Whereas many cinematic portraits of Los Angeles can double as tourist-targeted travelogues, the well-observed if rough-around-the-edges indie drama Where the Road Meets the Sun (2011, Yong Mun Chee) is admirably interested in exposing the real L.A. to audiences. Writer-director Yong has enough clear affection for the city that she does justice to its striking architecture and colorful neighborhoods--Little Tokyo and Silver Lake are both featured to fine effect--but she also offers viewers a glimpse of restaurant kitchens staffed with illegal Mexican immigrants and sweat shops where counterfeit green-card photos are taken. This is a version of the city--decaying, multicultural, inhabited by an invisible-to-most lower class--bound to be refreshingly familiar to residents and eye-opening to outsiders.
In one of the city's decrepit hotels, manager Blake (Eric Mabius), bearing wounds from a marriage that went south, rents rooms to immigrants looking for a temporary residence. Along with Blake, three of the hotel's denizens take center stage in the film: Julio (Fernando Noriega), a Mexican dish washer hoping to save enough money to bring his wife and child over the border to join him; Takashi (Will Yun Lee), a brooding Japanese man with a mysterious past; and Guy (Luke Brandon Field), a shamelessly womanizing Brit.
Yong has created an engaging (and respectably multi-ethnic) quartet of characters, and she and editor Azhar Ismon effortlessly balance each of the four characters' intersecting narrative threads. (Yong and Ismon also deserve credit for the economical storytelling of the movie's first 15 or so minutes, which track four years in the characters' lives in a minimum of screen time.) Julio and Guy emerge as the strongest figures, partly because the two characters form a touching and believable friendship, and partly because Noriega and Field are immensely charismatic. Noriega has a killer smile, and does an impressive job of conveying Julio's decency and optimism without ever turning the character into a cardboard saint. Field, who, with his dark eyes and broad nose, resembles a taller, less nerdy UK version of Shia LaBeouf, invests Guy with such sincerity that it's clear Guy is a big-hearted person underneath his raging libido.
I had such a good time getting to know these characters and their struggles that I was disappointed when the narrative machinations of the third act kicked in, overwhelming the movie's gentle humanity. Without giving anything away, the events that reunite Julio with a group of pawn-shop hooligans he antagonized earlier in the film depend upon an implausible number of narrative coincidences.
Also, Yong's dialogue often settles for being functional instead of inspired. While it's natural that characters in such desperate financial straits would talk most often about the hardships they face, some more loose conversational exchanges would've been welcome to keep monotony at bay.
However, Yong's vision of LA's fringe dwellers is so potent that I hope we're graced with more of her humane urban portraiture in the future. Grade: B-
[FULL DISCLOSURE: Yong is actually a friend and former colleague of mine, so I'm not even gonna pretend to be unbiased here (although, honestly, I did try to write as "objective" a review as possible under the circumstances). It was actually hard not to just call her Mun Chee throughout the review, but I stuck to my professional guns. To support her, I'll mention that Where the Road Meets the Sun is now playing for a week-long engagement in LA and New York as part of Maya Indie's Film Series and will spread to other cities in the weeks to come. Go see it!]
Friday, July 29, 2011
7/26 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Project Nim" and "The Guard")
Being a true animal lover requires an understanding that the beasts we share the planet with are far more unpredictable and vulnerable than humans, who possess the singular ability to vocalize their needs and the shelter of civilization. This knowledge should ideally guide any human interactions with animals, such as when I was walking Sadie, a gorgeous dog I watched for a week last year while her human parents were out of town, and she began aggressively snarling and barking at another passing canine. I had to hold Sadie back from engaging her perceived rival, but even though she was technically behaving badly, I knew, as any person should, that her actions were not to be punished. She couldn't let me know in English what her beef was with the dog--I'd like to think she was being either protective or possessive of me, naturally--and I'm smart enough to realize that her behavior, while annoying, did not constitute the kind of flaw that would make me love her any less. She's a dog, and it's just in her nature.
Part of what makes Project Nim (2011, James Marsh) the best and most engrossing documentary of the year so far is its implicit critique of how an unfortunate number of people who cross paths with the chimpanzee at its center, adorably named Nim Chimpsky, are so oblivious to Nim's basic animal nature.
Nim is taken from his mother in a prologue that hooks the viewer right from the start, and then placed with Dr. Herb Terrace, a Columbia University professor who, in the '70s, takes on an experiment to test whether or not humans can communicate with chimps using sign language. Nim becomes his subject for the experiment, and to provide the chimp with a home and someone to hopefully sign with, he passes Nim onto ex-girlfriend Stephanie LaFarge, who's excited to raise Nim within her self-proclaimed "rich hippie" family. Stephanie ends up treating Nim like an ordinary human son, ignorant that such anthopomorphism doesn't take into account such behavior as Nim's territorial anger towards Stephanie's long-haired poet husband.
Despite such complications, Dr. Terrace's test of the age-old nature-vs.-nurture hypothesis yields results. Nim acquires quite the sign-language vocabulary. My favorite is his compound use of the signs for "stone" and "smoke," indicating that he wants to smoke marijuana (the sign-language teachers who work under Dr. Terrace get him hooked on the wacky tobacky).
I'm reluctant to share where Nim goes from Stephanie LaFarge's houshould, and the directions in which Dr. Terrace takes his experiment, because the film really benefits from the viewer going into it with as little foreknowledge of Nim's true-life story as possible. But it's revealing little to say that whereas Stephanie fails in her treatment of Nim as something more than he really is, other people who come into possession of the chimp falter in treating him as something less--a being whose life has no value. The blatant disregard for animal welfare captured on film is downright disturbing. Without any preaching, Project Nim passionately attacks scientific pursuits divorced entirely from ethical considerations.
As he also proved with the excellent, Oscar-winning Man on Wire (which Nim, remarkably, improves upon), director Marsh is a poet of the non-fiction form, blending archival footage, still photos (almost all of which are extremely cute), evocatively lit interviews with Nim's human friends and foes, and artful recreations into a stunning cinematic whole (cinematographer Michael Simmonds, editor Jinx Godfrey, and composer Dickon Hinchliffe make invaluable contributions). Beneath this exquisite surface lies a mighty narrative engine; Marsh's style is magically connected to his muscular storytelling sense.
Project Nim is such a great story well told that its box-office underperformance thus far is depressing. It's hard to imagine even viewers who avoid documentaries not being affected by this thought-provoking, immensely moving glimpse into human-and-animal relationships gone spectacularly wrong. Grade: A
Since John Michael McDonagh is the brother of playwright Martin McDonagh, I was hoping his debut feature as writer and director, The Guard (2011, John Michael McDonagh), would be in the same league as Martin McDonagh's first feature, In Bruges, one of the few post-Tarantino hit-man comedies that could be classified as genuinely original and soulful in its own right. But, lacking In Bruges' meaty characterizations, narrative ingenuity, and thematic depth, The Guard is instead in the unambitious, reasonably-entertaining-yet-flimsy class of your average Guy Ritchie action-comedy.
Basically a formula buddy picture pairing the most ethically shaky cop (Brendan Gleeson) in all of Galway, Ireland with a by-the-book FBI agent (Don Cheadle) to crush a drug ring, The Guard is marred by McDonagh's inability to supply the requisite comic energy; the pacing just lags.
Luckily, though, the one trait McDonagh does share with his more talented sibling is a gift for enjoyably digressive tough-guy dialogue. There are enough great one-liners and interactions here to make one curious for what McDonagh does next, in spite of his shortcomings.
The writer-director also benefits from his casting of wonderful character actor Gleeson in a showy lead part. Gleeson is a marvel in the role of a cop so hedonistic he steals acid from a car-crash victim and even ingests it at the scene of the collision. As his mismatched partner, Cheadle, a great dramatic actor, is less successful; he doesn't possess the light touch necessary for comedy (except in that scene from Ocean's Thirteen where he goes gleefully over-the-top when his thief character pretends to be a showboating stunt cyclist in order to distract Al Pacino's villain). Underneath Cheadle's genre-inappropriate glowering, one senses he still did enjoy bouncing banter off of Gleeson. I mean, who wouldn't? Grade: B-
Part of what makes Project Nim (2011, James Marsh) the best and most engrossing documentary of the year so far is its implicit critique of how an unfortunate number of people who cross paths with the chimpanzee at its center, adorably named Nim Chimpsky, are so oblivious to Nim's basic animal nature.
Nim is taken from his mother in a prologue that hooks the viewer right from the start, and then placed with Dr. Herb Terrace, a Columbia University professor who, in the '70s, takes on an experiment to test whether or not humans can communicate with chimps using sign language. Nim becomes his subject for the experiment, and to provide the chimp with a home and someone to hopefully sign with, he passes Nim onto ex-girlfriend Stephanie LaFarge, who's excited to raise Nim within her self-proclaimed "rich hippie" family. Stephanie ends up treating Nim like an ordinary human son, ignorant that such anthopomorphism doesn't take into account such behavior as Nim's territorial anger towards Stephanie's long-haired poet husband.
Despite such complications, Dr. Terrace's test of the age-old nature-vs.-nurture hypothesis yields results. Nim acquires quite the sign-language vocabulary. My favorite is his compound use of the signs for "stone" and "smoke," indicating that he wants to smoke marijuana (the sign-language teachers who work under Dr. Terrace get him hooked on the wacky tobacky).
