Bigger (George Gallo, 2018)

Tyler Hoechlin, Calum Von Moger, and Aneurin Barnard in Bigger

Cast: Tyler Hoechlin, Julianne Hough, Kevin Durand, Aneurin Barnard, Robert Forster, DJ Qualls, Victoria Justice, Steve Guttenberg, Calum Von Moger, Max Martini, Colton Haynes, Tom Arnold. Screenplay: Andy Weiss, George Gallo, Brad Furman, Ellen Furman. Cinematography: Michael Negrin. Production design: Stephen J. Lineweaver. Film editing: Sophie Corra. Music: Jeff Beal. 

There is probably a good movie to be made about bodybuilding and fitness, but Bigger isn't it. A good one would deal with the ongoing questions about supplement use and abuse, the influence of steroids and other performance enhancers and practices, and the role of LGBT people in popularizing the bodybuilder image. Bigger ignores the role of supplements and enhancers almost entirely, and reduces the effect of gays on bodybuilding to just one of the stigmas Joe Weider (Tyler Hoechlin) encounters on his way to success as a promoter. What we get instead is a cliché rags to riches story, in which Weider battles antisemitism and a ruthless publisher-promoter called Bill Hauk (Kevin Durand) in the film, but based on fitness entrepreneur Bob Hoffman, to become a leading magazine publisher, fitness equipment and supplement manufacturer, and promoter of professional bodybuilding competitors, most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger (Calum Von Moger). Unfortunately, the film generates no real tension in tracking Weider's rise: The ugliness of the antisemitism he encounters feels incidental, rather than pervasive, and the tension with his apparently mentally disturbed mother (Nadine Lewington) feels like hack psychology. Hoechlin is a good, attractive actor, but he's forced to deliver his lines in a strange, tight accent that is, I suppose, meant to be Montreal-Canadian, but just manages to be distracting, especially since it doesn't match the one used by Robert Forster in the scenes in which he plays the older Joe Weider. Durand goes way over the top as the movie's villain, but there's some fun to be had in Von Moger's imitation of Schwarzenegger. It's a little hard to see who the film is for: People into bodybuilding won't learn anything they didn't already know -- and will probably take issue with what the film tells them about the actual people involved -- and people who aren't will take issue with the uncritical approach to the subject. 

Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969)

Robert Forster in Medium Cool

Cast: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Harold Blankenship, Charles Geary. Screenplay: Haskell Wexler. Cinematography: Haskell Wexler. Art direction: Leon Ericksen. Film editing: Verna Fields. Music: Mike Bloomfield.

The first time I saw Medium Cool was the year of its release, in a theater in downtown Dallas. I remember walking from the theater to the parking lot, still stunned by the movie's blend of fiction and actuality, past a high-end restaurant whose plate glass windows gave passersby a good view of wealthy Dallasites enjoying themselves. It felt like a continuation of the film, an ironic coda to the political passions it had documented. Seeing Medium Cool many years later, I can realize how cooked-up Haskell Wexler's movie really is, with its heavy-handed ending, so obviously recapitulating what now seems like a similarly contrived opening. I can watch Verna Bloom striding through the mobs of Chicago protesters, easily spotted in her bright yellow dress, and recognize how blatant a bit of staging that is. I have learned that the film's most celebrated line, "Watch out, Haskell, it's real," was dubbed into the soundtrack later: It may have been spoken by the cameraman to the director in the heat of the moment, when he was being teargassed along with the protesters, but Wexler wasn't recording sound at the time, so it's a bit of a con. And yet, Medium Cool remains for me a potent demonstration of art imitating life, and doing it so well that I hesitate to call it fakery. Wexler shrewdly knew this: Just look at the picture of Robert Forster above, cigarette dangling like Jean-Paul Belmondo's in the poster, and remember that truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

