LEAN ON PETE (2018)

Rated: R

STARS: Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, Travis Fimmel
DIRECTOR: Andrew Haigh
GENRE: Drama

I once read a review by a prominent film critic who was so disgusted by the ending of Pay It Forward that he revealed the ending in the review, reasoning that what happened was a cheap and shitty thing to do to viewers who had invested their money and emotional energy into something that up to that point had been an uplifting experience, and that they were better off knowing. I'm about to do something similar here, though I'm not revealing the ending...just the ending of my caring anything about what happens in this film from that point forward. 

Imagine if King Kong were not about a gorilla, but more about one of the Skull islanders who threw bananas at him from afar, and the gorilla was just incidental to the story...a prop, basically. You'd wonder why the hell they named the movie King Kong, now wouldn't you? And you might be pretty pissed at the film makers for the misleading way they advertised the movie to get gorilla lovers to fill the seats. That, in essence, is Lean On Pete, purportedly a story about a boy and his horse. It's not. It's a violent, mean-spirited film masquerading as a lyrical tale about a boy and a horse. The horse is just incidental to the story--expendable not only to the cold-hearted racing industry that uses the animals up and then sends them off to the glue factory when they no longer make money for the owners, but expendable to the plot of this film as well. And I don't consider my revealing this a spoiler so much as a public service for animal lovers and parents with children who love horses. This is not your kind of movie!  

Charlie Plummer is Charley Thompson, the Oregon teenager who gets hired on as a stable hand for a grizzled, cynical trainer of the low-rent quarter horse racing circuit, Del Montgomery (Steve Buscemi). Lean On Pete is the  name of the horse Charley takes a shine to. Despite repeated admonitions to not get emotionally involved (good idea for you too), Charley is crestfallen when he learns Del is about to sell Pete and that the horse will end up in Mexico and become dog food. Charley loads Pete into the trailer and takes off, embarking on a cross-country odyssey, roaming through picturesque fields that make for some great cinematography. He's trying to find his estranged aunt, who lives somewhere in Wyoming, and maybe have a place to call home.        


It is here where the film breaks the covenant with viewers who are expecting something more than just killing off characters for convenience. (Charley's dad dies earlier in the film as well.) Killing off characters is the easy way out if you don't know what to do with them. What's hard is bringing their screen time--synonymous with their time on this earth--to some sort of existential vista where they, and the viewer, can gaze back from and ponder how it all fits into the what's-it-all-about-Alfie narrative of their life. 

In fairness, the film makers were just being faithful to the 2010 novel by Willy Vlautin, so they're not responsible for the plot elements. What they are responsible for is the graphic, jarring and manipulative way they showed Pete making his "exit," which comes about two-thirds of the way through the film. After which, as stated above, I cared not a whit about what happened the rest of the way--just sat through it because I was going to review it. 

Still, this is a hard one for me to grade. Because there are good turns here from the young Plummer, who gives an understated performance that makes him seem real. And Steve Buscemi, demonstrating the versatility of his acting chops as the crusty trainer. And the film should maybe win an award for sound editing, because when those quarter horses come thundering past you, it puts you right there. I'm torn between what I want to give it on a heart level and what I want to give it on a head level. So I'll average the two out. 

Grade: C

JILL'S TAKE

Well, readers.  Get ready for some big disagreements. Lean On Pete is a film about survival.  And the title is both the name of a racehorse and a metaphor for Charley's journey.  Yes, I assumed when I entered the movie theater, that I'd be seeing a grittier version of My Friend Flicka. But even as the stark opening credits rolled and the unfamiliar production company announced itself, I knew it wasn't going to be a kiddies' film. 

There are so many unexpected twists and turns in Lean On Pete that I defy even the most knowledgeable film goer to predict any of them in advance.  Because they were so unpredictable, I actually felt like I was experiencing them along with Charley. (Not an altogether pleasant feeling but certainly an engrossing one.)  The kid who played Charley was brilliant.  Since his last name is Plummer, I wondered if he was any relation to Christopher. No, he isn't.  But he did play John Paul Getty's grandson in All The Money In The World. (The other Plummer played Getty Sr.) 

