Movie Review: The Public (2018)

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As the third floor librarian of the Cincinnati Public Library working in the Social Sciences Department, the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, history, economic, public health, and more are Stuart Goodson's domain.

However, as we see shortly into The Public from writer-director-producer Emilio Estevez (who also plays Goodson), the librarian's experience with these subjects goes far beyond the printed page as everyday his workplace transforms into a veritable homeless shelter, which gives citizens freezing on the streets of Cincinnati a warm place to go for the day.

Bringing awareness to an epidemic that plays out in public libraries across the country, the film, which was inspired by an article that Salt Lake City Public Library Deputy Director Chip Ward wrote for "The Los Angeles Times" in 2007, became a twelve years in the making indie passion project for Estevez.

Without the support of the local government, which instead turns a blind eye to the crisis, Goodson spends his shifts playing the role of friend, social worker, referee, and first-responder to a group of homeless patrons he knows almost as well as the books on the library's shelves, letting instinct and kindness be his guide.

But when a deadly cold front hits Cincinnati and fills every shelter in the area, Goodson finds himself caught in the middle of a righteous act of civil disobedience as a group of roughly one hundred men refuses to leave the warmth of the library at the end of the day.

Taking a few moments to weigh the pros and cons of the action, which arrives in the middle of a frivolous lawsuit against the Cincinnati Public Library, Goodson decides to risk everything and join the men's cause in the hopes that the mayor will sanction the library an emergency shelter for the night.

Having proclaimed that books saved his life, even though he understands they're facing an uphill legal battle, Estevez's aptly named Stuart Goodson knows that as a good son adhering to the rights of the nation's founding fathers in his role as a librarian, sometimes you have to stop stewing in the arts and stand up for what's right.

Filled with symbolism, speechifying, and signposting, The Public wears its heart in each one of cinematographer Just Miguel Azpiroz's frames. And while Estevez raises a number of valid and urgent points from start to finish, I couldn't help but wish that the film would have woven its main thesis into a much more organic narrative tapestry than it ultimately does.

Rather than draw us into The Public with character-driven storytelling, we're repeatedly told how to feel as (even with the best of intentions) Estevez introduces and then abandons important subtopics from the opioid crisis to media manipulation throughout the film's roughly two hour running time.

A work with a lot on its mind and all of it worthy of deeper discussion, the decision to turn Ward's article into a fictional feature is ambitious indeed since — as someone not only passionate about libraries but who also grew up in and around them — I believe there's enough here to warrant an HBO documentary miniseries.

Buoyed by a terrific turn by Estevez (in his strongest role in years), the film boasts a who's who cast of terrific and largely criminally underutilized character actors including Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Slater, Michael Kenneth Williams, Taylor Schilling, Gabrielle Union, and Alec Baldwin that's sure to delight fans.

Though continuing Estevez's great tradition of making socially conscious features like The War at Home and complex Altmanesque ensemble pictures like the masterful Bobby, The Public falls short of those films by too often spelling out key plot points and character reveals as if holding up a sign at a protest rally.

But thanks to Estevez's wise decision to add levity and laughter to the issue to try to appeal to a wider audience, it's one cause we'd be proud to stand up for along with Goodson and The Public since in the end, humanism should be in all of our domains.

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DVD Review: Cadillac Records (2008)

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Although pop culture would tell you otherwise, rock 'n roll did not begin with Elvis Presley at Memphis, Tennessee’s Sun Records. Instead, rock had its origins in the blues and later rhythm and blues. And while arguably the first bona fide rock 'n roll star was none other than Chuck Berry—Berry’s story along with the other pioneers of rhythm and blues that led to rock 'n roll as we now know it today has basically been left in the dust.

While interviews with artists like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and other musicians along with musical scholars will cite there early blues influences and a few years ago an entire PBS documentary was dedicated to the subject-- writer-director Darnell Martin said to change all that in a minor way with her stunning, underrated ensemble piece Cadillac Records.

