This week, Bernard talks to filmmaker/screenwriter Oren Moverman in-depth about his new movie starring Richard Gere, Time Out of Mind. Bernard also reviews the film, which he calls “the most ‘3-D’ movie of the year,” and talks about AMC’s forthcoming series Preacher, based on the classic Garth Ennis comic book and presented by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Topics

• Preacher (1:50)
• Time Out of Mind Review (9:18)
• Oren Moverman Interview (21:15)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

Time Out of Mind NYFF Review

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If Blockbuster still existed (R.I.P.), Andrew Renzi’s Franny would be the equivalent of picking a family friendly VHS with a cover featuring an audacious aristocrat who looks amusingly like he’s about to learn a thing or two about what really matters in life, only to get home, stick it in the VHS player and discover you’ve actually gotten a film about a drug addict that happens to have money. A little jarring to say the least. Insert a score that would actually fit that fun-loving aristocrat comedy and feels ridiculously out-of-place in this more serious character study and the film feels like it has the cinematic equivalent of body dysmorphia.

Beginning with Dakota Fanning’s Olivia preparing to go off to college as her parents lay down the final decisions on the children’s hospital they are founding with their longtime friend Franny (Richard Gere), things are of course a little too happy to last. And they don’t, almost immediately Franny and her parents get into a horrific car accident that results in Olivia’s parents dying. Flash forward five years and Franny, also injured in the crash, lives a secluded life of luxury, maintained by a morphine addiction that mellows him out enough to at least sometimes hang out with the children at his hospital. Olivia calls from out of the blue one day. She’s married, she’s pregnant, and her doctor husband needs a job. As much addicted to philanthropy as he is morphine, Franny is more than happy to find Luke (Theo James) a position at his hospital.

Upon returning to Philadelphia, Olivia tries to pick up with Franny, guilty about having left when she did, distraught by her own grief. Franny is thrilled to have Poodles (as he calls her) back in his life, and eager to recreate the relationship he had with her parents, he begins to deluge the young couple with gifts. Franny’s morphine addiction catches up to him as quickly as the reality of him not being able to recreate the past does as well.

Mood-wise, the film is all over the place. The music tries to capture Franny’s wealth and pomp but seems to have missed the note that he’s also a crazed drug addict. A couple skin-crawling moments of drug addiction keeps things feeling uneasy. Fanning is barely given lines in the film, let alone a character, so it’s no surprise that what should be the driving relationship of the film ends up as lip service and static. Instead Renzi (who takes his first foray into drama with this film, and also wrote it) focuses on Luke and Franny’s strange power-play bromance.

Whether he’s in denial of his own place in life, Gere weirdly comes across as a younger actor trying to play an older man. He’s got the rich eccentric thing, but not enough of the world-weariness. James is probably the strongest performance of the film, but it’s a little too easy to see his Insurgent bad-boy at play, not enough softness with Olivia to even things out. Fanning’s constant wide-eyes and warm voice make Olivia likable, but she’s shortchanged in the writing and thus underutilized.

Franny clearly wants to be a great many things. Heartwarming, emotional, a character study, and an acting platform; it takes two hours to come to a conclusion that would take two minutes in reality. If only more of Franny’s outgoing wealth-induced charm felt real it may have tipped the scale toward an enjoyable film, but in the end the pity one feels leaving the theater is likely to be geared more toward their own wasted time then to anything happening to the characters.

In a press conference yesterday the San Francisco Film Society announced the complete lineup for the 58th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, running from April 23rd – May 7th. Festival Executive Director Noah Cowan led the presentation, emphasizing SFFS’s mission to champion films and filmmakers from around the globe.

“I think this festival doesn’t get as much credit as it’s due as being among the most significant champions of emerging filmmakers from around the globe,” said Cowan at the press conference. “There’s a lot of focus right now in the festival world on American independent cinema. There’s lots of great stuff going on here, but sometimes it happens to neglect the quite extraordinary artists coming from other parts of the globe.”

Emblematic of the festival’s initiative to spotlight films on a global scale is its “Global Visions” section, which boasts an array of narrative and documentary films from Japan (Wonderful World End), Brazil (The Second Mother), Germany (Stations of the Cross), China (Red Amnesia), the United Kingdom (Luna), South Korea (A Hard Day), France (Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey), New Zealand (The Dark Horse), and many more countries with exciting, emerging filmmakers and films worthy of our undivided attention. Also celebrating global storytelling are the Golden Gate Award Competitions, in which will award films from around the world nearly $40,000 across 14 awards categories.