I'm reluctant to share where Nim goes from Stephanie LaFarge's houshould, and the directions in which Dr. Terrace takes his experiment, because the film really benefits from the viewer going into it with as little foreknowledge of Nim's true-life story as possible. But it's revealing little to say that whereas Stephanie fails in her treatment of Nim as something more than he really is, other people who come into possession of the chimp falter in treating him as something less--a being whose life has no value. The blatant disregard for animal welfare captured on film is downright disturbing. Without any preaching, Project Nim passionately attacks scientific pursuits divorced entirely from ethical considerations.
As he also proved with the excellent, Oscar-winning Man on Wire (which Nim, remarkably, improves upon), director Marsh is a poet of the non-fiction form, blending archival footage, still photos (almost all of which are extremely cute), evocatively lit interviews with Nim's human friends and foes, and artful recreations into a stunning cinematic whole (cinematographer Michael Simmonds, editor Jinx Godfrey, and composer Dickon Hinchliffe make invaluable contributions). Beneath this exquisite surface lies a mighty narrative engine; Marsh's style is magically connected to his muscular storytelling sense.
Project Nim is such a great story well told that its box-office underperformance thus far is depressing. It's hard to imagine even viewers who avoid documentaries not being affected by this thought-provoking, immensely moving glimpse into human-and-animal relationships gone spectacularly wrong. Grade: A
Since John Michael McDonagh is the brother of playwright Martin McDonagh, I was hoping his debut feature as writer and director, The Guard (2011, John Michael McDonagh), would be in the same league as Martin McDonagh's first feature, In Bruges, one of the few post-Tarantino hit-man comedies that could be classified as genuinely original and soulful in its own right. But, lacking In Bruges' meaty characterizations, narrative ingenuity, and thematic depth, The Guard is instead in the unambitious, reasonably-entertaining-yet-flimsy class of your average Guy Ritchie action-comedy.
Basically a formula buddy picture pairing the most ethically shaky cop (Brendan Gleeson) in all of Galway, Ireland with a by-the-book FBI agent (Don Cheadle) to crush a drug ring, The Guard is marred by McDonagh's inability to supply the requisite comic energy; the pacing just lags.
Luckily, though, the one trait McDonagh does share with his more talented sibling is a gift for enjoyably digressive tough-guy dialogue. There are enough great one-liners and interactions here to make one curious for what McDonagh does next, in spite of his shortcomings.
The writer-director also benefits from his casting of wonderful character actor Gleeson in a showy lead part. Gleeson is a marvel in the role of a cop so hedonistic he steals acid from a car-crash victim and even ingests it at the scene of the collision. As his mismatched partner, Cheadle, a great dramatic actor, is less successful; he doesn't possess the light touch necessary for comedy (except in that scene from Ocean's Thirteen where he goes gleefully over-the-top when his thief character pretends to be a showboating stunt cyclist in order to distract Al Pacino's villain). Underneath Cheadle's genre-inappropriate glowering, one senses he still did enjoy bouncing banter off of Gleeson. I mean, who wouldn't? Grade: B-
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
7/24 - 7/25 Viewing Journal
Nothing for last Sunday or Monday. But keep an eye on the blog over the next few days, when I post a couple more early reviews and rave about one of the very best movies of the year so far. (Hint: It's a movie that involves a non-human primate in a central role.) (That means it's either Project Nim or The Zookeeper. Place your bets!)
7/23 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Captain America: The First Avenger" and "Friends With Benefits")
Technically polished yet boring as hell, the WWII-era superhero movie Captain America: The First Avenger (2011, Joe Johnston) fastidiously recreates an era of USO rallies and Nazi foes (the work done by cinematographer Shelly Johnson, production designer Rick Heinrichs, and costume designer Anna B. Sheppard is not to be faulted) but finds only overly earnest stick figures with which to populate its handsome period recreation.
Don't get me wrong--a quality like earnestness is usually something to be treasured in a film. But this script, written by Chronicles of Narnia veterans Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, is so intent on painting heroes Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) as unblemished, noble do-gooders that they never attain that extra dimension needed to get us involved in their fight against evil. Lacking recognizable humanity, Captain America aims for retro sincerity but achieves only blandness and terminal dramatic stiffness instead.
The dull, mummified vibe extends to scenes in which the villainous Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, who adopts an enjoyably artificial German accent but gets absolutely no interesting words with which to wrap it around) confers with a scientist associate (Toby Jones) over his intricate, destructive plans. If the movie's meant to be a throwback, then why is that these scenes of overly dry exposition remind me only of other recent unsuccessful blockbusters?
Director Johnston drags the proceedings to a snail's pace. There's none of the matinee-adventure zip of his The Rocketeer, nor any of the rousing spirit of his October Sky, both of which were set in roughly the same time period as this. Now those movies were throwbacks.
Evans' work is more lively and nuanced in early scenes that use CGI to put his head on a rail-thin body to convey how puny Steve is; when a serum inflates Steve's body to the beefcake level of a superhero, Evans weirdly reverts to phoning it in, as if he believed his pecs and abs can just take over the acting duties. I missed the cocky, young-Tom-Cruise-esque confidence that Evans has brought to previous movies, but the character of Steve is so one-dimensional that it shouldn't be viewed as a test of his ability to play non-cocky types. Nor should Atwell's future be judged based solely on her ho-hum work here; she was very smart and charismatic in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, and no doubt other projects down the line will allow her to flourish again.
The only actor who really shines here is the infallible Tommy Lee Jones, who manages the neat trick of burrowing into his character--that of a colonel doubtful of Steve's ability to pull off the Captain America alter-ego--while simultaneously seeming to signal to the audience his contempt for the threadbare material. Jones' musical, curveball line readings give Captain America something it otherwise sorely lacks: a sense of surprise. Grade: C
While watching attractive stars Evans and Atwell straitjacketed by the goody-two-shoes act they're forced to play out in Captain America, it's hard not to picture them ripping off each other's clothes and going at it like two attractive people would in the real world, as opposed to the world of poor comic-book adaptations.
So the romantic comedy Friends With Benefits (2011, Will Gluck) already has an edge over its Saturday-afternoon predecessor in that it frequently gets stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis naked and in bed for some vigorous shagging. And the film's sex scenes also manage to work on a non-prurient level too. Since Timberlake and Kunis' characters, Dylan and Jamie, are pals looking to engage in entirely non-romantic sex, they openly tease and criticize each other while in the middle of the act. The intimacy is refreshing, and Timberlake, who really should quit his day job (actually, it seems he pretty much has at this point), and the whip-smart Kunis make for a naturally likable pair of lovers.
There's plenty more to like about the film too, from its rare-in-mainstream-comedies focus on two unashamedly intelligent, articulate characters, and amusing supporting performances from Woody Harrelson (as Dylan's self-mockingly gay sports-writer colleague) and Patricia Clarkson (as Jamie's loopy, free-spirit mother). (The awesome Richard Jenkins is also very good as Dylan's Alzheimer's-inflicted father, but due to the nature of the character, the word "amusing" wouldn't really fit.)
Still, I wasn't as taken with Friends With Benefits as most critics have been. Maybe I'm just at a younger age where I can sense the pandering behind nearly non-stop referencing to phenomena "those kids today" are attuned to, such as YouTube, iPhone apps, flash mobs, and the like. And while roughly half the dialogue in the script by Gluck, Keith Merryman & David A. Newman is genuinely clever, the other half just thinks it's clever in a cloying, Diablo Cody-esque way. The verbal wit in Gluck's previous comedy, the delightful surprise Easy A, was much sharper; conspicuously, it was written by somebody else, Bert V. Royal.
I'm actually about equally "meh" on this and the much less acclaimed, similar-in-concept No Strings Attached from earlier this year (which is less intelligent than Friends, but also more moving, due to star Natalie Portman's emotionally committed performance). Separately, neither of the two movies makes a compelling case for must-see big-screen status, but if combined as a stay-at-home double feature when both are available on DVD or cable, they'd make for a pleasant pair. As long as they have no plans for a serious commitment, of course. Grade: B-
Don't get me wrong--a quality like earnestness is usually something to be treasured in a film. But this script, written by Chronicles of Narnia veterans Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, is so intent on painting heroes Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) as unblemished, noble do-gooders that they never attain that extra dimension needed to get us involved in their fight against evil. Lacking recognizable humanity, Captain America aims for retro sincerity but achieves only blandness and terminal dramatic stiffness instead.
The dull, mummified vibe extends to scenes in which the villainous Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, who adopts an enjoyably artificial German accent but gets absolutely no interesting words with which to wrap it around) confers with a scientist associate (Toby Jones) over his intricate, destructive plans. If the movie's meant to be a throwback, then why is that these scenes of overly dry exposition remind me only of other recent unsuccessful blockbusters?
Director Johnston drags the proceedings to a snail's pace. There's none of the matinee-adventure zip of his The Rocketeer, nor any of the rousing spirit of his October Sky, both of which were set in roughly the same time period as this. Now those movies were throwbacks.
Evans' work is more lively and nuanced in early scenes that use CGI to put his head on a rail-thin body to convey how puny Steve is; when a serum inflates Steve's body to the beefcake level of a superhero, Evans weirdly reverts to phoning it in, as if he believed his pecs and abs can just take over the acting duties. I missed the cocky, young-Tom-Cruise-esque confidence that Evans has brought to previous movies, but the character of Steve is so one-dimensional that it shouldn't be viewed as a test of his ability to play non-cocky types. Nor should Atwell's future be judged based solely on her ho-hum work here; she was very smart and charismatic in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, and no doubt other projects down the line will allow her to flourish again.