The rest of the cast was also excellent.  Steve Buscemi...Chloe Sevigny...and especially Steve Zahn, as a homeless psychopath. Reality was rampant in this nugget of a film  Whether witnessing PTSD victims at their very worst.  Or the smarmy side of horse racing.  I was hooked -- like a morbid onlooker at the scene of a car crash. 

Another disagreement with Tim?  I thought the sound editing sucked. Too loud in places, inaudible in others.  But a minor criticism.  On the whole, I really liked this movie.  My subtitle for Lean On Pete? (It ain't The Kentucky Derby....)

Grade: B+

NORMAN: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2017)

Rated:  R

STARS: Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Steve Buscemi, Charlotte Gainsbourg
DIRECTOR: Joseph Cedar
GENRE: Drama

Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't. You won't get that until the end of the movie. One that is well worth sitting through to groan at my little pun!

So here we have Richard Gere. I never thought I'd see the day when he would totally dampen down his sex-appeal to play a character as quirky as this one. Gere is Norman Oppenheimer--a New York City flim-flam man. A schemer. A dreamer. A name dropper. Always working some angle that's going to hopefully put him into the black. But he's not very good at it. The epitome of those who live lives of quiet desperation, and he wears that look like it's painted on him from start to near finish of Norman:The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer.

And while Norman has some visually delightful and imaginative cinematography, Gere's character is as drab as anyone could ever look. He wears the same overcoat and "old guys' cap"--you know, the one that's supposed to look sporty but only old dudes wear them--throughout the entire film! Wardrobe expenditure for Mr. Gere: next to zilch.

Where Norman's rise begins is when he gloms onto Micha Eshel  (Lior Askenazi), a visiting Israeli politician. He buys the man a pair of shoes at a swanky boutique and nearly faints dead when he sees the price tag.  It turns into the best investment of  his life when Eshel becomes the Israeli prime minister.  For a while, Norm is living his dream of schmoozing with the movers and shakers. But where there are politicians there will be scandal, and our man finds himself smack dab in the middle of it, headed for a fall (hey, they tell you that in the title, so no spoiler there).

His years as a major heartthrob may be a thing of the past, but Gere is adapting nicely and establishing himself as a fine character actor. And there are noteworthy performances from Steve Buscemi--as a RABBI no less; and Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist; Nymphomaniac) who uncharacteristically keeps her duds on the whole time while delivering a sensitive portrayal as Norman's chance encounter on a train. And Lior Ashkenazi's character, whether he's up or he's down, is muy sympatico throughout. 

The thing I pondered as I left the theater is whether our protagonist changed even a whit in the end. Because Norman has only one gear (pardon the pun), but it's fascinating to watch him roll through the stops signs as he goes for broke at every turn, desperately trying to stay in the race. 

Grade:   B +

JILL'S TAKE

The best thing about this loser of a movie are the puns it created in Tim's review. I kept thinking "This has got to get better!" But it didn't. Not by a long shot. It's never easy to sit through a film where the main character is so desperately needy and sychophantic. And I, for one, prefer Richard Gere as an aging sex symbol to a smarmy weasel like Norman Oppenheimer. I have to give the director Joseph Cedar credit, though, for enlisting the talents of so many fine actors. Steve Buscemi was already mentioned but there were cameos by the likes of Michael Sheen, Hank Azaria and Harris Yulin. But that's the ONLY thing I'll give Cedar credit for.

I still don't know what half the movie was about – and couldn't care less. I found the score intrusive when it interrupted those endless conversations Norman insisted on having with people who avoided him like The Plague. There were so many loose ends in the script that it felt like a shag rug gone rogue.

But I try to find something positive in every review I write, so here goes: I applaud the acting of Lior Ashkenazi. Very believable. (And it probably doesn't hurt that he's an Israeli playing an Israeli politican!) Interesting last name:Ashkenazi Jews are people who are descended from the Jewish population of Central and Eastern Europe. Around 80% of the Jewish people around the world are Ashkenazim, including most American Jews.

