Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock,” a halfway competent but ultimately erratic, unfocused story of how “three days of peace and music” came to the small town of White Lake, New York and changed for the better the lives of those who embraced “the spirit,” not only celebrates the drug abuse and loveless sex that defined the “Woodstock Generation,” but goes beyond caricatures and into outright anti-Semitism to condemn those who didn’t.

Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), a young Jewish man in his early twenties, once again abandons his work as a struggling Greenwich Village artist to help his elderly parents (two Jewish stereotypes played by Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) through another summer season in the Catskills. Their “resort,” a filthy, dilapidated motel, is about to be foreclosed on and probably should be, but Elliott convinces an exasperated banker to give him one more season. But foreclosure is inevitable and Elliot knows it, and while his friends go to San Francisco with flowers in their hair, his dreams take a back seat to this annual guilt trip sponsored by his overbearing mother.

There are probably enough seasonal tourists to make for a nice profitable business. The problem is mom and dad. Her iron-willed hostility and suspicion towards everyone, her inexplicable cheapness – refusing to even change sheets between guests – chases all kinds of business away. And Dad? Well, he’s too beaten down by her and fatalistic to care.

As a matter of procedure and as President of the local Chamber of Commerce (a tired group of seven or so small business owners who meet in a dark barn), Elliot calls for votes issuing local permits, including one for his own annual music festival — maybe a nice string quartet this year. When the nearby town of Wallkill cancels a major music festival, Elliot begins to understand the power of a one-dollar permit and makes a phone call.

Led by long-haired and oh-so mellow Mike Lang (Jonathan Groff), the Woodstock organizers (hippies backed by a battalion of briefcase-toting lawyers) descend on White Lake in helicopters and limousines with military precision. Lang comes off as a shrewd hustler and mercenary businessman willing to put on a “groovy” front if it means suckering the dumb hippies into believing they’re not making The Man rich, but in the film’s best scenes, he meets his match with Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), a kind but cunning dairy farmer with the land the festival needs.

The story hits a stride as the organizers move in, hand out bags of cash and with real savvy, manipulate, charm and, when necessary, bribe whoever stands in the way of their harnessing the resources necessary to handle the coming human wave holding those hundred-thousand (and counting) tickets already sold. Through the eyes of Elliott, watching the machinations of the impossible come together is infectious but Ang Lee isn’t interested in having us merely observe. Lines are about to be drawn.

Before Woodstock arrived, living in Elliot’s barn was a starving theatre troupe into the avante garde and the removing of their clothes (translation: untalented bums who spend their food money on drugs and now run the NEA). In a truly ugly scene they put on a performance for the locals, including small children, that ends with them ripping off their clothes and screaming “Racist warmongers!” “Republican c-ksuckers!”

This is not only a turning point for the townspeople but for we the audience. Unforgivable behavior is presented as humorous, and this is just the beginning.

With their town swamped by dirty, filthy hippies, their roads blocks and their lives completely disrupted, Director Lee refuses to give even a hint of humanity to those who oppose Woodstock. They, and therefore we, are instead portrayed as intolerant bigots, the kind who defile a Jewish-owned motel with swastikas and “Die, Faggots Jews.”

In other words, you’re either with Woodstock or you’re against it. And through Elliot we’re shown why we should be with it. In a sloppily structured subplot, Elliot finds his inner homosexual and beds down with a burly construction worker and later will enjoy an acid-infused, bi-sexual ménage a trois in the back of a van that’s so enlightening and liberating, man, he finally works up the nerve to find his true narcissism, tell his parents to back off and go pursue his own dreams.

The military takes its usual beating. Emile Hirsch plays Billy, a vet just back from the ‘Nam, man, and riddled with PTSD. The “good” Marine is played by Liev Schreiber … in a long blond wig, pumps and a dress. Of course, Schreiber’s character is the Obi Wan Kenobi of the story, the wise and brave one, the only one who’s got it all together because he’s true to who he really is.  

 
Fine, whatever, right? A movie about Woodstock from this Hollywood is bound to do a clunky, overbearing job attempting to mythologize an event so morally appalling God turned on the sprinklers to get the shit off His lawn. But the portrayal of Elliot’s mother is something else … by far the ugliest Jewish stereotype you’ve seen in a long time.

**Spoiler**

“Money-grubbing Jew.” That’s not figurative in “Taking Woodstock,” it’s literal. This horribly cheap woman who milks every penny from her customers, overcharges at every opportunity and uses the Holocaust to guilt the world, literally hoards money below the floor boards at the expense of the well-being of her own family. And when we leave her, she’s literally lying in bundles of bills, grasping them, claiming them for her own. The image is revolting, the heavy-handed symbolism amateurish, and the whole film just another excessive exercise in self-involved, baby boomer masturbation.

–

Hollywood stars Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts, with their two children Samuel, 6, and Alexander, 1, recently visited Israel.

Schreiber said his grandfather was a strong Zionist who had always begged him to go to Israel. His grandfather died before he could make that happen, so this trip resonates for him. It may also have additional meaning following his most recent role as Zus Bielski in Defiance, the Holocaust movie recounting the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who lived and rebelled against the Nazis from a Bellarussian forest with a band of fellow refugees.