The only actor who really shines here is the infallible Tommy Lee Jones, who manages the neat trick of burrowing into his character--that of a colonel doubtful of Steve's ability to pull off the Captain America alter-ego--while simultaneously seeming to signal to the audience his contempt for the threadbare material. Jones' musical, curveball line readings give Captain America something it otherwise sorely lacks: a sense of surprise. Grade: C
While watching attractive stars Evans and Atwell straitjacketed by the goody-two-shoes act they're forced to play out in Captain America, it's hard not to picture them ripping off each other's clothes and going at it like two attractive people would in the real world, as opposed to the world of poor comic-book adaptations.
So the romantic comedy Friends With Benefits (2011, Will Gluck) already has an edge over its Saturday-afternoon predecessor in that it frequently gets stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis naked and in bed for some vigorous shagging. And the film's sex scenes also manage to work on a non-prurient level too. Since Timberlake and Kunis' characters, Dylan and Jamie, are pals looking to engage in entirely non-romantic sex, they openly tease and criticize each other while in the middle of the act. The intimacy is refreshing, and Timberlake, who really should quit his day job (actually, it seems he pretty much has at this point), and the whip-smart Kunis make for a naturally likable pair of lovers.
There's plenty more to like about the film too, from its rare-in-mainstream-comedies focus on two unashamedly intelligent, articulate characters, and amusing supporting performances from Woody Harrelson (as Dylan's self-mockingly gay sports-writer colleague) and Patricia Clarkson (as Jamie's loopy, free-spirit mother). (The awesome Richard Jenkins is also very good as Dylan's Alzheimer's-inflicted father, but due to the nature of the character, the word "amusing" wouldn't really fit.)
Still, I wasn't as taken with Friends With Benefits as most critics have been. Maybe I'm just at a younger age where I can sense the pandering behind nearly non-stop referencing to phenomena "those kids today" are attuned to, such as YouTube, iPhone apps, flash mobs, and the like. And while roughly half the dialogue in the script by Gluck, Keith Merryman & David A. Newman is genuinely clever, the other half just thinks it's clever in a cloying, Diablo Cody-esque way. The verbal wit in Gluck's previous comedy, the delightful surprise Easy A, was much sharper; conspicuously, it was written by somebody else, Bert V. Royal.
I'm actually about equally "meh" on this and the much less acclaimed, similar-in-concept No Strings Attached from earlier this year (which is less intelligent than Friends, but also more moving, due to star Natalie Portman's emotionally committed performance). Separately, neither of the two movies makes a compelling case for must-see big-screen status, but if combined as a stay-at-home double feature when both are available on DVD or cable, they'd make for a pleasant pair. As long as they have no plans for a serious commitment, of course. Grade: B-
7/22 Viewing Journal (EARLY REVIEW: "30 Minutes or Less")
Since Bridesmaids, Bad Teacher, and Horrible Bosses are all fairly benign examples of the now-popular form of the raunchy, R-rated mainstream comedy, I was hoping to go all summer without having to bear witness to another scummy, mean-spirited blast of immature machismo on the order of The Hangover, the movie that brought box-office viability back to the restricted-rating laugh-fest even as it alienated those of us who demand more than hateful boys'-club hijinks from our comedies. But, alas, here comes 30 Minutes or Less (2011, Ruben Fleischer) (opening 8/12 nationwide), a profane lark wherein all the women onscreen are either strippers, cardboard love interests, helpless victims, or some combination thereof, and where there's nothing scarier for the central straight-male characters than the very existence of homosexuality.
However, while The Hangover and 30 Minutes or Less share the same ugly mindset, it would be unfair to the newer film to say it's precisely "on the order of" The Hangover. It doesn't come near that level of awfulness--thank goodness for small favors, right?--and it has a number of compensating pleasures, chief among them the presence of Parks and Recreation's very funny Aziz Ansari. With his tendency to erupt in buzzing, high-pitched fits and rants that contain enough sharp observations to ever come close to being annoying (his best bit here is an astute assessment of Netflix), Ansari raises the movie's hit-to-miss gag ratio to an adequate level.
Ansari also connects well with Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Nick, a burnt-out pizza-delivery boy more comfortable spending his nights swigging beers with teacher pal Chet (Ansari) than trying to strike up a real relationship with Chet's sister, Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria), a former one-night-stand who Nick is secretly in love with.
One night, Nick unfortunately crosses paths with Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson), two losers looking for a patsy to rob a bank, which would then provide Dwayne with enough money to hire a hitman to kill his father (Fred Ward, a strong presence reduced here to the duty of hurling homophobic slurs), a military veteran made rich by a lottery win. Dwayne and Travis decide that Nick is their patsy, so they strap Nick with a time-bomb vest that will detonate if he doesn't rob a bank within a matter of hours.
Nick enlists Chet's assistance, and the comic set piece in which they carry out the robbery does not disappoint--it escalates nicely as farce, and is one of the movie's highlights. The scene confirms that director Fleischer has some talent when it comes to funneling the cast's energy into tightly constructed bits of comic mayhem, but I wonder if Fleischer knows that not every film he takes on needs to be as slick and propulsive as a Mountain Dew commercial. His injection of a healthy amount of action into his only previous film, the superior Zombieland, made sense in that case because the survivors-vs.-zombies set-up warranted the gunfights. Here, though, all the blam-blam stuff, the flame-thrower explosions, and the car chases feel desperate and gratuitous, as if Fleischer didn't trust his comedy chops to carry the film. (His next film, inexplicably, will be a period gangster epic starring the impressive line-up of Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, and Josh Brolin. It seems Ward's character isn't the only lottery winner involved in 30 Minutes or Less.)
Eisenberg is fine, although unlike some who complain (unfairly) that "he always plays the same character," or some such garbage, I didn't need him to tamp down his natural wit, charm, and intelligence to play an underachieving douchebag; there's enough range within the gallery of articulate youngsters he has played as to render the question of whether he needs to "stretch" entirely moot. McBride's disgusting-cretin routine is growing on me; he's dependably funny, although if the anti-Eisenberg camp wants me to point to an actor who I feel does have a limited range, I will gladly offer McBride as Exhibit A. Swardson, who often just looks lost when he's required to react to a scene partner, is the weak link in the central quartet.
Still, three good performances out of the four main actors is nothing to scoff at when considering the juvenile material the cast has to work with. 30 Minutes or Less isn't a bad movie of its kind, but how much of an achievement is that when the kind of comedy it is inspires repulsion? Grade: C+
However, while The Hangover and 30 Minutes or Less share the same ugly mindset, it would be unfair to the newer film to say it's precisely "on the order of" The Hangover. It doesn't come near that level of awfulness--thank goodness for small favors, right?--and it has a number of compensating pleasures, chief among them the presence of Parks and Recreation's very funny Aziz Ansari. With his tendency to erupt in buzzing, high-pitched fits and rants that contain enough sharp observations to ever come close to being annoying (his best bit here is an astute assessment of Netflix), Ansari raises the movie's hit-to-miss gag ratio to an adequate level.
Ansari also connects well with Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Nick, a burnt-out pizza-delivery boy more comfortable spending his nights swigging beers with teacher pal Chet (Ansari) than trying to strike up a real relationship with Chet's sister, Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria), a former one-night-stand who Nick is secretly in love with.
One night, Nick unfortunately crosses paths with Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson), two losers looking for a patsy to rob a bank, which would then provide Dwayne with enough money to hire a hitman to kill his father (Fred Ward, a strong presence reduced here to the duty of hurling homophobic slurs), a military veteran made rich by a lottery win. Dwayne and Travis decide that Nick is their patsy, so they strap Nick with a time-bomb vest that will detonate if he doesn't rob a bank within a matter of hours.
Nick enlists Chet's assistance, and the comic set piece in which they carry out the robbery does not disappoint--it escalates nicely as farce, and is one of the movie's highlights. The scene confirms that director Fleischer has some talent when it comes to funneling the cast's energy into tightly constructed bits of comic mayhem, but I wonder if Fleischer knows that not every film he takes on needs to be as slick and propulsive as a Mountain Dew commercial. His injection of a healthy amount of action into his only previous film, the superior Zombieland, made sense in that case because the survivors-vs.-zombies set-up warranted the gunfights. Here, though, all the blam-blam stuff, the flame-thrower explosions, and the car chases feel desperate and gratuitous, as if Fleischer didn't trust his comedy chops to carry the film. (His next film, inexplicably, will be a period gangster epic starring the impressive line-up of Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, and Josh Brolin. It seems Ward's character isn't the only lottery winner involved in 30 Minutes or Less.)
Eisenberg is fine, although unlike some who complain (unfairly) that "he always plays the same character," or some such garbage, I didn't need him to tamp down his natural wit, charm, and intelligence to play an underachieving douchebag; there's enough range within the gallery of articulate youngsters he has played as to render the question of whether he needs to "stretch" entirely moot. McBride's disgusting-cretin routine is growing on me; he's dependably funny, although if the anti-Eisenberg camp wants me to point to an actor who I feel does have a limited range, I will gladly offer McBride as Exhibit A. Swardson, who often just looks lost when he's required to react to a scene partner, is the weak link in the central quartet.
