Love Liza (Todd Louiso, 2002)

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Love Liza

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Sarah Koskoff, Stephen Tobolowsky. Screenplay: Gordy Hoffman. Cinematography: Lisa Renzler. Production design: Stephen Beatrice. Film editing: Katz, Anne Stein. Music: Jim O'Rourke. 

Love Liza is a screwball tragedy. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Wilson Joel, deep into grieving for his wife, who recently committed suicide. To ease his grief, he takes to huffing gasoline fumes. (It's implied that his wife asphyxiated herself in their garage.) Through a farcical sequence of misunderstandings brought about by his addiction to the fumes, he winds up making friends with Denny (Jack Kehler), an enthusiast for remote-controlled model boats. At this point, the film turns into a kind of road movie, and Wilson's spirits temporarily rise. But all the while he is carrying his wife's suicide note, which he discovered under a pillow on their bed. His mother-in-law (Kathy Bates) and others urge him to open the envelope and read the note, but Wilson fears that it will tell him things he doesn't want to know. It's a remarkably eccentric film that reminds me of Hal Hartley's movies in that you're never quite sure what direction the characters will go next. Hoffman's brother, Gordy, wrote the screenplay, which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance, and actor Todd Louiso, in his debut as a feature director, handles the story's frequent and abrupt variations of tone well. The cast gives it their all, especially Hoffman, who provides the right fragility for his character, and Kehler, who makes us believe that Denny wouldn't have cut and run in his first encounter with the obviously disturbed Wilson. It took me a while to adjust to the film's departures from convention, including some background music and songs by Jim O'Rourke that sometimes feel like they're angling away from what's on screen. Inevitably, too, the story of Hoffman's death from an overdose of drugs colors our reactions to his character in the film. 

Macbeth (Justin Kurzel, 2015)

Translating a play from its theatrical mode into a cinematic one is never easy, but Justin Kurzel and his screenwriters, Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie, and Todd Louiso, do several smart things in their adaptation of Macbeth. They open the film with a scene not in Shakespeare's play, the funeral of a small child presumably born to Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his Lady (Marion Cotillard), an extrapolation from Lady Macbeth's later claim that she has "given suck" to an infant. It establishes the sense of unsettling loss and grave disorientation that feeds the Macbeths' ambition. The film also scraps the witches' cauldron scene, its "double, double, toil and trouble" and "eye of newt" incantations, which can become ludicrous even in a well-done modern production, turning the witches into Halloween hags instead of the eerie prophets Shakespeare portrayed. In their place, the witches become three peasant women, one of whom has a baby in her arms, accompanied by another child. They seem indigenous, gifted with the air of prophecy attributed to those close to the land. Another problematic element of the play, the movement of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, which can look silly on stage, with soldiers carrying branches in their hands, is resolved into something terrifying: Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane in the form of ashes and sparks, after the forest is set fire to by the troops of Macduff (Sean Harris) and Malcolm (Jack Reynor). This also creates a hellish landscape for the final duel of Macbeth and Macduff. There are some other touches that, though cinematic, don't work quite so well. Lady Macbeth's line, "screw your courage to the sticking place," is turned into a kind of dirty joke: an encouragement for Macbeth to penetrate her sexually. The banquet scene and the appearance of Banquo's ghost (Paddy Considine) is awkwardly staged. The lady's sleepwalking scene is shorn of its witnesses, and despite Cotillard's fine performance, it becomes a disjointed monologue in which she returns to the scene of the original crime, the murder of Duncan (David Thewlis). And worst of all, I think, the fear that speaking Shakespeare's verse aloud could become "stagey," leads Kurzel to reduce much of the dialogue and soliloquies to murmurs and whispers. The "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech is barely coherent when Macbeth mutters it as he hauls Lady Macbeth from her deathbed. Fassbender and Cotillard are formidable actors, but they have been done a severe disservice by not allowing them to use their voices to full effect.