FILM: Grandma
DIRECTOR: Paul Weitz
CAST: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Sam Elliott, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer

There is a heart-breaking scene between Lily Tomlin and Sam Elliott toward the end of Grandma that is one of the finest things either has ever done on film — or, for that matter, ever will do. In Elliott’s case, it’s his finest film moment.
In Tomlin’s, it will always have to contend with her masterpiece — John Bailey’s 1991 film of her one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which was written by her life partner Jane Wagner.
Lily Tomlin is, legendarily, a piece of work. So is her eponymous character in Grandma (whose fictional name, revealingly, is “Elle”). But then Paul Weitz’s movie is itself a piece of work, in which it couldn’t be more obvious at every turn why Tomlin clearly embraced it so wholeheartedly that the film makes comic use of an actual 1955 Dodge owned by its star.
She has never been easy to work with. She’s admitted that from the beginning — most famously early on after shooting Robert Benton’s The Late Show. Go online, type in “Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell” and watch a candid video in horror as her harsh complaints to her director Russell during the filming of I Heart Huckabees light the match that causes a Russell explosion of volcanic profanity and magnitude.
Her periodic difficulties have, no doubt, accounted for her having approximately one-third the career many of us wanted her to have. In every second of Weitz’s Grandma you can see the kind of very funny and moving film that would allow Tomlin to breathe deeply, mutter “at last” to herself and bless her luck for starring in the kind of movie she should be making.
She’s wonderful — not always artfully directed by Weitz, but so intrinsically perfect for this script that I think the two of them spent the shoot blessing their good fortune in such a collaboration.
She plays a once highly thought of feminist poet whose life has stalled while she deals with grief over the death of her life partner. “I’m an academic” she says now with no small rue. “An unemployed one.”
She’s also a lifelong rebel — constantly marinating in disgust at an increasingly dispiriting world. She cut up all her credit cards and made wind-chimes out them. (Don’t examine that claim too closely; just swing with Weitz’s script in good faith.)
She has broken up with a new, much-younger partner (Judy Greer) and now freely admits to anyone interested: “I’m a horrible person.”
At that exact moment, as if to test that proposition, her granddaughter shows up at her front door with the news that she’s in immediate need of $630 for an abortion.
“I’ve turned my life into art,” says Grandma, explaining why she doesn’t have that amount of cash at the ready.
So many bracing things are treated matter-of-factly in Grandma that you can understand why a performer as sensitive and feisty and feminist as Tomlin would give this movie everything she’s got.
And so she does most of the time, often to brilliant effect. The film is often terribly funny but, because its basic subject matter is serious, you’re engrossed, too, in the tale of a granddaughter and grandmother having to rely on a huge reservoir of love that neither one, in their less needy moments, wants anything to do with.
If you’re at all suddenly startled by Tomlin so visible after so many damnable years of apparently self-imposed obscurity (she has also made a TV sitcom with Jane Fonda called Grace and Frankie for Netflix), she’s entered a time of life when she can deliver a joyously sour line like “I like being old. Young people are stupid.”
I dare say there are, at most, half a dozen living American actresses who can make that line both sing and make it work in perfect dramatic context at the same time in a movie.
Tomlin is one of them. Hallelujah for having her back.
And if you care about either one of them after all these years, don’t miss her scene with Elliott. It’s one of 2015’s great movie moments. — The Buffalo News/TNS

A hero’s tale

By M Scott Morris


FILM: Bridge of Spies
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
CAST: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have joined forces to make a beautiful movie about what it means to be an American.
Bridge of Spies is based on true events and is set during the Cold War, when there was no mistaking the enemy. The USSR wants to learn all it can about the USA, and vice versa.
Early in the film, federal forces capture Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a painter by profession, but that’s only a cover. Abel is charged as a spy, and James B Donovan (Hanks) is assigned to be his defence attorney.
It’s not an easy job for Donovan because he’s determined to fight for every right Abel deserves under the law. That doesn’t sit well with his boss, the judge or people in the community.
Donovan’s wife (Amy Ryan) isn’t too happy either, especially after the family receives credible threats of violence.
The government wants to execute Abel, but Donovan is an insurance lawyer. He knows the value of an ace in the hole, and so do the viewers, because there’s a parallel story with Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), an American spy plane pilot who’s shot down over Soviet skies.
Bridge of Spies becomes a behind-the-scenes look at how Donovan negotiates with Soviets and East Germans when his government can’t.
The movie has its comedic moments, as Donovan deals with petty, bureaucratic cruelties in the East and West, and Abel’s dry wit in dire circumstances lightens the mood.
That’s balanced with almost casual tragedy. We see the Berlin Wall bisect Berlin, when tensions are high and trigger fingers fast.
I don’t know what kind of man Donovan actually was, but Hanks portrays him as a good-natured everyman, who’s dedicated to his ideals, even when people around him would rather cut corners.
His frustrations pile up, but he never loses his sense of grace. Donovan is the definition of a stand-up guy, and Hanks’ portrayal propels this movie forward.
This is a Cold War story, but it’s clear Spielberg sees Donovan’s example as universal. In times of turmoil, it’s up to ordinary people to do the right thing. It’s not an easy ideal to live up to, and that’s what makes Donovan a true American hero.
I give Bridge of Spies an A. —Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal/TNS

Courage under fire


FILM: He Named Me Malala
DIRECTION: Davis Guggenheim

An intimate portrait of the fearless young advocate for women’s education, He Named Me Malala is one of the significant films of the year. Using extensive interviews with his subject and her family as well as newsreel footage, award-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) sheds new light on the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Malala was named by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, after the teenage Afghani woman who rallied Pashtun fighters against British troops in the 19th century. Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for speaking out in support of girls’ education in Pakistan. Transferred to a hospital in Birmingham in the UK, she miraculously survived. We follow Malala as she builds a new life for herself, all the while continuing her campaign on behalf of girls who have been denied basic education.
Even as she speaks at international events and meets with global dignitaries, Malala leads a fairly conventional life at home — squabbling with her two younger brothers or gushing over her sports idols, cricketer Shahid Afridi and tennis player Roger Federer.
Unfortunately, director Guggenheim devotes a disproportionate amount of time to the animation interludes that illustrate crucial moments in the life of the courageous young woman. Also, there are several clumsily recreated sequences that seek to highlight the plight of underprivileged children in her hometown. But these are quibbles. Visiting children at a school in Africa, Malala is heard declaring that “school is my home”. It’s a sentiment that governments worldwide should heed. —Hindustan Times/TNS

DVDs courtesy:
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