Still, three good performances out of the four main actors is nothing to scoff at when considering the juvenile material the cast has to work with. 30 Minutes or Less isn't a bad movie of its kind, but how much of an achievement is that when the kind of comedy it is inspires repulsion? Grade: C+
7/21 Viewing Journal
I didn't see anything on this day, so it's time again for a little of the ol' self-promotion. Here's a Metromix feature I just wrote on weird Westerns, tied into the release of Cowboys & Aliens:
http://newyork.metromix.com/movies/essay_photo_gallery/10-weirdest-western-movies/2738503/content
Check back for my review of Cowboys & Aliens when I post my 7/31 Viewing Journal.
http://newyork.metromix.com/movies/essay_photo_gallery/10-weirdest-western-movies/2738503/content
Check back for my review of Cowboys & Aliens when I post my 7/31 Viewing Journal.
Monday, July 25, 2011
7/20 Viewing Journal (reviews of "John Carpenter's The Ward" and "The Perfect Host")
A mere two days after enduring the obnoxious, amped-up postmodernism of Joe Cornish's Attack the Block, the decidedly more relaxed, neo-classical genre craftsmanship of John Carpenter's The Ward (2011, John Carpenter) arrived as a breath of fresh air. Understand this, though: The Ward is more of an exceedingly well-directed okay movie than a legitimately good one. Still, even if the unoriginal and predictable script by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen prevents Carpenter from reaching the heights of his The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China, the filmmaker's compositional rigor and infectious glee at working with familiar genre tropes invigorates the cliches enough to make this worth a look for die-hard fans.
The setting is a sinister mental-patient ward, which is hardly a novel one, although Carpenter's tracking shots down the ward's corridors during stormy evenings strike the right ominous tone. This is where Kristen (Amber Heard) is admitted after a fit of pyromania, although she insists her sanity is above reproach. In an effort to adjust to her new surroundings, she bonds with her fellow female inmates and makes her required appointments with the hospital's psychiatrist (Jared Harris, whose plummy, Rex Harrison-esque Britishness works for a character with ambiguous motives). But frequent nighttime visits from a pissed-off ghost understandably heightens her desire to escape the ward.
Carpenter builds nicely to an increasingly intense third act, and he remains an expert at delivering scares that don't cheat. And while his decision to stock the ward completely with perfectly-coiffed hotties is questionable, for plausibility's sake at the very least, he doesn't make the mistake of sleazily ogling and violently exploiting his young-female cast the way director Zack Snyder did with his own, thoroughly vile female-mental-ward yarn Sucker Punch. Even the obligatory shower scene is shot and cut for maximum tastefulness, if you can imagine such a thing.
It helps, too, that the distaff ensemble does fairly solid work. Mamie Gummer is a standout as Emily, the ward's only patient to fully embrace her looney-tunes status (since Gummer is Meryl Streep's daughter, she truly is a chip off the old block). In the lead, Heard botches a couple of her more emotionally demanding scenes, but she still exudes a forceful charisma befitting her "It Girl" status.
Even viewers whose past exposure to insane-asylum genre flicks consists only of having seen recent entries Sucker Punch (which this is vastly superior to) and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (which this is vastly inferior to) will know exactly where the story's heading. But old pro Carpenter makes getting there mildly fun. Grade: B-
More of a whatsit than an actual movie, The Perfect Host (2011, Nick Tomnay) delights in narrative rug-pulling that is entertaining for the duration of the movie but fails to hold up to even the slightest scrutiny once it wraps up. A riveting, delightfully odd star performance from the perpetually underutilized David Hyde Pierce (Niles from TV's Frasier) does its best to cover over the massive plot holes and debut writer-director Tomnay's shoddy filmmaking, and the spectacle of his unhinged performance combined with the out-of-left-field plot twists almost manage that feat. But, as they say, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Another liability is actor Clayne Crawford's charisma-free and woefully amateurish work as John, a bank robber on the run who coerces Pierce's Warwick to let him into Warwick's posh abode by pretending to be a friend of a friend. Warwick warns John right off the bat that because he's throwing a dinner party, John can't stay for long, though John's impulse is to stay in the safe harbor of Warwick's house for as long as possible.
That describes the first act of The Perfect Host, and it would be ungenerous of me to outline the remaining two acts. It would be sufficient to say that the more loopy surprises the movie throws at the audience, the more entertaining it becomes while simultaneously making less and less sense. The narrative hinges on coincidences and lapses in logic so hard for the rational viewer to swallow that one has to decide either to go with the madness or resist it. I straddled the middle ground; I felt like my intelligence was insulted, but I can't deny I had some fun in the process.
Let's admit it--any movie that gives Pierce an extremely weird dance number isn't a total waste. With his skills far exceeding Crawford's, The Perfect Host is an unusually imbalanced two-hander. But Pierce is so rarely given such a juicy leading role that I could frankly care less who he's sharing the screen with. Grade: C+
The setting is a sinister mental-patient ward, which is hardly a novel one, although Carpenter's tracking shots down the ward's corridors during stormy evenings strike the right ominous tone. This is where Kristen (Amber Heard) is admitted after a fit of pyromania, although she insists her sanity is above reproach. In an effort to adjust to her new surroundings, she bonds with her fellow female inmates and makes her required appointments with the hospital's psychiatrist (Jared Harris, whose plummy, Rex Harrison-esque Britishness works for a character with ambiguous motives). But frequent nighttime visits from a pissed-off ghost understandably heightens her desire to escape the ward.
Carpenter builds nicely to an increasingly intense third act, and he remains an expert at delivering scares that don't cheat. And while his decision to stock the ward completely with perfectly-coiffed hotties is questionable, for plausibility's sake at the very least, he doesn't make the mistake of sleazily ogling and violently exploiting his young-female cast the way director Zack Snyder did with his own, thoroughly vile female-mental-ward yarn Sucker Punch. Even the obligatory shower scene is shot and cut for maximum tastefulness, if you can imagine such a thing.
It helps, too, that the distaff ensemble does fairly solid work. Mamie Gummer is a standout as Emily, the ward's only patient to fully embrace her looney-tunes status (since Gummer is Meryl Streep's daughter, she truly is a chip off the old block). In the lead, Heard botches a couple of her more emotionally demanding scenes, but she still exudes a forceful charisma befitting her "It Girl" status.
Even viewers whose past exposure to insane-asylum genre flicks consists only of having seen recent entries Sucker Punch (which this is vastly superior to) and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (which this is vastly inferior to) will know exactly where the story's heading. But old pro Carpenter makes getting there mildly fun. Grade: B-
More of a whatsit than an actual movie, The Perfect Host (2011, Nick Tomnay) delights in narrative rug-pulling that is entertaining for the duration of the movie but fails to hold up to even the slightest scrutiny once it wraps up. A riveting, delightfully odd star performance from the perpetually underutilized David Hyde Pierce (Niles from TV's Frasier) does its best to cover over the massive plot holes and debut writer-director Tomnay's shoddy filmmaking, and the spectacle of his unhinged performance combined with the out-of-left-field plot twists almost manage that feat. But, as they say, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Another liability is actor Clayne Crawford's charisma-free and woefully amateurish work as John, a bank robber on the run who coerces Pierce's Warwick to let him into Warwick's posh abode by pretending to be a friend of a friend. Warwick warns John right off the bat that because he's throwing a dinner party, John can't stay for long, though John's impulse is to stay in the safe harbor of Warwick's house for as long as possible.
That describes the first act of The Perfect Host, and it would be ungenerous of me to outline the remaining two acts. It would be sufficient to say that the more loopy surprises the movie throws at the audience, the more entertaining it becomes while simultaneously making less and less sense. The narrative hinges on coincidences and lapses in logic so hard for the rational viewer to swallow that one has to decide either to go with the madness or resist it. I straddled the middle ground; I felt like my intelligence was insulted, but I can't deny I had some fun in the process.
Let's admit it--any movie that gives Pierce an extremely weird dance number isn't a total waste. With his skills far exceeding Crawford's, The Perfect Host is an unusually imbalanced two-hander. But Pierce is so rarely given such a juicy leading role that I could frankly care less who he's sharing the screen with. Grade: C+
7/19 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Terri" and "Tabloid")
Slow to get going but ultimately very winning in its understated humanity, Terri (2011, Azazel Jacobs) tracks a lonely, overweight high-school student's social progress as he gradually expands his circle of friends.
When we first meet the high-schooler, named Terri and played by likable newcomer Jacob Wysocki with nary a trace of pity-party pleading, his life is stuck in an unenviable cycle of going to school, performing household tasks for his mentally troubled uncle (The Office's Creed Bratton), and scarfing down meals consisting of toast topped with baked beans. Director Jacobs depicts Terri's routine existence with a vividly unglamorous verisimilitude, but in early scenes, he and writer Patrick Dewitt are unable to separate the necessary repetition of Terri's daily grind from the unnecessary repetition of a character study spinning its narrative wheels. You've seen one scene of Terri setting mouse traps in the attic for doddering Uncle James, you've seen 'em all.
The movie gains in interest at the point when Terri's weekly meetings with assistant principal Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who insists on the meetings in a bid to increase Terri's self-esteem, gain in character depth. Mr. Fitzgerald is initially viewed as a comical figure armed with feeble motivational phrases and tricks, but Dewitt and the masterful Reilly eventually reveal, with commendable subtlety, that underneath his optimistic bluster, Mr. Fitzgerald is a regular guy with problems like anyone else who is just trying to do his job to the best of his abilities. Reilly is perfectly cast in a role that draws upon both his vast comedic and dramatic gifts, and he and Wysocki play off of each other beautifully.
