are the lasting scars of paternal abandonment, now taking up residence in the form of Sutter’s dependence on the contents of his ever-present hip flask. Sutter’s mom Sara (Jennifer Jason Leigh) works hard to provide for her son, clearly hoping he won’t follow in his father’s unsteady footsteps. Recently dumped, Sutter surprises his friends and himself by pursuing a rebound romance with the quiet, overlooked Aimee Finecky (Woodley).

As a filmmaker, Ponsoldt takes obvious pleasure in collaborating with the performers, and some of the most rewarding exchanges of “The Spectacular Now” emerge from the long takes and unhurried intimacies that give Teller and Woodley the space to listen, react, and respond to each other. The opposites-attract combination of smart but slightly sheltered girl and sociable, underachieving wiseacre boy will remind some of Cameron Crowe’s beloved “Say Anything…” but “The Spectacular Now” appears to aim for a slightly different kind of epiphany for its central pair. John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler never doubts his suitability as a partner for Ione Skye’s Diane Court the way that Sutter second-guesses being with Aimee.

As admirably as “The Spectacular Now” holds focus on Teller and Woodley, Ponsoldt sometimes fails to fully capitalize on the story’s grown-ups. The film certainly would have benefited from one or two more short conversations featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh. The same goes for the brilliant Andre Royo as Sutter’s patient geometry teacher Mr. Aster. Bob Odenkirk plays a terrific turning point scene as Sutter’s tailor shop boss and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who starred as an alcoholic elementary school teacher in Ponsoldt’s previous feature “Smashed,” appears as Sutter’s slightly older, married sister.

For many viewers, the film’s highlight will be Sutter’s ill-advised journey to visit his absentee father, an irresponsible lush whose glassy eyes instantly relate the grim knowledge that he spends most of his time inebriated. As Tommy Keely, Kyle Chandler steals the brief segment in which he is featured. The father-son interaction is clearly engineered as a bleak wake-up call to Sutter and a reminder to the audience that history can come uncomfortably close to repetition. Sutter’s anger and resentment reside next to a pained and fragile vulnerability that positions “The Spectacular Now” as one of the year’s most welcome entries.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Next to the events that inspired it, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s “Blackfish” is the worst kind of public relations nightmare for marine park giant SeaWorld Entertainment. Systematically documenting and dismantling years of questionable practices and dubious assertions about orcas, the gripping film uses an array of footage, from degraded old television spots to freshly composed interviews with scientists and former killer whale trainers. Most dramatic, however, are clips from several harrowing incidents in which the massive black and white captives have inflicted harm on one another and on human beings. SeaWorld representatives declined requests to be interviewed, and issued a rebuttal to some of the film’s charges.

The movie’s central non-human subject is a twelve thousand pound bull orca named Tilikum. On February 24, 2010, Tilikum killed 40-year-old SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau. The same orca was also previously involved in two other deaths: trainer Keltie Byrne in 1991 and Daniel Dukes in 1999. Although Tilikum has become one of the most widely known whales in captivity due to these three incidents, other captive orcas have killed trainers and there are dozens of well-documented near misses. In the wild, orca attacks on humans are nearly nonexistent.

A reasonable person might ask why Tilikum has continued to perform in SeaWorld shows after killing Dawn Brancheau and the answer, not surprisingly, is financial. Tilikum’s value as a stud is of tremendous significance to his owners. Motley Crue drummer and animal rights activist Tommy Lee – who does not appear in “Blackfish” – has called Tilikum the “chief sperm bank” of SeaWorld. Graphic video of trainers collecting whale semen underscores the exploitation, and the revelation that Tilikum is the most prolific sire in orca captivity leads Cowperthwaite to a deeper and more disturbing discussion of the cruelty of separating offspring from parent. Orca researchers know that killer whale calves remain with their mothers for life, and descriptions of desperate, long-distance cries as the young are taken by force leave a deep impression on the viewer.

To be fair, SeaWorld does not break up all mother-offspring family units, but shrewdly, Cowperthwaite builds a case that exculpates the whales for presumably just responding to the appalling conditions in which they are forced to exist. In the wild, orcas swim many miles each day, and the cramped pens of SeaWorld in no way, shape, or form offer adequate room for the animals to thrive. Among the repercussions of cell-containment are behaviors in which whales rake one another with their teeth, dental problems from gnawing and chewing on barriers, and the most pathetic visual reminder of the difference between wild bull orcas and those in captivity: the collapsed dorsal fin. SeaWorld’s explanation for the numbers on flopped-over dorsal fins doesn’t align with scientific data.

The closest cinematic companion piece to “Blackfish” is probably “The Cove,” the gruesome expose of Dolphin hunting in Japan, but Cowperthwaite’s film also shares much in common with Werner Herzog’s phenomenal “Grizzly Man,” particularly in the way the ethics of human interaction with wild creatures are pondered. Interestingly, “Blackfish” omits any footage from “Free Willy,” although a few shots of Richard Harris in the much maligned 1977 “Jaws” pretender “Orca” are used to underscore some points about long-held misperceptions of killer whale behavior. Two other films are worth noting: “Blackfish” may lead some to Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone,” one of the most memorable films of 2012. Also, Amy Kaufman reported in “The Los Angeles Times” a few weeks ago that the ending of Pixar’s upcoming “Finding Dory” was “retooled” following a screening and discussion of “Blackfish.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

An engrossing and thoughtful look at the backup singers whose voices grace some of the most familiar recordings of popular music, “Twenty Feet from Stardom” is certainly a must-see for rock fans. Tracing the enormous and all too often unheralded contributions of the supremely talented vocalists whose job requirement more or less demands a kind of selfless anonymity, director Morgan Neville’s documentary opens up a conversation on the mysterious alchemy of stardom and the painful realities of a cold-blooded industry. Colorfully supported with vintage film and video footage, archival photographs, and interviews with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, and Sting, “Twenty Feet from Stardom” shines a light on a segment of the music world long overdue for just this kind of consideration.

