Summer often means cinematic garbage but here are two worth your popcorn and parking.
Both are imperfect films but have shimmering lead performers that boost their films to glorious art.
Woody Allen has assembled a talented cast for his latest film Blue Jasmine but few of the scenes burst with as much energy as those featuring Cate Blanchett.
Stunning even when unhinged and muttering to herself, Jasmine is a study of the woman scorned and then some. As Blanchett plays her, she is at once spoiled and haughty and later, pleading and pathetic. Never once, though, is she anything but mesmerizing. As the long suffering sister Ginger, Sally Hawkins, star of the fantastic Happy-Go-Lucky, holds her own against the Blanchett hurricane but only just. Alec Baldwin, as the philandering cheat, is disappointingly dull but Allen doesn’t seem to care: his camera only has eyes for Blanchett. Go see the film but not because it is perfect. There are scenes that are off balance and the tone of the piece is a little schizophrenic. But marvel at the wonder of one of this generation’s greatest talents as she does that seemingly simply trick of every great actor: make us care deeply about their narrative. In Blanchett’s hands, we are given a map of Jasmine’s madness.
It is an intelligent, finely wrought performance that will leave you breathless.
The tone of The Way, Way Back is note perfect if predictable.
While we understand where the story is headed, the ride there whisked me back to my own teenage summers, when I washed my hair in sunlight soap and roared Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” in my bedroom. The film’s nostalgic gleam is purposeful. This is a coming of age tale and we are meant to go back, if not in time (the film is set in present day) but in stage of life. As the misunderstood teen Duncan, ignored by the asinine adults meant to be his caregivers, Liam James is appropriately awkward and vulnerable. But the movie belongs to Sam Rockwell, as the water park staff lifer who gives Duncan the missing ingredient at exactly the right moment.
Can I help it if the sexy Rockwell reminds me of a camp counsellor that asked me to dance when I was a junior staffer at a camp exchange?
We only danced once (to Jefferson Starship’s Miracles) and he was years older but his goofy charm played havoc with my imagination. Rockwell too nails the goofy quip but also a tenderness that elevates the film from a piece of whimsy to a grander gesture. His is the performance you remember all summer, like the refrain of a ’70’s ballad. Anyone who was young once (and remembers it!) will love this one.
I can hear windmills and rainbows
Whenever you’re talkin’ to me
I feel like swirling and dancin’
Whenever you’re walking with me
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