Wysocki also has real chemistry opposite Bridger Zadina and Olivia Crocicchia, who play two high-school peers of Terri's who warm up to him. Zadina's compulsively hair-pulling beanpole Chad bonds with Terri over their shared visits to Mr. Fitzgerald's office, while Crocicchia's Heather is a beauty downgraded to outcast status after suffering a sexually humiliating incident in home-ec class. Jacobs gets these three teens together for a marvelously observed climactic scene, boldly played out in near-real-time, in which they experiment with drugs and alcohol in Uncle James' shed. The substance ingestion leads to honest confessions, awkward stabs at intimacy, and bursts of drunken hostility, all captured by Jacobs and Dewitt with compassion enough to recognize that teenagers need nights like this to remind them that life is full of surprise and possibility; it's not just homework and social ostracism.
Another good scene follows, between Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald, that cements Terri as a sweet, small-scale hymn to friendship. Grade: B
There's no other way to put it--Tabloid (2011, Errol Morris) is a humdinger of a documentary. The story of gossip-rag magnet Joyce McKinney is packed with enough sordid twists and turns to satisfy viewers drawn in by the title's implicit promise of salacious shocks; it's impossible not to laugh in disbelief or react with an inner "oh no, she didn't!" at what's unearthed here (honestly, this is the rare movie where other theatre patrons surely wouldn't mind if you vocalize that "oh no, she didn't!" reaction). But what makes Tabloid even more of an accomplishment is how celebrated documentarian Morris (The Fog of War), a sharp cookie, seems to flatter the intelligent viewer's armchair analysis of McKinney's story one moment and then confound that analysis the next moment. It's clear that he doesn't want every audience member walking out of the theatre with the exact same interpretation of who McKinney is and how trustworthy her own account of her life story is, and that ambiguity is what makes Tabloid such an exhilarating puzzle to piece together.
When McKinney, an enabling pilot, and a tabloid reporter offer their accounts of the "manacled Mormon" story that first gained McKinney notoriety in the film's opening passages, I wrongfully felt I had a handle on what Morris is after here. The differing accounts of the "manacled Mormon" legend go like this: authorities and reporters believe that former beauty queen McKinney kidnapped her Mormon ex-boyfriend, chained him to a bed, and forced him to repeatedly have sex with her, while McKinney claims in on-camera interviews that she and the love of her life had a blissfully romantic weekend that involved her challenging the shame-related perception of sex that had been drilled into the ex-boyfriend's head by the Mormon church. At this point, I believed that Morris was subtextually drawing a savage parallel between the neuroses women attain when paraded around the beauty-pageant circuit like so much meat and the inhuman repression suffered by devout followers of unhealthily restrictive religious cults (Morris, always cinematic in his approach to the documentary form, slyly incorporates footage from an animated Mormon propaganda film).
And, well, that initial reading of the film is still a valid interpretation, but it started to feel like a reductive one when McKinney's story continued unspooling onscreen. McKinney's tale most certainly doesn't end with the "manacled Mormon" fiasco, and the more you learn about her after the details of that incident have been laid out, the more your opinion of her and what Morris' movie really is keep shifting.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that most people I discuss this film with in the near future will conclude simply that McKinney is utterly batshit--a self-mythologizing loon. Morris' sole weakness is his occasional tendency to condescendingly underline the possibility of McKinney's insanity; at one point, he cuts immediately to black after McKinney stumbles in pronouncing the easy-enough word "phenomenon." But, for the most part, Morris lets us make up our own minds about her. In her defense, I'll say two things: her claim that female-on-male rape still requires an erection on the victim's part seems to me indisputable, and when a certain event much later in her life once again attracts the attention of tabloid reporters (I'm so not saying anything more than that), she does adopt a pseudonym, indicating that she doesn't always seek the validation of mass-media attention.
Look, I still don't quite know what I think about McKinney overall, but that fits what I think is Morris' ultimate goal--to provide a character study that tantalizingly withholds crucial details, the better to satisfy masochists who love a good "objective truth is unknowable" cinematic narrative. Those who have seen the likes of Rashomon or (my personal favorite) Zodiac several times know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes, walking out of a movie not having any of the answers is preferable to having only one. Grade: A-
When we first meet the high-schooler, named Terri and played by likable newcomer Jacob Wysocki with nary a trace of pity-party pleading, his life is stuck in an unenviable cycle of going to school, performing household tasks for his mentally troubled uncle (The Office's Creed Bratton), and scarfing down meals consisting of toast topped with baked beans. Director Jacobs depicts Terri's routine existence with a vividly unglamorous verisimilitude, but in early scenes, he and writer Patrick Dewitt are unable to separate the necessary repetition of Terri's daily grind from the unnecessary repetition of a character study spinning its narrative wheels. You've seen one scene of Terri setting mouse traps in the attic for doddering Uncle James, you've seen 'em all.
The movie gains in interest at the point when Terri's weekly meetings with assistant principal Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who insists on the meetings in a bid to increase Terri's self-esteem, gain in character depth. Mr. Fitzgerald is initially viewed as a comical figure armed with feeble motivational phrases and tricks, but Dewitt and the masterful Reilly eventually reveal, with commendable subtlety, that underneath his optimistic bluster, Mr. Fitzgerald is a regular guy with problems like anyone else who is just trying to do his job to the best of his abilities. Reilly is perfectly cast in a role that draws upon both his vast comedic and dramatic gifts, and he and Wysocki play off of each other beautifully.
Wysocki also has real chemistry opposite Bridger Zadina and Olivia Crocicchia, who play two high-school peers of Terri's who warm up to him. Zadina's compulsively hair-pulling beanpole Chad bonds with Terri over their shared visits to Mr. Fitzgerald's office, while Crocicchia's Heather is a beauty downgraded to outcast status after suffering a sexually humiliating incident in home-ec class. Jacobs gets these three teens together for a marvelously observed climactic scene, boldly played out in near-real-time, in which they experiment with drugs and alcohol in Uncle James' shed. The substance ingestion leads to honest confessions, awkward stabs at intimacy, and bursts of drunken hostility, all captured by Jacobs and Dewitt with compassion enough to recognize that teenagers need nights like this to remind them that life is full of surprise and possibility; it's not just homework and social ostracism.
Another good scene follows, between Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald, that cements Terri as a sweet, small-scale hymn to friendship. Grade: B
There's no other way to put it--Tabloid (2011, Errol Morris) is a humdinger of a documentary. The story of gossip-rag magnet Joyce McKinney is packed with enough sordid twists and turns to satisfy viewers drawn in by the title's implicit promise of salacious shocks; it's impossible not to laugh in disbelief or react with an inner "oh no, she didn't!" at what's unearthed here (honestly, this is the rare movie where other theatre patrons surely wouldn't mind if you vocalize that "oh no, she didn't!" reaction). But what makes Tabloid even more of an accomplishment is how celebrated documentarian Morris (The Fog of War), a sharp cookie, seems to flatter the intelligent viewer's armchair analysis of McKinney's story one moment and then confound that analysis the next moment. It's clear that he doesn't want every audience member walking out of the theatre with the exact same interpretation of who McKinney is and how trustworthy her own account of her life story is, and that ambiguity is what makes Tabloid such an exhilarating puzzle to piece together.
When McKinney, an enabling pilot, and a tabloid reporter offer their accounts of the "manacled Mormon" story that first gained McKinney notoriety in the film's opening passages, I wrongfully felt I had a handle on what Morris is after here. The differing accounts of the "manacled Mormon" legend go like this: authorities and reporters believe that former beauty queen McKinney kidnapped her Mormon ex-boyfriend, chained him to a bed, and forced him to repeatedly have sex with her, while McKinney claims in on-camera interviews that she and the love of her life had a blissfully romantic weekend that involved her challenging the shame-related perception of sex that had been drilled into the ex-boyfriend's head by the Mormon church. At this point, I believed that Morris was subtextually drawing a savage parallel between the neuroses women attain when paraded around the beauty-pageant circuit like so much meat and the inhuman repression suffered by devout followers of unhealthily restrictive religious cults (Morris, always cinematic in his approach to the documentary form, slyly incorporates footage from an animated Mormon propaganda film).
And, well, that initial reading of the film is still a valid interpretation, but it started to feel like a reductive one when McKinney's story continued unspooling onscreen. McKinney's tale most certainly doesn't end with the "manacled Mormon" fiasco, and the more you learn about her after the details of that incident have been laid out, the more your opinion of her and what Morris' movie really is keep shifting.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that most people I discuss this film with in the near future will conclude simply that McKinney is utterly batshit--a self-mythologizing loon. Morris' sole weakness is his occasional tendency to condescendingly underline the possibility of McKinney's insanity; at one point, he cuts immediately to black after McKinney stumbles in pronouncing the easy-enough word "phenomenon." But, for the most part, Morris lets us make up our own minds about her. In her defense, I'll say two things: her claim that female-on-male rape still requires an erection on the victim's part seems to me indisputable, and when a certain event much later in her life once again attracts the attention of tabloid reporters (I'm so not saying anything more than that), she does adopt a pseudonym, indicating that she doesn't always seek the validation of mass-media attention.
Look, I still don't quite know what I think about McKinney overall, but that fits what I think is Morris' ultimate goal--to provide a character study that tantalizingly withholds crucial details, the better to satisfy masochists who love a good "objective truth is unknowable" cinematic narrative. Those who have seen the likes of Rashomon or (my personal favorite) Zodiac several times know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes, walking out of a movie not having any of the answers is preferable to having only one. Grade: A-
7/18 Viewing Journal (EARLY REVIEW: "Attack the Block")
The score for the British alien-invasion comedy Attack the Block (2011, Joe Cornish) (opening 7/29 in limited release) is by Steven Price, who nimbly mixes hip-hop influences with the recognizable sounds of synth-heavy '80s genre-movie music. Pity, then, that the film itself fails to pull off a similar mix of old-school sci-fi and contemporary gangsta-culture edge.
