Tag Archives: Alan Alda

Music Maker, Dreamer of Dreams

April 3, 2024 maddwolf Leave a comment

Remembering Gene Wilder

by Hope Madden

Maybe the smartest choice director Ron Frank made when putting together his affectionate documentary Remembering Gene Wilder was to pull audio from Wilder’s own autobiography. Sure, we hear from many who loved the comic actor—Mel Brooks, Carol Kane, Alan Alda among them. But everything they tell you about his authenticity, humility, humanity, and perfect comic timing you can hear for yourself as Wilder spills the beans on his life.

You remember the hair, of course. And probably those eyes. But that voice proves, in case you have forgotten, that there was something deeply, bubblingly, undeniably delightful about Gene Wilder. And he could act.

Frank, working with writer Glenn Kirschbaum, hand picks some of Wilder’s best scenes. Not necessarily the most iconic, but the most confounding, the scenes where he made a creative decision no one else would have considered, creating an indelible moment on screen.

This is a film that loves Gene Wilder, and it makes a pretty good case for that.

We hear about is childhood, about Willy Wonka, Young Frankenstein, Richard Pryor, Gilda. Each story showcases the gentle, charming creature that was Gene Wilder. Though Frank doesn’t break any new ground cinematically—talking head interviews flank home movies, film clips surround family photos—the mellow approach belies a deep emotional connection.

Remembering Gene Wilder is not just a greatest hits. Although the film does not delve into any of the actor/director’s box office or critical missteps—nor does it devote a single moment to anything that would make Wilder out to be anything other than a treasure—it acknowledges low times. Even those just make you want to hug him.

Not every film or character of Wilder’s has aged well, but his good nature and talent shine none the dimmer. Remembering Gene Wilder certainly does not unearth any ugliness, bares no startling truths. It’s clearly the product of a filmmaker who truly loves his subject.

He doesn’t seem wrong, though.

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Being Alive

November 25, 2019 maddwolf Leave a comment

Marriage Story

by George Wolf

If plot is what happens and story is how it happens, there’s no better title for Noah Baumbach’s latest than Marriage Story.

For years, Baumbach’s films have probed characters struggling to live up to an image of themselves. It’s what he does, and now Baumbach has written and directed his masterpiece, a bravely personal and beautifully heartbreaking deconstruction of a marriage falling apart.

Adam Driver is Charlie, a New York stage director. Scarlett Johansson is Nicole, an L.A. film actress who made the switch to NYC live theater when she married Charlie and they welcomed son Henry (Azhy Robertson).

We meet Charlie and Nicole in counseling, taking part in an exercise that reminds them why they married and reminds us how skilled Baumbach is at not only writing wonderfully organic dialog, but in bringing it to the screen with layer upon layer of authenticity.

Tremendous performances from Johansson and Driver cement our immersion into the lives of two people valiantly trying to retain some control over the process of splitting up.

Nicole hurts deeply but wears a brave face, unsure of how to approach a future without Charlie, but unable to deny that life with him has meant she “got smaller.” Johannson has never been better, successfully mining Nicole’s mix of pain and defiance with silent tears and impassioned outbursts alike.

Here’s something I’ve said a lot this year: Driver is one the most consistently impressive actors around. His skill at finding the human center of his characters is subtle but unmistakable, and here Driver never lets you abandon Charlie, most importantly when his refusals to face reality seem like cathartic soul-baring from Baumbach himself.

We see the details that make up the work of a marriage, and the subtle cracks that weaken the relationship and begin to pull two people apart. And with the break comes the battle for child custody and the business of divorce.

But even as their two opposing lawyers (Ray Liotta and Laura Dern, Oscar-worthy herself) bleed the couple’s finances and turn the fight dirty, Baumbach never gets petty. When you think the film is taking sides it makes a subtle change in direction, slowly building toward the brilliantly executed emotional tsunami you know is coming.

Will you need tissues? Oh yes. The story of Nicole and Charlie’s marriage will put you through the wringer. And every frame is absolutely worth it.

Late in the film, Charlie’s out with a group of theater friends and ends up joining a pianist to sing Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive.” So we have a theater guy going through a tumultuous divorce taking time to sing a Broadway classic about the risk of commitment. It’s a sequence that could have easily devolved into self-indulgent excess, but instead only confirms the depth of Baumbach’s reach.

He lets another writer’s words brilliantly refocus what Charlie and Nicole will always mean to other, and like everything else in Marriage Story, it feels real, true and necessary.

It feels alive.

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Old Pros at Work

October 15, 2015 maddwolf Leave a comment

Bridge of Spies

by George Wolf

It’s October, so if you hear “Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, two hour twenty minute historical drama” and think Oscar bait, you’re not alone.

But Bridge of Spies also walks the walk, emerging as a taut, effective and absorbing film, as finely crafted as you would expect from the talents involved.

It’s also a wonderful slice of history, especially for those not familiar with the story of Jim Donovan.

As the Cold War rages in the late 1950s, Donovan (Hanks) is an insurance lawyer with three kids and a wife (Amy Ryan) in a big house in the New York suburbs. When the CIA nabs Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), the head of Donovan’s firm (Alan Alda) volunteers him to help the Feds and give Abel just enough of a defense to make the trial seem legit.

Going through the motions doesn’t sit well with Donovan, even as his commitment brings a cost “to family and firm.”

Complications arise when the Russians capture one of ours, and a prisoner exchange seems in the best interest of both parties. That’s not the sort of thing governments want to officially participate in, so Donovan is sent to Berlin to negotiate the deal.

Standing alone, the true events are undoubtedly compelling, but onscreen they unfold like an intentionally old school genre thriller, crafted by veteran artists wearing their considerable skills like a perfectly broken-in pair of shoes.

Spielberg’s sense of pace and framing is casually impeccable, Hanks perfectly embodies Donovan’s inner journey, and Rylance is sure to get Oscar consideration for his scene-stealing perfection.

But there’s more. Composer Thomas Newman (what, not John Williams?) provides a gently evocative score, and Matt Charman’s script gets an assist from none other than the Coen Brothers.

As the tale moves from courtroom motions to clandestine spy games, it’s punctuated by perfectly realized moments that speak to more universal themes. Schoolchildren frightened by the thought of war, a mad dash to make it over the Berlin Wall, or a pledge to be a justice system that doesn’t “toss people in the trash heap”, all linger just long enough to resonate without manipulation.

By the time Donovan heads to the bridge for the prisoner transfer, the only chance of letdown in the film comes from being lulled into complacency by the skill of people who just know what the hell they are doing.

You knew Bridge of Spies would be good. It is.

Maddwolf