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‘The Last Thing He Wanted’ Will Become Yours, Too

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Not too deep into the Netflix film The Last Thing He Wanted, the spunky heroine is given a warning: “Buckle up. It’s gonna be bananas!”

It’s advice that checks out. It’s definitely bananas, but not those fancy, ripe, yellow ones Cheetah gets at Tarzan & Jane’s jungle soirees. These are more the splotchy, half-decomposed bananas with those  cancerous brown chunks throughout of the fruit.

Director Dee Rees has stumbled badly with her adaptation of Joan Didion’s novel of the same name, creating a messy, disorientating and meandering film. It’s the last thing we wanted.

Rees, who helmed Mudbound to acclaim, directs and co-writes the screenplay with Marco Villalobos and they clearly admire the novel. That leads to pointless scenes, too many minor characters and a lack of precision. For a thriller, there’s also an alarming lack of thrills. So often this films feels like a balloon repeatedly blown up and then just as soon deflated.Image result for mudbound

(Mudbound)

Viewers might need to do some homework beforehand and get familiar with Nicaragua in the 1980s. Knowing who the Sandinistas and Contras are is crucial. Being patient with lots of cryptic geopolitical conversations is also a plus. This isn’t based on a true story, but then we oddly get a portrayal of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz. (Look away, Shultz fans. It isn’t pretty.)Image result for george p shultz

The movie stars Anne Hathaway as the middle-aged woman at the heart of the book. Hathaway’s Elena McMahon has walked out of her life. Actually she does it twice. We meet her as a hard-nosed journalist who has already fled a cossetted existence and wealthy husband. Then we see her flee that high-flying career in order to aid her ailing dad.

Dad (Willem Dafoe, terrific) is a curmudgeonly arms dealer who has manged to arrange one last exchange which will net him $1 million, a lot in the mid-80s. But his memory is failing and he gets confused so he asks his daughter to fill in for him. So that’s how we get Elena in a cocktail dress standing on a remote airstrip in Nicaragua with cases of guns, bullets and land mines.Image result for the last thing he wanted willem dafoe

Somehow the irony of this situation isn’t fully explored. Here we have a righteous journalist who just a few minutes before was declaring “We can’t just look away!” about Central American atrocities who’s now smuggling in the exact weapons fueling the violence. But Elena is moving too quickly to think about it — she’s fallen deep into a twisty conspiracy wrapped in an enigma hidden in a lousy script.

Somewhere in the film is a lesson about corruption of the soul or the venality of nations. But “ The Last Thing He Wanted ” is both too small and too large, unable to tell the whole story of the U.S. meddling in Central America and yet unable to really tell the story of one woman, either.

There are moments when Hathaway really reveals a hurt deep inside — a scene in which she opens her dad’s empty fridge is deeply affecting — but the individual scenes don’t add up to a real portrait. The film also stars Ben Affleck as a shadowy figure and he has decided that being quiet and blank is the best option here, except for a scene in which he eats pie with Shultz, which is just bizarre. There is criminally too little Rosie Perez as well.Image result for the last thing he wanted hathaway affleck

The first half doesn’t fit with the second half, there are too many distractions and the filmmakers think it’s clever to leave clues but they do it clumsily and at the last minute and it’s really exhausting for the viewer. There’s a whiff of The Year of Living Dangerously, a little Air America and even some of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.

But whiffs aren’t enough. Ultimately, Last Thing is a banana peel on which everyone has slipped.

Call ‘The Pharmacist’ for Refills

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Spend enough time as a reporter, and you’ll quickly learn: There comes a moment in any interview when you tell yourself, ‘This is the quote. This is the interview. This is the story.’

The same must happen with non-fiction movies.

Sometimes when you watch a documentary – particularly one of the new wave of true crime serial documentaries – you can’t help but imagine the moment when the producers first met their key interviewee and, within a couple of minutes, realized they were looking at factual-film-making gold.

Dan Schneider, the hero – and here, that’s not hyperbole – of Netflix’s rollicking new four-parter, The Pharmacist, is such an interviewee. An open-hearted, grey-haired bear of a man who is articulate and eager to tell his shattering tale, often through thick tears and repeatedly invoking God as a helper and witness, Schneider has an attribute even the best sources don’t usually offer: he has recorded, on film or audio cassette, everything he has been through, meaning The Pharmacist has a vivid immediacy most documentaries can’t achieve.

Appalled at the lack of police interest in the case and with acute grief occluding his instinct for self-preservation, Schneider launched his own investigation, hunting for and interviewing suspects and witnesses while ignoring strong advice not to proceed. In the hope of one day presenting his evidence at trial, Schneider taped all his phone calls and even spoke his private thoughts into his recorder, as if narrating his own story.