Of course, it would be reductive and offensive to blame the fact that writer-director Cornish is white for his inability to deliver on the latter, but his race does become a factor when examining how glaringly problematic his film's representational politics are. By populating Attack the Block with a group of mostly black teenage characters who live in a public housing project, it's clear that Cornish wants his movie, on some level, to be a corrective to the regrettably white-washed, class-ignorant genre fare Hollywood is currently offering up (you can almost hear the studio executives behind Captain America, for example, asking themselves, "hey, if we put Derek Luke onscreen for 20 seconds, that counts as multi-racial, right?"). But Cornish is so inept when it comes to characterization that every person of color onscreen comes off as a troubling stereotype instead of a flesh-and-blood human being (the black characters include a gold-toothed drug dealer who whips out his pistol at the slightest provocation and the dealer's overweight, bumbling, Fetchit-level-comic-relief henchman--believe me, I'm not making this up).
Cornish also has the misguided audacity to open Attack the Block with a scene in which the film's ostensible heroes assault and steal from an innocent white woman, Sam (Jodie Whittaker). So right off the bat, he correlates black, lower-class masculinity with ugly intimidation and misogyny, associations that he's not smart enough to debunk as the movie goes on. But, for anyone looking to give him a pat on the back for effort, it should be noted he does try to debunk them, kind of. As soon as sharp-fanged aliens start slamming into the asphalt like miniature asteroids, the teenage muggers and Sam are forced to team up to survive in a characters-on-both-sides-of-the-law-vs.-a-common-enemy set-up straight out of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. But, as would be the case with any movie that fails to produce a single three-dimensional character, the intended moral ambiguity inherent in that set-up never achieves proper human weight. At one point, the stereotypically sassy female friend of the thieves' stereotypically sullen ringleader, Moses (John Boyega, who resembles the young Denzel Washington; hopefully one day, a better script will come along to test if he has any of Washington's talent and charisma), chastises Moses for the mugging of Sam, which may be enough for some to excuse the film's minefield of race and gender issues. However, when, just 20 or so minutes later, Cornish shows the thieves making creepy passes at Sam and Moses clarifying to Sam that he wouldn't have robbed her if he had known she lived in the same housing project as him (oh, so mugging non-natives is fine and dandy then), it's clear that the filmmaker just can't keep from tripping over his representational-political feet, as it were.
Okay, so putting aside those major political issues, does Attack the Block at least work as a simple humans-vs.-aliens action-thriller? Only in fits and starts, sadly. There's a race to get into the protective housing project that makes fun use of parkour leaps, and the climax is a superficially badass slo-mo treat. But all too often, Cornish and editor Jonathan Amos dice the action into incoherent, sadistic bursts of gleaming-alien-teeth close-ups, geysers of blood, and loud noises.
The shrill volume extends to the ensemble cast, who seem to have been directed to shout their lame, juvenile one-liners at an eardrum-shattering level.
Mystifyingly, Attack the Block has played at film festivals like the Los Angeles Film Festival and Austin's South by Southwest to a generally positive audience reception. Honestly, the only way I can imagine anyone over the age of 12 finding it genuinely good is if that potential viewer either likes any contemporary genre movie bearing the unmistakable Carpenter influence or any action movie centered on a black, lower-class protagonist. If you belong to either or both of those camps, have at it, I guess. Grade: C-
Of course, it would be reductive and offensive to blame the fact that writer-director Cornish is white for his inability to deliver on the latter, but his race does become a factor when examining how glaringly problematic his film's representational politics are. By populating Attack the Block with a group of mostly black teenage characters who live in a public housing project, it's clear that Cornish wants his movie, on some level, to be a corrective to the regrettably white-washed, class-ignorant genre fare Hollywood is currently offering up (you can almost hear the studio executives behind Captain America, for example, asking themselves, "hey, if we put Derek Luke onscreen for 20 seconds, that counts as multi-racial, right?"). But Cornish is so inept when it comes to characterization that every person of color onscreen comes off as a troubling stereotype instead of a flesh-and-blood human being (the black characters include a gold-toothed drug dealer who whips out his pistol at the slightest provocation and the dealer's overweight, bumbling, Fetchit-level-comic-relief henchman--believe me, I'm not making this up).
Cornish also has the misguided audacity to open Attack the Block with a scene in which the film's ostensible heroes assault and steal from an innocent white woman, Sam (Jodie Whittaker). So right off the bat, he correlates black, lower-class masculinity with ugly intimidation and misogyny, associations that he's not smart enough to debunk as the movie goes on. But, for anyone looking to give him a pat on the back for effort, it should be noted he does try to debunk them, kind of. As soon as sharp-fanged aliens start slamming into the asphalt like miniature asteroids, the teenage muggers and Sam are forced to team up to survive in a characters-on-both-sides-of-the-law-vs.-a-common-enemy set-up straight out of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. But, as would be the case with any movie that fails to produce a single three-dimensional character, the intended moral ambiguity inherent in that set-up never achieves proper human weight. At one point, the stereotypically sassy female friend of the thieves' stereotypically sullen ringleader, Moses (John Boyega, who resembles the young Denzel Washington; hopefully one day, a better script will come along to test if he has any of Washington's talent and charisma), chastises Moses for the mugging of Sam, which may be enough for some to excuse the film's minefield of race and gender issues. However, when, just 20 or so minutes later, Cornish shows the thieves making creepy passes at Sam and Moses clarifying to Sam that he wouldn't have robbed her if he had known she lived in the same housing project as him (oh, so mugging non-natives is fine and dandy then), it's clear that the filmmaker just can't keep from tripping over his representational-political feet, as it were.
Okay, so putting aside those major political issues, does Attack the Block at least work as a simple humans-vs.-aliens action-thriller? Only in fits and starts, sadly. There's a race to get into the protective housing project that makes fun use of parkour leaps, and the climax is a superficially badass slo-mo treat. But all too often, Cornish and editor Jonathan Amos dice the action into incoherent, sadistic bursts of gleaming-alien-teeth close-ups, geysers of blood, and loud noises.
The shrill volume extends to the ensemble cast, who seem to have been directed to shout their lame, juvenile one-liners at an eardrum-shattering level.
Mystifyingly, Attack the Block has played at film festivals like the Los Angeles Film Festival and Austin's South by Southwest to a generally positive audience reception. Honestly, the only way I can imagine anyone over the age of 12 finding it genuinely good is if that potential viewer either likes any contemporary genre movie bearing the unmistakable Carpenter influence or any action movie centered on a black, lower-class protagonist. If you belong to either or both of those camps, have at it, I guess. Grade: C-
7/17 Viewing Journal (mini-review of "Louis C.K.: Hilarious")
I still haven't decided what to do with a movie like Louis C.K.: Hilarious (2010, Louis C.K.), which played on the big screen a handful of times (including at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival) but is essentially a straight-to-DVD title, in terms of site coverage. I figure I'll write up reviews for, say, made-for-HBO movies, since there's some really brilliant work being done on that channel, but if I open up the floodgates to every non-theatrical title, then this blog will be overrun by write-ups on cheesy Wesley Snipes action vehicles and whatnot. (Actually, that wouldn't be so bad.) So for now, I'll just do a really brief review of the film in question, of which not a lot needs to be said.
Basically, Louis C.K.: Hilarious possesses the best truth-in-advertising title since U2 3D. This stand-up-comedy concert film is so unrelenting in its attack on the funny bone that I would've fainted from exhaustion if it had lasted even a minute longer. It would hardly be exaggerating to label it as your-neighbors-may-call-the-police-because-your-laughter-is-legitmately-disturbing-the-peace funny. In one bit, Louis skewers people who overuse the adjective "hilarious," but it certainly applies here. Grade: A
Basically, Louis C.K.: Hilarious possesses the best truth-in-advertising title since U2 3D. This stand-up-comedy concert film is so unrelenting in its attack on the funny bone that I would've fainted from exhaustion if it had lasted even a minute longer. It would hardly be exaggerating to label it as your-neighbors-may-call-the-police-because-your-laughter-is-legitmately-disturbing-the-peace funny. In one bit, Louis skewers people who overuse the adjective "hilarious," but it certainly applies here. Grade: A
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
7/16 Viewing Journal (review of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2")
As someone who has been keeping up with the Harry Potter film series without the benefit of having read author J.K. Rowling's mega-best-selling Potter books, I can pinpoint the exact moment at which I became more emotionally invested in the bespectacled boy wizard. It was in the very first scene of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), touchingly isolated, sat in a swing in an otherwise deserted playground as bullies taunted him over his parents' deaths. Understandably, Harry starts crying.
It's an opening of shocking emotional directness, especially coming after four films that primarily concerned themselves with Harry, redheaded pal Ron (Rupert Grint), and shrewd-beyond-her-years Hermione (Emma Watson) walking along the Hogwarts hallways and dispensing with exposition. (To be fair, the third film, Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, proved a vivid exception, although only on a post-Order of the Phoenix second viewing did its merits become clear to me.) It's no coincidence that this was the first scene in the series directed by British TV veteran David Yates (whose crackling BBC mini-series State of Play is, ironically, much more cinematic in style than the tepid theatrically released Hollywood remake helmed by Kevin MacDonald), and the Potter producers were smart in entrusting Yates with the three remaining post-Phoenix films in the series. His flair for immaculately composed fantasy spectacle and his foregrounding of performance nuance from both the young and seasoned members of the vast Potter cast have converted at least this muggle into a true-blue series fan.
