S/D: Albert Brooks, the neurotic American Ozu

yeah, lost in america is all time!

Is there anybody worse than a suggest ban, all things considered?

Albert's godlike for Lost in America, Taxi Driver, and Broadcast News alone; there are good things in most of the other films he directed too, especially Modern Romance. (I don't think I've ever watched all of Real Life for some reason.)

I like Albert the dramatic actor a lot - he's perfect in "Out of Sight," "Broadcast News," "Taxi Driver." Albert the filmmaker, though, since "Defending Your Life," has been pretty tone deaf. "Mother" I thought was pretty insufferable. "The Muse" was terrible. "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," I honestly could never make it past the title, but I assume it's terrible.

he's perfect in Drive.

"Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," I honestly could never make it past the title, but I assume it's terrible.

It's brilliant. Easily his best since Defending Your Life.

Pretty divergent 53 at Metacritic, 43% at Rotten Tomatoes ... but maybe time has been kind?

Well, I liked Mother a lot (except for the ending), and I found The Muse tolerable (except for the ending). But Looking... is far more rewarding than both of those combined. Not sure where the negative reviews came from, other than maybe people who weren't familiar with/versed in/just didn't get Brooks' older routines (like the crappy ventriloquist bit), which he reprises here.

I'm actually closer to Josh--after Defending Your Life, which I think is underrated, there's real drop-off for me. Didn't care for Mother, didn't like The Muse at all, and Looking for Comedy just meandered along (I liked it a bit better than the other two, though). If memory serves, Mother was treated as something of a major film at the time; don't think anybody talks about it much anymore.

I still haven't seen Defending Your Life but I'll agree that Mother has some problems: a sluggish pace and the lack of chemistry between Reynolds and Brooks. I know some will say, "Well, that's the point," but Reynolds' passivity places too much of a burden on Brooks' zings, which aren't as funny this time (I like the cheese scene though).

"Defending features Streep at her most effervescent, FWIW. Sort of brilliant to cast her vs. some random blonde (or, say, Sharon Stone, who is terrible in "the Muse").

I rarely use the word radiant, but I will here: Streep is radiant in Defending Your Life. She carries all this baggage as being so humdrum and serious--I was so surprised at the time at how well she pulled that role off.

Nothing like people looking at Metacritic scores to make me wish I'd been born 30 years earlier.

I'm sure most of you have seen this, but in case anyone hasn't:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J43bcbIzfI&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

mother's watchable enough, but the muse is a disaster. havent seen looking for comedy...

Didn't care much for Mother & haven't seen any of his stuff since, but his initial quartet of films are all fab. Plus Taxi Driver, Broadcast News, "The Simpsons"...I basically kinda love the guy.

xpost I generally couldn't care less about metacritic, etc., but they do take into account pretty much all the major critics. Admittedly, that doesn't say very much, but as an aggregate surely it gives an indiction of a film's general reception. There will always be contrarian outliers who really love/hate anything, but I think even they factor into something like metacritic.

Morbs, are you a big fan of "Looking for Comedy..."?

It was OK.

So Metacritic would give your review around a ... 62?

"It was OK." - Morbs, ILX.

I use Metacritic to read reviews, for which it's quite handy; I never look at the score.

I came back from vacation on Sunday night realizing that, because I was barely on the Internet all week, I had no idea what the general reception of Moneyball was. So I checked out Metacritic and thought "hey wow!" and felt a bit more excited about seeing it.

looking for comedy in the muslim world had some funny stuff in it and had this guy's usual lovably weird and unamerican straightfaced quotidian mildness (critics called it... japanese) but i don't remember very much of it at all; it was so slight. lost in america is literally amazing -- the first time i saw it i was totally disoriented by how few scenes it seemed to have, but those i remember all of. defending your life is adorable: rip torn, buck henry, and yeah that glowing meryl streep performance; it's the only movie my dad likes meryl streep in.

The high score shouldn't be taken so seriously when fools like David Ansen will rise to any Oscar bait ever released.

Up in the Air fer instance got an 83.

But again, unless I'm mistaken, it takes into account all the copious naysayers and contrarians, too. It just gives a general good bead on how a film has been received, and "Up in the Air" for sure was received well, even if I didn't like it. Like I basically said above, there's always someone who loves/hates everything/anything, and I'm sure there is someone that loves "Looking for Comedy ...", too.

But if a human rights violations like UITA get an 83 and I see Ansen, Rex Reed, and some TIME Magazine loser fellating it, I'm going to say, "Hmmm...."

Well, I'm going to say at least 83% of critics don't think of "Up in the Air" as a human rights violation? Certainly there are some negatives incorporated into that arbitrary number.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4RZTNtuZvQ

once seen, never forgotten.

Mother isn't great but it's much better than the stuff that followed. The stuff before Mother is some of my favorite stuff, and I still think about little parts of Mother from time to time.

For example: pretty much every time I buy jam.

My second favourite scene in the movie, eclipsed only by:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0rS5Zusw4M&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

"it takes into account all the copious naysayers and contrarians"

no. hell, my pub is on there now, and the brayers who are de facto PR shills for the studios still dominate.