That story, of who killed Schneider’s son and how he found them, is a breathless thriller with a sensational twist in the middle. But, in episode two, The Pharmacist reveals that Danny’s murder is merely a horribly tragic prelude.Image result for netflix the pharmacist

Indeed, Schneider’s investigations did not end with the killing. He used his day job to look into an even bigger problem than crack: opioids. Oxycontin prescriptions are coming through his pharmacy’s door far too often, clutched by patients too young and not in enough pain to warrant taking the drug. When he recognizes a young user in a news report on her premature death, Schneider takes his audio equipment and his unstoppable curiosity and picks up the case: thanks to one rogue doctor, there are young people on their way to dying early just like Schneider’s son did. But unlike Danny, some of them can be saved.

What follows is a rapidly expanding narrative of medical, corporate and law-enforcement corruption, doggedly chipped away at by a lone individual who simply won’t shut up and be quiet. The you’re-kidding-me revelations that power any good true crime doc come regularly – the moment when a simple piece of investigative work by Schneider makes the DEA, FBI and local sheriff’s office all look stupid is a corker – as The Pharmacist scores interviews with all relevant parties, holding some of them back for maximum storytelling impact.Image result for netflix the pharmacist

The show is blessed with several compelling talking heads apart from Schneider himself, not least a reformed big-pharma drugs rep who announces yet another abrupt shift in the plot by dramatically barking, more than halfway through the series: “That wasn’t the end! That was … the beginning!”

In the last two episodes, we arrive at the real point of The Pharmacist, as it pulls back to look at the history of a national opioid crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives since Schneider correctly outlined its mechanics at a local level. It is a story of inhuman capitalist greed on a huge scale, described here as being on a par with the lies told about tobacco in a previous century. The final twist is that when the scandal goes national, the humble Louisiana pharmacist keeps up with it, scaling up the same fussy, stubborn common sense to help stem the tide.

The Pharmacist raises an impeccably important global issue, but its power as television all comes from one individual. Schneider, always dogged by sadness (the program never forgets young Danny’s loss) but resolute in his faith and his desire to right wrongs, also has the self-awareness necessary to be a truly great documentary protagonist:

“I was driven,” he says in one of many wry examinations of his own motives. “Other people would say ‘obsessed’.”

Quentin Tarantino’s Long Oscar Con

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Warning: Spoilers loose here!

First, full disclosure: I love Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. I think it’s one of the best movies of the year, one of Tarantino’s finest in a career of fine films, and as fitting an homage to Los Angeles’ Golden Age of film as any ever rendered. And it’s getting too much praise.

Hollywood has been nominated for 10 Oscars, and has already collected 102 trophies over more than a dozen award ceremonies, including the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs.

Those plaudits for the films aren’t the problem. The problem is the praise heaped on supporting star Brad Pitt. He, like the film, has been showered in praise and gold plating, nabbing a Best Supporting Oscar nomination and taking home supporting acting statuettes from said Globes/BAFTAs. Should Pitt win the Oscar, his first order of business should be to thank Tarantino for pulling off the greatest heist since Ocean’s Eleven. In fact, classic films were part of the heist.Image result for pitt golden globe"

You see, Tarantino is this year’s Oscar’s darling for his love letter to 1960’s Hollywood, when the industry’s  ability to sell a concocted happiness was at its peak. Families were nuclear and daddies knew best. Kids didn’t swear, adults didn’t screw, and cowboys didn’t miss or bleed (unless they were bad). Killers met with unfettered justice — often dealt out by likes of Rick Dalton, Tarantino’s leading man in Hollywood.

Dalton is one of those Bonanza cowboys, at least on the outside. Steady. Steely. Sure-handed. Inside, though, he’s a wreck. He drinks too much, swears up a storm, has a nervous stutter, and is having trouble coming to terms with age and relevance.

Now consider Cliff Booth, Pitt’s likable, buff stunt double to DiCaprio’s Dalton in Hollywood. Cliff is an understated Missouri boy who, in the span of three hours, saves his buddy’s career, kicks Bruce Lee’s ass in a street fight and single-handedly prevents the Manson family murders. He is as stalwart a Hollywood hero as any produced 50 years ago. And like all good 60’s movie cowboys, his acting sucks.Image result for bruce lee cliff booth"

Like, really sucks. I challenge anyone who has seen the film: Name one scene in which Pitt is called upon to act. One scene in which he sheds a tear. Or loses his temper. Or becomes nervous, uncomfortable or caught unawares. He is Shane, mysterious, unflappable and Ivory pure.

This isn’t Pitt’s fault. He’s a solid actor (See Twelve Monkeys, Moneyball, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). It’s just he’s playing John Wayne without the temper, and is never asked to express anything approximating range. Tarantino must know: DiCaprio acted circles around Pitt, gaining weight, shedding tears, allowing insecurities to surface. But while Pitt won honors, DiCaprio had to settle for honorable mentions among the Globes and BAFTAs.Image result for twelve monkeys"

Not that anyone need shed a tear over Hollywood‘s fortunes. But if Pitt manages to pull off a win, and beat co-nominees Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, Joe Pesci and Tom Hanks, he should silently signal to Tarantino Sting-style, with a nod of the head and forefinger gently brushing his nose. Image result for the sting rub nose"

Because that’s a helluva take.