Although admittedly, some of the facts have been blended together and some of the personalities have been left by the wayside to squeeze in what Martin explains was “the absolute truth” of the stories she wanted to tell “about how the blues became popular music, how it affected civil rights,” by whittling down her 150 page first draft to a feature-length movie running just 109 minutes, she achieves a wonderful success that works on two levels.

Firstly, she's made it one hell of a great film about the blues (which in reality is surely about the history of the American people) by calling attention to artists that have been long forgotten and secondly, like a cool walking musical encyclopedia, Martin earns in n honorary title as professor in making us want to not only seek out the recordings by these amazing artists but also learn more about them as human beings.

Purporting to tell the history, inception, and impact of Chicago's own Chess Records initially created by first-generation Polish immigrants Leonard and Phil Chess (although Phil is mostly absent from the film aside from a few scenes in which we infer he’s the “other white guy” next to Adrien Brody), Martin simultaneously weaves in the story of the artists who would join the label including Leonard Chess’s first great star, Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright).

In yet another phenomenal, chameleon-like performance by the great Jeffrey Wright -- the type of which we’re beginning to take for granted on—he tackles Muddy first as a sharecropper in Mississippi whose life was forever changed by a happy accident when his voice was recorded by two men from Fisk University who had initially set out see record the fault music of the late Robert Johnson. After they learned that Johnson had passed away, they were directed to Muddy’s porch and following an impromptu recording that gave the future “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish Boy” the first opportunity to hear the way he sounded on vinyl, he memorably noted he felt as though, “I’m meeting myself for the first time.”

It was with those determined and confident words that Muddy packed his guitar and headed north without looking over his shoulder to Chicago where he formed two important relationships. The first was with Geneva (Gabrielle Union) who would become his longtime love and the second was none other than Leonard Chess, with whom Muddy began making records, taking part in payola schemes, getting him as well as the rest of the Chess lineup of artists unprecedented air-play and treating them to shiny new Cadillacs sometimes without informing them that it was being taken out of their royalties.

Admittedly in the 1950s, both the friendship and relationship -- especially when money was involved -- between both white and black individuals was charged with complexity over whether or not the musician was being exploited and the idea that a white man may have been needed to be the front for the organization in order to lead to the era of Motown but Martin never makes any concrete judgments about her characters.

This is especially evident as other artists join the roster and Martin manages to interlace some double-standards and new thoughts coming from all involved—mostly in the form of Muddy’s greatest harmonica player and the seventeen year old hot-headed prodigy Little Walter (Columbus Short) and the fiery and proud Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker) who has extremely firm ideas about what we sense he felt was an evolved version of “slave” and “master.” Rounding out Martin’s ensemble piece, we’re also introduced to the terrific writer and current owner of Chess Records who has turned it into a museum, Mr. Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), and two of the most legendary acts—Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and Etta James (Beyonce Knowles).

Although it was Muddy that paved the way, eventually it was Berry’s blend of country and rockabilly helped destroy racial barriers playing sold out gigs to white and black listeners alike along with appearing on television. Yet, unfortunately while his song “Sweet Little Sixteen” was blatantly stolen by The Beach Boys for the background of “Surfin’ USA,” and his career was cut short when he was imprisoned for driving a white female minor across state lines (making his dalliances with young women not that much different than Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley), soon a savior managed to enter the recording studio at precisely the right moment in the form of the exquisite yet contradictorily volcanic Ms. Etta James (Knowles).

Despite her deceptively sweet appearance, James was a woman who as Leonard described “lived the blues” instead of just singing about them. With a horrific addiction to heroin and countless family problems including a failure to get her rumored father Minnesota Fats to acknowledge his paternity, James as played by Knowles is walking heartbreak. Anyone who thought that the singer’s vast improvement as an actress in Dreamgirls was a fluke will be immediately taken aback by her dynamic portrayal in this film.

In the part written exclusively for the musician by Ms. Martin and amazingly shooting all of her scenes in just six days, Knowles is able to effortlessly capture James’ tough-talking demeanor, her more vulnerable side opposite Oscar winner Adrien Brody (in a few scenes that really send sparks flying), and most importantly bring the house down in recording session performances that will send shivers down your spine as she sings not just “At Last,” but also “Once in a Lifetime,” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.”