With the possible exception of 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Darlene Love, the incomparable voice cruelly exploited by Phil Spector, most of the singers profiled by Neville are unknown to a general audience. Along with Love, the performers who receive the most screen time include Merry Clayton, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill, although Neville includes many more figures whose individual tales could easily support entire films of their own. “Twenty Feet from Stardom” makes the case that any one of these women could have – or should have – achieved the stratospheric levels of adoration and compensation enjoyed by the rock stars they complement, but as Sting points out, there is no way to figure the luck and timing and fortune that smile on some and ignore others, regardless of talent.

In a document filled with lore and legend, no anecdote is more potent than the story of Merry Clayton receiving an invitation to a late night session for “Let It Bleed.” Clayton describes being pregnant and dressed for bed, but determined to hold nothing back with each take. Without her scorching contributions to “Gimme Shelter,” particularly the lacerating wail of “rape, murder, it’s just a shot away,” the track is unthinkable, unimaginable. Neville treats the viewer to a sample of Clayton’s vocal isolated from the mix, and the sound sends a chill up and down the spine of any appreciator of the Rolling Stones’ apocalyptic hurricane.

Many of the most complex skeins involving race and gender are at least acknowledged if not completely and satisfyingly untangled by Neville. The movie opens with a brief discussion of the famous line “and the colored girls go…” preceding the Thunderthighs “doo do doo” backup on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” and any time the director reaches for the details of songcraft and collaboration – Bowie’s “Young Americans” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” are two of the other examples – the movie soars.

Slightly less successful is the handling of the sticky question confronting the extent to which the women were used by the performers who hired their services. Even though Neville does not directly make note of it, Claudia Lennear’s intimate relationship with Mick Jagger inspired him to pen “Brown Sugar” (she is also regularly cited as the inspiration for Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul”). Lennear, who would leave the music business and find work as a tutor and teacher, carefully and tactfully alludes to her time in the orbit of the Stones, leaving one to marvel at her grace and class. Robert Christgau once called “Brown Sugar” a “rocker so compelling that it discourages exegesis.” After spending a little time with her in “Twenty Feet from Stardom,” one could say the same thing about Lennear.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The tremendous Cate Blanchett supplies a tour-de-force performance in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” a Blanche DuBois meets Bernie Madoff moral tale that represents one of the writer-director’s strongest and most sustained efforts since 2005’s “Match Point.” Allen’s ever-prolific late period contains more clunkers than gems, but the misfires (“To Rome with Love,” “Whatever Works”) haven’t tarnished the delights (“Midnight in Paris,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”). “Blue Jasmine” doesn’t surpass “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” perhaps Allen’s finest exploration of the psyche’s darkest corners, but the new film is a worthy addition to the filmmaker’s oeuvre.

Blanchett appeared as DuBois in the Sydney Theatre Company’s revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (performed in 2009 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) and many commentators have drawn comparisons between Tennessee Williams’ tipsy, fading belle and Jeanette “Jasmine French” Francis, Allen’s richly imagined hothouse flower. While the “Streetcar” allusions in “Blue Jasmine” can keep Williams aficionados busy – see Manohla Dargis’ review in “The New York Times” for a thorough account – Allen has shaped the homage into a stern portrait of desperation both loud and quiet.

Miraculously, Blanchett wills the elitist, entitled Jasmine into spaces of pathos and vulnerability. The fallen Park Avenue socialite’s doomed marriage with a swindling financier (Alec Baldwin) has left her without means and a place to live. After fleeing New York for San Francisco to crash with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), Jasmine’s sense of privilege collides with the working class world inhabited by her sibling, a grocery clerk whose boyfriend, an auto mechanic named Chili (Bobby Cannavale), deeply resents the needy Jasmine’s inconvenient imposition. Jasmine’s plans to rediscover herself are by turns pathetic and misguided, and Allen nails the clash of classes in a series of jittery outbursts and cruel recriminations.

Allen explores a number of his pet themes, including self-delusion, wealth, opportunity, greed, and the fallout from amour fou. The fortunes and misfortunes of both Jasmine and Ginger are examined in detail, and Allen includes numerous flashbacks to explain Jasmine’s precarious and deteriorating mental health. Even though both blue and white collar stereotypes abound in the outward appearances of the film’s inhabitants, Allen wisely withholds judgment on his players, allowing the viewer to understand the motives of all significant parties, most of whom make poor decisions at one point or another. Along with Hawkins, Baldwin, and Cannavale, support is provided by Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Michael Stuhlbarg, and Peter Sarsgaard.

“Blue Jasmine” belongs to Blanchett, however, and although it’s far too early to make award season predictions, nobody would be surprised if she earns an emphatic series of accolades later this year for her work as Jasmine, a role David Denby has called “the most complicated and demanding performance of her movie career.” Allen currently holds the record among living filmmakers for directing the most Oscar-winning performances (six total, five by women), so it is little wonder that actors seek opportunities to appear in his movies. Blanchett, like Dianne Wiest before her, makes room for humor while striking the perfect notes of seriousness and sadness. By the time we join Jasmine on a park bench in the movie’s stirring coda, she has become very difficult to forget.