Schreiber recalls some intensely personal history:

“I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, and I’m half-Jewish. Anything that has resonance for me about my family history, because I don’t know much about it, I’m drawn to. That’s part of why I think I choose projects like this. Less because I’m right for them, but because I want to know if I’m right for them.”

As Schreiber planted a tree in the Galilee, Naomi Watts recited the tree planting prayer.

“This particular area is called Galilee,” the dad-of-two explained. “And in this area, approximately 750,000 trees were destroyed in missile attacks [from Gaza]. So what we are doing here today is called Project Renewal.”

From years of watching Hollywood distance itself from Israel and Zionism I can safely observe that Schreiber and Watts, in their unabashed support of Israel and Judaism—make no mistake about it, the war against Israel is primarily a jihad against Judaism—are brave people for going public. Both are exquisitely gifted actors and their support for Israel should be applauded.

Once upon a time, Hollywood stars were firm supporters of Israel. Screenwriter Ben Hecht was a major voice for the Irgun. Frank Sinatra donated thousands to the fledgling state of Israel. But the cancer of multiculturalism has embedded itself into the, ahem, “progressive” Hollywood body politic and with it comes the inevitable poison of moral equivalency, resulting in such vile movies as Steven Spielberg’s historically and ethically bankrupt Munich.

Liev and Naomi hold up their Jewish National Fund certificates.

Liev Schreiber binds himself in tefillin.

Naomi Watts, holding her son Alexander, prays at the Kotel,
the Western Wall.

More pictures here.

Unlike “The Dark Knight,” which used allegory and theme to richen its story and characters, the first two X-Men movies (haven’t seen 3) were unduly burdened by political subtext. At no time did either achieve the most important moment in a superhero film – at no time did they soar. It’s not hard to figure out why. How do you accomplish lift-off weighed down by a blinding nuance which won’t allow an all-out rumble between good and evil? “Wolverine” never soars either, but it’s not a superhero film, it’s a genre flick; a satisfying, old-fashioned revenger, a B-movie whose characters just happen to possess extraordinary powers.

The story opens just before the Civil War, introducing us to Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (a well-cast Liev Schreiber) as young brothers forced to come to terms with who and what they are. A nifty credit sequence, not unlike “Watchmen’s,” quickly takes us through their lives and the development of their relationship until we land somewhere around 1970 where both are mixed up in a secret and elite U.S. Military hit squad made up of other mutants and commanded by the oily General Stryker (Danny Houston).

A particularly ugly mission involving the killing of innocent civilians ends up being too much for Logan and he decides he’s had enough. But Victor (now Sabretooth) has shred much of his humanity over the decades, enjoys him some killing and feels he’s finally found a place for his mutant self among his own kind. For reasons that never fully make sense, this tension results in the brothers becoming mortal enemies.

In Canada, Logan builds himself a new life working as a lumberjack. He lives in a beautiful mountain home no lumberjack not living in a movie could ever afford and has found true love with Kayla Silverfox (the quite fetching Lynn Collins), his tender, understanding, live-in girlfriend.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, I could’ve done without the old trope of the “sinister” military and really could’ve done without the arch-villain’s wildly out-of-place Dr. Evil speech about the necessity of “pre-emptive war” (I thought Obama told everyone to look forward?), but remove the superpowers and special effects and “Wolverine” is the same movie Charles Bronson made a dozen times between 1972 and 1987. And that’s a compliment.  

The story’s lean, simple and thankfully, unlike its predecessors, more concerned with pacing than moralizing. The special effects are a little cheesy, but that only heightens the winning lack of ambition which is the film’s strongest element. Best of all, the action scenes don’t have you reaching for the Dramamine nor do they numb you with blazing overkill. The unholy shaky-cam is nowhere to be seen and the three or four set-pieces are choreographed and shot in a way that allows you to follow them.

If you worry as I do about origin stories that get bogged down in those layers of mythology that so please Those-Who-Have-Never-Felt-The-Touch-Of-A-Woman, no worries here, which is why the fanboy crowd might be disappointed.  The introduction of new mutants and a younger version of an old favorite might help, but the story surrounding what made Wolverine Wolverine is refreshingly straight-forward and simple.

Emotionally the relationships never really connect, especially the central one between Wolverine and Sabretooth. The demands of the plot drive these characters when it should be the other way around. The need for an action scene or a “surprising” turn of events seems to change their relationship dynamic on a dime which makes it impossible to grasp or to invest in it. Logan’s relationship with Kayla is only a little better, but his connection with an elderly farm couple is the strongest element in the film but also the shortest.

This is Jackman’s fourth tour as Logan, the mutant who will be Wolverine, and he’s as good as I’ve seen him. The most important aspect of a movie star is clear-eyed confidence and an ease in your own skin.  Jackman’s performance is effortless in that respect and shows no sign of the self-consciousness I’ve seen in his other work. Hopefully this will translate beyond the “X-Men” franchise.

“Wolverine” satisfies and works because it respects what it is and never pretends otherwise. Good actors and plenty of action expertly paced over 107 minutes with no aspirations beyond holding our attention.

So far, this is my kind of summer.