While indeed there is some accurate criticisms about liberty being taken with the facts, Martin surpasses expectations by avoiding the trappings of strict biopic and moving into a far more daunting challenge of bringing to life several figures at the same time. To tell you just the Leonard Chess story, or just the Muddy Waters story, or just the Chuck Berry story, or just the Etta James story wouldn't have captured the real story namely that of the blues which is what provided the soundtrack of the American experience.

Over the past few years, we've been inundated with biopics and while some of them have been exceptional such as James Mangold’s Walk the Line-- the decision to move away from that tried and true paradigm and instead embrace the idea of presenting us with an authentic sense of time and place is what sets Cadillac Records apart.

In the incredibly worthwhile roughly twenty-seven minute making-of-featurette “Playing Chess,” the filmmaker accurately describes the approach in the work of the cast as “everybody’s playing a different instrument.” Effectively managing to make the most of their limited budget by ensuring the production and costumer designers always knew what was going to be seen by the camera at any given moment to avoid unnecessary expenses, the largely female production team discuss the methods they used in augmenting the story from using both color and texture to truly “sell the period.”

Employing a large amount of blues, greens, purples and browns near the opening—Martin reveals in the design featurette “Once Upon a Blues,” that she was extremely careful about avoiding the color red until the moment Chuck Berry and rock ‘n roll are officially introduced. In addition to providing deleted scenes, the filmmaker also takes part in a feature-length commentary track that would be of extreme interest to music buffs as Martin’s knowledge of the characters, Chess records, music, and the time period is extraordinarily detailed, which is evident from the start as she helps clear the air on factual items that didn’t make it into the movie.

Unfortunately overlooked in a crowded December filled with a large amount of Oscar bait pictures making their way daily into theatres across the states, luckily Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s underrated gem is now available in both DVD and Blu-ray high definition where the sound on even the DVD alone manage to heighten the sound of James’ “At Last” or Waters’ “Mannish Boy” to concert level quality despite your sound system setup.

Download the Standard or Deluxe
Soundtrack From iTunes
(Click the Icons Below)

Download "The Best of Chess"
(The Original Recordings of the Songs
Heard in the Film Via the iTunes Album Icon Below)

Meet Dave

Director:
Brian Robbins

You know he’s from another planet when you realize that not only is Eddie Murphy’s character in Meet Dave unfamiliar with the maternal fashion adage to never wear white after Labor Day but that if his goal is to remain inconspicuous in contemporary New York, he should never wear a white suit after the 1970’s. Of course, had he worn more suitable attire to avoid what he refers to as his “wardrobe debacle,” then Meet Dave would have lost the precious few jokes that actually work in the opening thirty minutes of Eddie Murphy’s latest cinematic disaster as we find the white-suited character mistaken for the ice cream man by hungry children before learning that he drew inspiration from Mr. Roarke and Tattoo greeting guests with “Da plane! Da plane!” from the 1970’s television series, Fantasy Island.

Why Fantasy Island? Well, it seems it’s the only Earthly transmitted image he could receive in outer space, given the weak signal strength. (And you thought your cell phone reception was bad!) To explain--keeping with the Murphy tradition of playing numerous characters in each of his films, sometimes to marvelous effect (Bowfinger) and downright disastrous (pretty much everything else after 2000), in Meet Dave we learn that Murphy’s primary character is an alien captain leading a space mission to save his planet along with a dedicated crew of very, very little people who are less than two inches tall. However, the catch is that the vessel occupied by the mission’s crew isn’t the typical flying saucer one would expect but a human-sized replica of the Captain himself, giving new meaning to the film’s tag line that we’re watching “Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy.” (Cue the obligatory Keanu Reeves like “whoa!”)