The festival’s “Marquee Presentations” section takes a look at some buzzy titles from the festival circuit. Highlights include Eden, Mia Hansen-Løve’s French DJ drama starring Greta Gerwig and Brady Corbet; Best of Enemies, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s doc about Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.’s legendary 1968 televised debates; Results, Andrew Bujalski’s awkward comedy starring Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce as personal trainers; Francois Ozon‘s latest drama, The New Girlfriend; and What Happened, Miss Simone?, Liz Garbus’ piercing doc about legendary vocalist Nina Simone.

The festival will open with lauded documentarian Alex Gibney‘s Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, which should be a perfect kick-off for the Bay Area audience. The End of the Tour, James Ponsoldt’s follow-up to The Spectacular Now, is the fest’s Centerpiece presentation, while Michael Almereyda’s biopic Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard as scientist Stanley Milgram, will be the Closing Night Film.

Late additions to the festival lineup are still rolling in, but three additions confirmed are Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Sundance darling Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Patrick Brice’s uncomfortable comedy The Overnight, and Helen Hunt’s Ride.

Special awards will be handed out to two of the industry’s most enduring luminaries. Guillermo del Toro will be in attendance to receive the Irving M. Levin Directing Award, and Richard Gere will be on-hand to receive the Peter J. Owens Award. Also receiving awards are documentarian Kim Longinotto and film translator Lenny Borger.

For the complete lineup, visit www.sffs.org

To shoot or not to shoot? It’s a question still up in the air for Nicholas “Nicky” Vreeland, an aristocratic American who renounced his life of comfort and excess forever to become a Tibetan monk in India. Vreeland–whose grandmother Diana Vreeland was the editor of Vogue for most of the ’60s–found his passion for women to be the toughest part about his transition from his first life of “worldly ways” to his second life of simplicity and selflessness, but he kept one woman around after all. “Would you like to meet my girlfriend?” he asks with a sunny smile in the opening moments of Monk With a Camera, a documentary about him by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara. He reveals his “girlfriend” is his titular camera, the one worldly thing he couldn’t renounce.

“I kept trying to give it up. I kept trying to not have it be part of my life.” But he couldn’t. The Dalai Llama himself (one of the many adorers of Vreeland stuffed into the film) encouraged the American monk, to his surprise, to continue snapping shots to his heart’s content. But herein lies the paradox. According to Buddhist philosophy, for an act to be virtuous it must be done to benefit others, not oneself. “You don’t produce art without some sort of ego gratification,” says Vogue fashion director Tonne Goodman in the film, another high-profile Vreeland fan and interviewee.

Could the pursuit of photography go against the principals Vreeland has adopted as a Tibetan monk? He’s done everything in his power to make it as selfless a hobby as possible, selling his photographs to his old friends (dignitaries, socialites…people with lots of money) in order to build a monastery for his fellow monks, who had grown in number so rapidly that in their old living quarters, many were forced to sleep on the ground outside in the rain. When he finally raised enough funds with his photographs and built the new monastery (it’s gorgeous–simple, elegant architecture lined with colorful, national flags), The Dalai Llama bestowed upon him an unprecedented honor, making him the monastery’s abbott, a first for an American.

But still, it’s clear there’s still uncertainty in Vreeland. Is his photo-snapping obsession justified? Santi and Mascara don’t explore this moral murkiness enough, focusing more on their adulation for their subjects’ accomplishments. Yes, Vreeland was a celebrity-status playboy who left the world of artificiality to pursue a more noble existence (and actually stuck with it for decades, practicing Buddhism to this day), but is that enough material to make a great documentary? I’d say not. It’s enough to make a decent documentary. Vreeland is a good onscreen subject, his flamboyance and charm from his early days dating girls in Europe still intact, but he’s not charismatic enough to skyrocket the film Alejandro Jodorowsky in Frank Pavich’s docu from earlier this year, Jodorowsky’s Dune.

There was an excellent opportunity for Santi and Mascara to dig deeper and be more challenging, a question that never gets asked: If the selflessness and egocentrism of photography are debatable, what does that say about starring in your own movie? Vreeland didn’t make the movie, but to agree to participate in a production that gathers famous people to sing your praises (even Richard Gere makes several appearances to praise his buddy Nicky) is, with all due respect, just as–if not more–debatable an endeavor. Maybe I’m wrong, but the question is valid, and it’s an elephant in the room that grows bigger as the film unfolds.

Sleeping on park benches, in emergency room waiting areas, or the bathtubs of recently evicted apartments, Richard Gere is far from the suave, charming persona he normally assumes in his roles. Directed by The Messenger and Rampart filmmaker Oren Moverman, Time Out of Mind casts Gere in the role of the homeless, alcoholic protagonist shuffling down the busy urban New York City landscapes. As George Hammond (Gere) moves throughout the city he’s treated with varying levels of compassion, both from people he knows and complete strangers.