Mulholland Dr. defies exegesis like no other film I know. Sure, you can trace its origins: Car-crash amnesia is a soap-opera trope; the mysterious mobsters and other manipulators are film noir staples; the portrayal of Hollywood as a nightmare dreamland is straight from Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950), which the film even imitates by having its before-the-credits title appear on a street sign. But writer-director David Lynch isn't out to parody the sources -- not entirely, anyway. What he is up to is harder to pinpoint. There's a part of me that thinks Lynch just wants to have fun -- a nasty kind of fun -- manipulating our responses. At the beginning, we're on to him in that regard: We laugh at the minimal conversation between the two detectives (Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe) at the crash site. We recognize the naive awe on the face of Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), as she arrives in Los Angeles, as a throwback to the old Hollywood musicals in which choruses of hopefuls arrive at the L.A. train station singing "Hooray for Hollywood!" (Has anyone ever been inspired to sing and dance when arriving at LAX?) We're delighted by the appearance of Ann Miller as the landlady, just as later we identify Lee Grant, Chad Everett, and even Billy Ray Cyrus in their cameos. Even the seemingly disjointed scenes -- the director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), is bullied by the Castiglianes (Dan Hedaya and the film's composer, Angelo Badalamenti), or a man (Patrick Fischler) recounts his nightmare at a restaurant called Winkie's, or a hit man (Mark Pellegrino) murders three people -- are standard thriller stuff, designed to keep us guessing -- though at that point, having seen this sort of thing in films by Quentin Tarantino and others, we feel confident that everything will fit together. And then, suddenly, it doesn't. Betty vanishes and Diane Selwyn (Watts), whom we have thought dead, is alive. The amnesia victim known as Rita (Laura Harring) is now Camilla Rhodes, the movie star that Betty wanted to be, and Diane, Camilla's former lover, wants to kill her. It's such a complete overthrow of conventional narrative that there are really only two basic responses, neither of them quite sufficient: One is to dismiss the film as a wacked-out experiment in playing with the audience -- "a load of moronic and incoherent garbage," in the words of Rex Reed -- or to try to assimilate it into some coherent and consistent scheme, like the theory that the first two-thirds of the film are the disillusioned Diane Selwyn's dream-fantasy of what her life might have been as the fresh and talented Betty. There is truth in both extremes: Lynch is playing with the audience, and he is portraying Los Angeles as a land of dreamers. But his film will never be forced into coherence, and it can't be entirely dismissed. I think it is some kind of great film -- the Sight & Sound critics poll in 2010 ranked it at No. 28 in the list of greatest films of all time -- but I also think it's self-indulgent and something of a dead end when it comes to narrative filmmaking. It has moments of sheer brilliance, including a performance by Watts that is superb, but they are moments in a somewhat annoying whole.

Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)

Pam Grier and Robert Forster in Jackie Brown

Sometimes called "the Tarantino movie for people who don't like Tarantino movies," Jackie Brown feels a bit like Tarantino under the influence of Martin Scorsese. That's not just because of the presence of Robert De Niro in the cast, but also because it's the Tarantino film that feels most under control, with its long takes and following shots. It's also the only Tarantino movie adapted from other material, in this case the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard, which imposes a certain rhythm on the material, unlike Tarantino's usual jazzy riffs and variations. On the other hand, any time that Samuel L. Jackson (who is to Tarantino what De Niro used to be to Scorsese) is on screen, you can feel the obvious synergy between director and star. The real star, however, is Pam Grier, whose Jackie Brown is a force of nature, proud and statuesque, like Sophia Loren or Anna Magnani in their prime. Delivering her lines out of the side of her mouth, she's clearly in control even when things seem to be going against her. She's well-matched with Robert Forster's wearily implacable Max Cherry, a bail bondsman who can't help getting too involved with his clients. It's clear from the outset that Jackie and Max have what it takes to triumph just by sheer persistence over Jackson's flamboyant Ordell Robbie, not to mention his somewhat too stoned accomplices, Louis (De Niro) and Melanie (Bridget Fonda), and the wiseass ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton). The pleasure of the film consists largely in watching this gallery of top-notch actors go through the paces of the plot.