So leave it to Yates, with his combination of visual magic and alertness to human feeling, to make a thoroughly rewarding film out of what is essentially a series of narrative payoffs in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates). Going into the film, I had no idea of the difficulties Yates and writer Steve Kloves faced in making this installment work as a stand-alone film, and that's not only because of my lack of familiarity with the original books. The thing is, critics raved about this series finale to a degree previously unprecedented in the series (its score on the review-compilation site Metacritic is an 87, which, if memory serves, is behind only two wide releases from all of 2010: The Social Network and Toy Story 3), and many reviews hyped it as being an extremely emotional cinematic experience, which didn't adequately prepare me for what Deathly Hallows: Part 2 really is on a narrative and character level. The movie is essentially a series of major narrative incidents and spectacular battles, with intermittent pauses for exposition, drawing upon our memories of moving scenes from all the previous films. There are way too many plot threads to tie up here for there to be any room for the kind of truly emotional grace notes like that aforementioned swing scene in Phoenix, or Harry's attempt to cheer up Hermione as she weeps in a quiet stairwell after seeing her crush Ron with another girl in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, or Harry's playful dance with Hermione to a Leonard Cohen song in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. And while it's spoiling nothing to say that characters we like die in Deathly Hallows: Part 2, only one of those is rooted in the emotional context of this film and this film only (in non-spoiler fashion, I'll just say the person whose deathbed tears provide a window into his/her past).
While airing out my reasons for why this is only my fifth favorite in the eight-film series, I might as well add that I'm still undecided as to whether Kloves has been an asset or a liability to the series overall. This is the first Potter film since the so-so fourth entry, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, to have a handful of dramatically inert exposition-driven scenes (also: not a good idea to put one of those scenes in the first ten minutes, even if John Hurt is involved), and it's telling that the only film in the series that works entirely on its own as a stand-alone, meaning that it has a beginning, middle, and end that work on a thematic, emotional, narrative, and fantasy-genre level, is Phoenix, the only one not written by Kloves (Michael Goldenberg did the more film-narrative-friendly adapting there). At the same time, though, the two films preceding Deathly Hallows: Part 2 have really strong character work in them, and they were written by Kloves. And the guy wrote Wonder Boys, which definitely counts for something.
At any rate, I don't intend for my nitpicks to make it sound like Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a disappointment. The narrative stakes are raised to an epic level entirely appropriate for the series' ending, and Yates makes the action set pieces spectacularly inventive. His classical visual approach prevents the visual effects from ever becoming too overwhelming or wearying, and he instead lets the biggest scenes play out as a series of small, wondrous surprises (my favorite may be the first-act Gringott's Bank sequence, in which a trip to get into the evil Bellatrix Lastrange's vault leads to a tense bit of undercover work, then to a pleasantly dizzying roller-coaster ride into the bank's subterranean depths, then to a treasure trove of multiplying jewels and goblets, and only then does a dragon come into play; my description is hardly doing it justice).
Since this movie asks less of the central trio of Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson than the three Potter films immediately preceding it (though it must be said again that they've grown into very solid young actors, Radcliffe especially), Deathly Hallows: Part 2 allows some of those great supporting Brits to really step up and strut their stuff. Helena Bonham Carter is stealthily funny in that bank sequence wherein Bellatrix has essentially become Hermione's puppet, and Ralph Fiennes intelligently modulates master villain Voldemort's chilling line readings (notice that his voice is much less trembly after Voldemort believes he has gained the upper hand over Harry). But a badass Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman really dominate here. Rickman's skill at making Dark Arts professor Snape a compelling enigma has been evident even in the disposable early films, and the payoff Kloves delivers in revealing who Snape really is makes for the strongest character work in this notably light-on-character-nuance series entry (Yates and editor Mark Day also deserve credit for making a pivotal Snape-centered sequence so beautiful and collage-like for a blockbuster of this size).
So obviously, the high accomplishment of filmmaking and acting here cannot be denied. And if Deathly Hallows: Part 2 feels a bit more like a magnificently mounted and entirely absorbing ending to what has come before than something that stands on its own two legs, it's worth mentioning that most franchises are entirely inept when it comes to conclusions. Remember that third Matrix? Or that final Austin Powers where it felt like Mike Meyers played everyone but Beyonce's character? Or the insanely convoluted third Pirates, which was meant to finish the series before Jerry Bruckheimer remembered he liked money? Point taken, right? So there's no reason for me to be too hard on ol' Harry. I'll miss him. And chances are, I'll be catching up with those goshdarn books. Grade: B+
For Potter-philes, here's my personal best-to-worst rankings of the movies, which I realize is a pretty idiosyncratic one:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007, David Yates): A
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron): A-
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010, David Yates): A-
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009, David Yates): A-
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates): B+
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2004, Mike Newell): B-
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002, Chris Columbus): C+
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001, Chris Columbus): C
It's an opening of shocking emotional directness, especially coming after four films that primarily concerned themselves with Harry, redheaded pal Ron (Rupert Grint), and shrewd-beyond-her-years Hermione (Emma Watson) walking along the Hogwarts hallways and dispensing with exposition. (To be fair, the third film, Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, proved a vivid exception, although only on a post-Order of the Phoenix second viewing did its merits become clear to me.) It's no coincidence that this was the first scene in the series directed by British TV veteran David Yates (whose crackling BBC mini-series State of Play is, ironically, much more cinematic in style than the tepid theatrically released Hollywood remake helmed by Kevin MacDonald), and the Potter producers were smart in entrusting Yates with the three remaining post-Phoenix films in the series. His flair for immaculately composed fantasy spectacle and his foregrounding of performance nuance from both the young and seasoned members of the vast Potter cast have converted at least this muggle into a true-blue series fan.
So leave it to Yates, with his combination of visual magic and alertness to human feeling, to make a thoroughly rewarding film out of what is essentially a series of narrative payoffs in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates). Going into the film, I had no idea of the difficulties Yates and writer Steve Kloves faced in making this installment work as a stand-alone film, and that's not only because of my lack of familiarity with the original books. The thing is, critics raved about this series finale to a degree previously unprecedented in the series (its score on the review-compilation site Metacritic is an 87, which, if memory serves, is behind only two wide releases from all of 2010: The Social Network and Toy Story 3), and many reviews hyped it as being an extremely emotional cinematic experience, which didn't adequately prepare me for what Deathly Hallows: Part 2 really is on a narrative and character level. The movie is essentially a series of major narrative incidents and spectacular battles, with intermittent pauses for exposition, drawing upon our memories of moving scenes from all the previous films. There are way too many plot threads to tie up here for there to be any room for the kind of truly emotional grace notes like that aforementioned swing scene in Phoenix, or Harry's attempt to cheer up Hermione as she weeps in a quiet stairwell after seeing her crush Ron with another girl in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, or Harry's playful dance with Hermione to a Leonard Cohen song in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. And while it's spoiling nothing to say that characters we like die in Deathly Hallows: Part 2, only one of those is rooted in the emotional context of this film and this film only (in non-spoiler fashion, I'll just say the person whose deathbed tears provide a window into his/her past).
While airing out my reasons for why this is only my fifth favorite in the eight-film series, I might as well add that I'm still undecided as to whether Kloves has been an asset or a liability to the series overall. This is the first Potter film since the so-so fourth entry, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, to have a handful of dramatically inert exposition-driven scenes (also: not a good idea to put one of those scenes in the first ten minutes, even if John Hurt is involved), and it's telling that the only film in the series that works entirely on its own as a stand-alone, meaning that it has a beginning, middle, and end that work on a thematic, emotional, narrative, and fantasy-genre level, is Phoenix, the only one not written by Kloves (Michael Goldenberg did the more film-narrative-friendly adapting there). At the same time, though, the two films preceding Deathly Hallows: Part 2 have really strong character work in them, and they were written by Kloves. And the guy wrote Wonder Boys, which definitely counts for something.
At any rate, I don't intend for my nitpicks to make it sound like Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a disappointment. The narrative stakes are raised to an epic level entirely appropriate for the series' ending, and Yates makes the action set pieces spectacularly inventive. His classical visual approach prevents the visual effects from ever becoming too overwhelming or wearying, and he instead lets the biggest scenes play out as a series of small, wondrous surprises (my favorite may be the first-act Gringott's Bank sequence, in which a trip to get into the evil Bellatrix Lastrange's vault leads to a tense bit of undercover work, then to a pleasantly dizzying roller-coaster ride into the bank's subterranean depths, then to a treasure trove of multiplying jewels and goblets, and only then does a dragon come into play; my description is hardly doing it justice).
Since this movie asks less of the central trio of Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson than the three Potter films immediately preceding it (though it must be said again that they've grown into very solid young actors, Radcliffe especially), Deathly Hallows: Part 2 allows some of those great supporting Brits to really step up and strut their stuff. Helena Bonham Carter is stealthily funny in that bank sequence wherein Bellatrix has essentially become Hermione's puppet, and Ralph Fiennes intelligently modulates master villain Voldemort's chilling line readings (notice that his voice is much less trembly after Voldemort believes he has gained the upper hand over Harry). But a badass Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman really dominate here. Rickman's skill at making Dark Arts professor Snape a compelling enigma has been evident even in the disposable early films, and the payoff Kloves delivers in revealing who Snape really is makes for the strongest character work in this notably light-on-character-nuance series entry (Yates and editor Mark Day also deserve credit for making a pivotal Snape-centered sequence so beautiful and collage-like for a blockbuster of this size).