Regardless of what you believe, "Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer" is – like its subtitle – painfully long-winded and uninviting. 

Grade: D -

ON THE ROAD (2012)

Rated: R

Stars: Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi, Tom Sturridge

Director: Walter Salles

Genre: Drama/Arthouse


The first thing I want to see at the beginning of a period movie is that the sets and the hairstyles and clothing of the actors is reflective of that era. In other words, to feel that I am authentically THERE. Otherwise, it's pretty stupid to ask you to believe you are watching a scene from the late forties, for example, when all the primary characters have contemporary looking hair styles. It's like they time traveled BACK to that era as their current selves, rather than being the authentic folks FROM that era. Some may think that's a relatively minor point, but I don't. And that's the first thing that irks me about On The Road, the film adaptation of beat poet Jack Kerouac's novel of "high" adventure in late forties and early fifties America.

I read the novel some time back, but if you are unfamiliar with it, you'll need to keep in mind that in the book--as it is in the film--that Kerouac has thinly disguised himself as a character called Sal Paradise, (Sam Riley) and his close friend Neal Cassady,(Garrett Hedlund) as Dean Moriarty. The third primary character is Cassady's free-spirited wife, Marylou (Kristen Stewart). 

Okay, here it comes again...they didn't even try...they didn't even TRY to do anything with Stewart's straightish, beyond shoulder-length hair that looks the same in the movie as it looks in any current publicity shot of her. That's the end of my rant, except that I've posted a picture of what women's hairstyles really looked like in the forties at the head of this review. 

So now they're all off to look for America in a drugged-up haze of weed fumes, Benzedrine and bongo drums. On The Road the movie is, like the book, a rambling recounting of aimless bohemian youth in all its hedonistic glory. It's evident that everyone involved in this production is trying real hard to bring off the unbringable and recreate the spontaneous, frenetic feel of the book, and to an extent they succeed. 

Kristen Stewart, whom up until now has been associated with a variety of vacuous vampire flicks, loses her adolescent image-- along with her duds--as a seductive predecessor to the free love movement of the sixties with a couple of steamy, revealing scenes,including a menage a trois with Paradise and Moriarty. 

Heglund is well cast as Moriarty/Cassady, but Sam Riley as Paradise/Kerouac just felt WRONG! Jack Kerouac had a kind of Boston "blue collar-ness" to him, and a bit of an edge to his personality that Riley--who comes off as slightly effeminate in the role--simply did not bring.

A bevy of household names are here in either small roles or cameos, including Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, and Steve Buscemi. Seems they all wanted to be a part of something legendary. The book is legendary, the movie is not, but On The Road--your quintessential arthouse film-- becomes more fascinating as it snakes and weaves recklessly along its way to a sobering conclusion. 

Grade:  C +

FROM THE DISTAFF SIDE--Jill's Take!

[In case Tim doesn't include this in his introduction, I'm his bona fide movie buddy. We see everything together—and agree on nothing. That's what prompted the idea of me adding my two cents in writing rather than bending his ear in the parking lot.]

I'm usually very quick to have opinions, and strong ones. But ON THE ROAD left me wondering how I felt about it. Hairstyles be damned, it was long and disjointed. And I should have hated it. Only I didn't. And the embarrassing thing is, I can't really tell you why. Except that the film created a kind of innocence of the era. No cell phones, no seat belts. There's a scene—it won't ruin the movie for you—where Sal Paradise/Sam Riley goes into a mom-and-pop store to steal some food and the clerk says he'll be right back, heading for the supply room. Would that happen today? No way. The clerk would probably have a gun hidden below the cash register. I much preferred the road scenes to the endless pot-smoking orgies. Yes, the film meandered. And yes, the main character was nobody I'd ever empathize with. But for once in our joint movie history, I'd rate this flick higher than my male cohort. If for no other reason than to watch all those megastars—especially Steve Buscemi as a smarmy closet gay, and naked-from-the-rear Viggo Mortensen—making quickie appearances.

Grade: B