Shortly after the film opens, we follow as Murphy—utilizing a terrifically silent film styled comedic and mime-like approach—tries to assimilate with fellow humans on Earth, forcing his lips into an awkward smile to duplicate the expression of an old woman and mimicking the downright orthopedically nightmarish poses of dummies in a store window. Meanwhile the devoted crew inside his “body” (played by Gabrielle Union, Ed Helms, Kevin Hart, Pat Kilbane, Judah Friedlander, Adam Tomei and others) struggles to keep up with the external chaos while advising his every action. Needless to say the fact that his quest for their planet’s missing orb has landed him directly into one of the busiest, most notoriously aggressive and fast-paced cities isn’t making their job any easier and it’s only a matter of time before he’s knocked over by a motorist named Gina (played by the lovely Heights, Definitely, Maybe, and Invincible star Elizabeth Banks).

Fearing a lawsuit, the bohemian painter and widowed single mother invites the strange Captain up to her apartment for some water, where he not only struggles to pretend to “drink” while inside his ship the crew must deal with a tidal wave of water, but also gets his first chance to practice conversation. Upon realizing he must create a name, on the advice of his adoring girl Friday, Gabrielle Union’s No. 3, he dubs himself Dave Ming Chang before rushing off to rectify the problem of his outdated suit which—by this point—has served as not only a running gag but a plot arc for the undercooked script from surprisingly Yale Drama School educated writers Rob Greenberg (Frasier, How I Met Your Mother) and Bill Corbett (Mystery Science Theatre 3000). Landing at Old Navy, the film’s laughs continue as Dave mistakes the store greeter’s obligatory “Welcome to Old Navy” as a ritualistic statement he uses throughout the film’s most comically successful sequence since Murphy first set foot in New York’s concrete jungle, before—and par for Murphy’s course—the scene and indeed a majority of the rest of the film ends up relying too heavily on juvenile scatological humor.

Unfortunately, it really shouldn’t have been this way as I’d genuinely enjoyed Meet Dave early on, recalling once again the Murphy from my youth who made me laugh until my stomach hurt in the original Beverly Hills Cop. However, as the novelty of the ingenious premise wears off, the film morphs into a seemingly endless, really bad Saturday Night Live styled skit. And far more detrimental to its success, in trying to reach every ticket buying demographic, director Brian Robbins (Norbit) tries to cram in way too much plot, never sure if he wants to structure Meet Dave as a family film, a science fiction movie, or an unlikely romantic comedy as Dave finds himself growing attached to Gina and her young son Josh (newcomer Austyn Lind Myers) all the while realizing that the aptly named No. 3 (Union), is beginning to feel like the ultimate third wheel, caught up in an unrequited love triangle with Dave.

While initially there are enough laughs to amuse Murphy’s most ardent fans, the picture completely derails during the last forty-five minutes when the ship’s crew become affected by their interactions with New York as No. 2’s Ed Helms plans to stage a coup, another turns into a MySpace addict and-- at its most demeaning—one becomes a stereotypically flamboyant gay man worshipping Cher, offering makeovers and snaps at will to the horror of intelligent audience member everywhere.

Since, aside from Dreamgirls and the Shrek series, Eddie Murphy has set the bar so low that it’s now a cliché to even critique him, perhaps (other than its very existence), Meet Dave’s greatest crime is that it completely wastes all of its likable performers including Scott Caan who—although he stars as an X-Files inclined police officer-- seems to have been so uninspired by his role that in his major scene with Murphy in a department interrogation room, he basically does a five minute pitch perfect impersonation of his father James Caan. And while I’d rather sit through Meet Dave again in its entirety than even watch the trailers for Norbit, Pluto Nash, and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Robbins may have been much better off compiling a few of these scenes, along with Murphy’s brilliant beginning, and releasing a disc of short comedic skits instead of serving up a film that would no doubt have been ideal fodder for co-writer Corbett’s Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Although, I guess it could be worse-- if the film had actually been good, it could have caused an ironic trend of men defying the fashion faux pas and digging out those retro white suits so instead of “Da plane! Da plane!” it could have been “Da horror! Da, horror!”