It’s not until nearly halfway through the movie that George enters a homeless shelter and begins to accept his situation as well as the realities of how much he can expected from those around him, including his estranged daughter (Jena Malone). In the time before then, Time Out of Mind uses an excessive amount short scenes that illustrate daily life on the streets to highlight societal indifference towards the homeless. These scenes intentionally obscure the focus by shooting through windows, the glass panes of doors, and off of rooftops. Likewise, Time Out of Mind layers in the incessant sounds of overheard cell phone conversation and distant police sirens that cannot be avoided in New York City. The effect allows the film to be one of the strongest auditory representations of how the city sounds, but it’s ultimately to the detriment of Oren Moverman’s movie. The techniques are jarring and become frustrating as they feature for a large part of the beginning in place of actual plot.

In his first two films (The Messenger, Rampart), Oren Moverman’s ability to draw nuanced performances from his actors (notably Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson, twice) is rooted in the movies’ thoughtful approach to character study. Time Out of Mind demonstrates a similar patience but fails to deliver as much depth. Gere delivers a quiet performance as George that is among the best roles in his career considering his limited range. Subjected to being outside the frame and in the background of many scenes, his limited opportunities to offer texture to the character are only a touch away from caricature. A greater actor might have been able to do more with the part, but it’s a decent turn from Gere.

The energy of the film changes considerably with the arrival of Ben Vereen’s Dixon, a homeless man of questionable mental health who talks nonstop but is one of the first people in the story to show any kindness towards George. Dixon aids George as he accepts his status and begins to work on improving his life in some of the few scenes that provide forward momentum to the movie. Like most of the elements in Time Out of Mind, the repetition in this section becomes wearing and the film does little to shed new light on the plight of the homeless.

The sentimentality in the second half of the film gives Time Out of Mind some redeeming empathetic scenes but is entirely expected, and indistinctive. By that point, the methods implemented by Moverman to show George’s invisibility to the outside world only serve to distract from the rest of the film. While many of the performances are solid, the content in Time Out of Mind is dull and insubstantial.

Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage is a riveting thriller that works without being wholly original, instead it relies on a solid script backed by a fantastic lead performance by Richard Gere. Similar to what Margin Call was last year, the film is economically relevant, featuring a corrupt business leader, a ‘1%er’, who does whatever it takes to prevent his company from tanking. From the very beginning to the end, Arbitrage is gripping film that uses its runtime effectively, making the runtime fly-by.

Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is a high profile CEO of Miller Capital. The opening sequence has him landing from his corporate jet and entering his luxury penthouse. A bellhop greets him with presents for the children that accompany his birthday party, which he pretends to be surprised about. Even though Robert is a CEO, he is a very likeable guy, one that you proudly stand behind when working underneath him. We find out that his daughter, Brooke Miller (Brit Marling), works as the Chief Financial Officer for the company and that her father had just decided to sell the company earlier that day. She playfully, but with a serious tone, asks him why he would want to sell a company that is doing so well. He brushes it off as just being at a point in his life where he is ready to let go of the company, but there is a strong sense of an ulterior motive.

Robert leaves his birthday party telling his wife, Ellen Miller (Susan Sarandon) that he needs to go to his office to finish up some of the paper work. He enters his limo but his destination is not his office. Instead he visits the residence of a woman who he clearly has an attachment with. The two exchange a few words then passionately begin to make love. He is a charmer who hides behind his friendly smile to live a double life.

Things take a drastic turn when Robert and his mistress (Laetitia Casta) are on their way out of the city one night. Robert falls asleep behind the wheel and crashes into the median causing the vehicle to flip. He walks away with just a few scratches, but unfortunately his mistress is dead in the passenger seat. Naturally, his first instinct is to call 911, but he refrains from doing so after thinking about what the implications would be for both his career and personal life.

The script in Arbitrage is sharp and concise, nearly to a fault. Most of the supporting characters were not developed because of the film’s concentration of the main plot. Supporting characters have heavily implied backstories, but the film never went beyond the surface on any of them. So I appreciated the script for the most part but having such a tight focus does have its trade-offs.

Having said that about the supporting characters, Marling was alright but did not have a particularly memorable role. Susan Sarandon laid low for most of the film, until the very end where she made a grand finale performance. But the true star of the film is of course Richard Gere (the role felt written for him though apparently it was originally for Al Pacino). Gere delivers a performance that may be his best to date, or at the very least, the best in a long while. He is a flawed character but one you find yourself rooting for even though you probably should not be.

Arbitrage is not a terribly original story, a prolific man gets into trouble and attempts to sweep it all under the rug while seeking pity from both his family and the audience, but it is one that is well crafted. It is an effective thriller with some minor faults that act more like speed bumps than showstoppers. Arbitrage is a pleasure to watch and keeps you entertained the whole way through.