And they shall always dominate.

The interviewer's cardigan really makes that job interview scene work.

"A bird lives in a round stick!"

"Santy Clause."

Love Marshall's pronunciation.

btw, Brooks played a recurring character for the first season or two of "The Odd Couple" (produced by Marshall)

oddly, Defending Your Life is the only movie of his I've ever seen. SNL/Hank Scorpio are hilarious tho

btw, Brooks played a recurring character for the first season or two of "The Odd Couple"
"It's now! It's happening!"

i kind don't fully get the love for this guy. he seems kind of pedestrian. did not like "real life" much.

He's one of the few actors who can play smug and sweet in the same performance.

<3 albert brooks always but he def peaked with lost in america.

i posted a quote on the "DRIVE" thread where the director says lost in america scared the hell out of him as a kid, he thought that brooks' character would end up killing someone some day, and that is why he cast him in his movie

i don't think real life's very good. a good concept, but he doesn't do enough with it. it feels very static, like a 5 minute sketch stretched out to 90mins of entropy.

exactly. it also feels very dated, insofar as w/ reality TV all these ideas have been harvested for jokes over and over. brooks can't help that, obviously, but i think it still diminishes the film.

i'll check out lost in america again. haven't seen it since high school (and that was a long time ago).

agree that Real Life was a wobbly first feature, but I still love that exec on the speaker phone saying "James Caan!"

Besides the Hollywood honcho on the speakerphone- "They're not gonna care about the guy with the cup, they're gonna say Where's Newman? Where's Redford?"- there is a good bit on the steps of some institute of higher learning: "If I had worked harder or had been graded more fairly, I would have been a scientist."

^ That last quote is Brooks in a nutshell. The naivete, the egotism, the grudge-bearing, the hint of social dysfunction. It's the line of his I like to quote the most - you can replace the word "scientist" with anything.

I think the speakerphone honcho is Brooks. Similar to how he talked to himself as the Mercedes salesman in Lost In America ("It's a very thick vinyl.")

I did not know that.

That's a good description, Josefa. Think maybe AB is a missing link or at least a stepping stone between the likeable coward comedic archetype of a Bob Hope to the full on make-you-squirm flop sweat of Andy Kaufman or Ricky Gervais. Although Albert is only two years older than Andy so maybe not.

A couple more stray observations:

1. This is the first viewing where I realized what an asshole the Brooks character is. Reading Ebert's review just now, I see that he kind of picks up on this too. Not a flaw; it actually gives the film some rich thematic continuity: sure, his mother is subtly maddening, but his need to use the women in his life as affirmation of his self-esteem is way more dickish than offering lamb to a vegetarian ("I didn't know if it was the cow you were siding with, or the whole thing").

2. The younger brother, played by Rob Morrow, still creeps me the fuck out. The entirely non-comic scene of he and his wife bickering over his mommy issues is beautifully handled.

I also rewatched Mother and agree with several of the caveats above. Reynolds is canny and never winks at the character, and even her throwaway lines are pricelessly delivered ("You know I enjoy my Grape-Nuts"). I also wonder if AB knew how much of a dick his character is... also, his parents' surnames were Henderson and Bartlett? Rather goyish. And he's a little too old for the role (15 years younger than Debbie).

Mostly aligned with this David Edelstein review from Jan '97:

The brother episode dribbles away, and the conclusion of John's journey--his epiphany--is so easy that I wondered if it were meant to be fatuous, a satire of all those Freudian psychodramas where secrets are unearthed and the now-psychologically unfettered characters emerge into the sunlight. Brooks must know that such revelations, even when valid, rarely translate into changes in behavior--mustn't he? He doesn't lay any blame at John's own doorstep: The man's only fault seems to have been choosing mates who would hate him as much as his mother does. The movie suggests that domestic bliss begins and ends with blaming Mom.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/1997/01/sons_and_lovers.html

I find Defending Yr Life mostly flat but I'd still like to see Mother. It's hard to believe, based on previous films, that AB doesn't understand what a dick he is.

My favourite thing of Brooks's might be this Real Life trailer

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6KtAzt9LGsI

Or even

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KtAzt9LGsI

Criterion Lost in America out now

https://www.criterion.com/films/29022-lost-in-america

I always wished he'd done commentaries on his DVDs. Has he expressed any reasons for not doing them, or explained his apparent aversion to them?

Albert Brooks, c. 1988, gets it. pic.twitter.com/tS0aqSzH7O

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) May 5, 2018

More Albert Brooks wisdom literature, this from a 1987 Village Voice profile. pic.twitter.com/Clk2wQwBfY

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) May 5, 2018

The new Albert Brooks doc “Defending My Life” (dir by Reiner) is steaming on Max

It’s really lovely & the old standup clips are pure gold (also great stuff about his Dad)

Yeah, thoroughly enjoyed it, and made me want to rewatch all his old movies.

https://www.criterion.com/films/30974-real-life

https://www.criterion.com/films/29661-mother

Mother's way underrated

oh, it's such lovely cheese!