So obviously, the high accomplishment of filmmaking and acting here cannot be denied. And if Deathly Hallows: Part 2 feels a bit more like a magnificently mounted and entirely absorbing ending to what has come before than something that stands on its own two legs, it's worth mentioning that most franchises are entirely inept when it comes to conclusions. Remember that third Matrix? Or that final Austin Powers where it felt like Mike Meyers played everyone but Beyonce's character? Or the insanely convoluted third Pirates, which was meant to finish the series before Jerry Bruckheimer remembered he liked money? Point taken, right? So there's no reason for me to be too hard on ol' Harry. I'll miss him. And chances are, I'll be catching up with those goshdarn books. Grade: B+
For Potter-philes, here's my personal best-to-worst rankings of the movies, which I realize is a pretty idiosyncratic one:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007, David Yates): A
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron): A-
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010, David Yates): A-
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009, David Yates): A-
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates): B+
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2004, Mike Newell): B-
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002, Chris Columbus): C+
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001, Chris Columbus): C
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
7/15 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Horrible Bosses" and "Winnie the Pooh")
Readers of this blog can now bear witness to what may be some kind of record: since seeing the third Transformers on 7/1, I've gone a full two weeks without seeing any current releases in theatres. And for my first voyage to the multiplex in a fortnight, it's entirely apropos that I see a rare mainstream release to address the economic times we're living in--times so tough that a film nerd like me has to reduce his moviegoing budget.
When the bumbling trio (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis) at the center of Horrible Bosses (2011, Seth Gordon) runs into an old friend of theirs who lost his job at Lehmann Brothers and is now turning tricks for money, it's a reminder that the three heroes could have it a lot worse than having to deal with insufferable bosses (Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell) every workday--and also a reminder of the real world outside the theatre auditorium. Which is not to build up Horrible Bosses as a blisteringly topical satire. Nor is it a mainstream comedy graced with the complex, recognizable humanity of something like Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin or the recent Apatow-produced hit Bridesmaids. But it is a lowbrow comedy made with enough intelligence, wit, and awareness of how to play potentially offensive material for good-natured laughs to strike the right stupid/clever balance. Think of other broad but extremely funny summer-comedy successes like Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, and Get Him to the Greek, and you're in the right ballpark.
The movie's Trojan Horse--its weapon capable of overpowering viewer resistance to goofy mainstream comedy--is an expert ensemble cast fully committed to the silly, raunchy nature of the project. Bateman flaunts real leading-man chops, and some of his deadpan reactions here equal those he perfected as Michael Bluth on TV's Arrested Development. Day, another actor who can't help but remind you of his most memorable small-screen creation (in this case, squeaky-voiced man-child Charlie Kelly on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), invites real sympathy as a dental assistant so in love with his fiance he's horrified by the passes his sexually predatory boss (Aniston) makes at him on a daily basis. Aniston, for her part, tears into some memorably racy dialogue--the kind you least expect to be coming out of Jennifer Aniston's mouth--with real gusto. Jamie Foxx, as a self-proclaimed "murder consultant" who mentors the Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis characters, is so subtly weird in his comic spin on the black-ex-con archetype that he reminds you of how good he can be when he puts forth the right effort. SNL's Sudeikis isn't quite a big-screen presence on the level of his fellow TV-alumni co-stars, but he still nabs some of the movie's biggest laughs with his quick, dry asides (I liked his quietly uttered insistence that a hitman's online claim that he doesn't kill children or political figures is what really makes the consumer difference). As Sudeikis' scummy cokehead of a supervisor, Farrell gets to flex the comedic muscles that powered my favorite performance of his (as a tourist-town-hating, conscience-stricken killer with eyebrows perpetually crinkled in quizzical curiosity in In Bruges), but has considerably less screentime than his half-dozen top-billed colleagues. I wanted more of him, frankly.
Brief appearances by Modern Family's Julie Bowen, Ioan Gruffud, The Wire's Wendell Pierce, and a certain comedy legend making a cameo appearance at film's end (it would be devilish to spoil who) add to the fun. But I enjoyed myself most whenever Spacey was onscreen. Some critics--from both "pro" and "con" camps--have accused Spacey of merely rehashing his Buddy Ackerman character from Swimming With Sharks to play the white-collar sadist who bullies Bateman's character here, which feels short-sighted to me. True, both roles demand that Spacey break out those sinister dramatic pauses that he does so well, but context is everything. Buddy was a man full of secrets, a character equally dramatic and comedic in conception, and Spacey responded with a performance of appropriate complexity. Dave Harken, Spacey's Horrible Bosses character, on the other hand, is a cartoonish psycho who requires the actor playing him to bring nothing more than a finely tuned sense of hammy wildness to the role--which Spacey delivers in spades. I can't think of another Spacey performance this is comparable to, but it does resemble fellow theatre veteran Christopher Walken's late-career comedic triumphs in its hilarious sense of exaggeration. Honestly, pretty much every overly haughty and prissy line reading of Spacey's cracked me up.
Not everything in the entire movie made me laugh, it should be clarified (one set piece involving Sudeikis in a private residence's bathroom is just crass--you'll know it when you see it), but a lot more than expected. After those two weeks, it was certainly a sight for sore eyes. Grade: B+
At a scant 69 minutes, Winnie the Pooh (2011, Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall) barely qualifies as a feature, but its charm quotient is off the charts. The characters from A.A. Milne's stories that Disney brought to adorable life in its The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh short collection some years back return here with a refreshing lack of modern touch-ups, and their cuteness is damn near paralyzing. Whenever the dim yet loyal Pooh Bear (voiced by Jim Cummings, who provides the red-shirted ursine hero with the right, gentle tones) finds his senses overtaken by an overwhelming hunger for honey (which happens quite often, as one might expect), it's hard to repress the urge to sigh, "awwww." (Of course, there's always the option of not repressing said urge, but good luck with not arousing the suspicion of the tots and parents surrounding you in the audience.)
For adults, there's not a high amount of narrative intrigue; Pooh's ongoing quest for honey is actually a major plot thread, believe it or not. But that's exactly how it should be with this franchise. Directors Anderson and Hall, along with Pixar honcho John Lasseter, who spear-headed this re-boot, keep the goings-on at Hundred Acre Wood as small-scaled and generally non-threatening as they've always been. And besides, there's plenty else here to stimulate older viewers, from genuinely clever wordplay to gorgeous, hand-drawn animation to an imaginative sense of play bound to awaken anyone's inner child.
The only caveat, really, is that miniscule running time, and I should emphasize that the movie decidedly does not feel any longer than that hour-and-change. So it would be best to catch Winnie the Pooh at a cheap matinee showing, or maybe you could theatre-hop into it after seeing Horrible Bosses, as some blog administrators have been rumored to do. If you wait for DVD, there's the benefit of watching it multiple times without having to tell your friends how many times you revisited it, which is not to say that this proudly literate treat is a pleasure worth feeling guilty over. Grade: B
When the bumbling trio (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis) at the center of Horrible Bosses (2011, Seth Gordon) runs into an old friend of theirs who lost his job at Lehmann Brothers and is now turning tricks for money, it's a reminder that the three heroes could have it a lot worse than having to deal with insufferable bosses (Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell) every workday--and also a reminder of the real world outside the theatre auditorium. Which is not to build up Horrible Bosses as a blisteringly topical satire. Nor is it a mainstream comedy graced with the complex, recognizable humanity of something like Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin or the recent Apatow-produced hit Bridesmaids. But it is a lowbrow comedy made with enough intelligence, wit, and awareness of how to play potentially offensive material for good-natured laughs to strike the right stupid/clever balance. Think of other broad but extremely funny summer-comedy successes like Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, and Get Him to the Greek, and you're in the right ballpark.
The movie's Trojan Horse--its weapon capable of overpowering viewer resistance to goofy mainstream comedy--is an expert ensemble cast fully committed to the silly, raunchy nature of the project. Bateman flaunts real leading-man chops, and some of his deadpan reactions here equal those he perfected as Michael Bluth on TV's Arrested Development. Day, another actor who can't help but remind you of his most memorable small-screen creation (in this case, squeaky-voiced man-child Charlie Kelly on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), invites real sympathy as a dental assistant so in love with his fiance he's horrified by the passes his sexually predatory boss (Aniston) makes at him on a daily basis. Aniston, for her part, tears into some memorably racy dialogue--the kind you least expect to be coming out of Jennifer Aniston's mouth--with real gusto. Jamie Foxx, as a self-proclaimed "murder consultant" who mentors the Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis characters, is so subtly weird in his comic spin on the black-ex-con archetype that he reminds you of how good he can be when he puts forth the right effort. SNL's Sudeikis isn't quite a big-screen presence on the level of his fellow TV-alumni co-stars, but he still nabs some of the movie's biggest laughs with his quick, dry asides (I liked his quietly uttered insistence that a hitman's online claim that he doesn't kill children or political figures is what really makes the consumer difference). As Sudeikis' scummy cokehead of a supervisor, Farrell gets to flex the comedic muscles that powered my favorite performance of his (as a tourist-town-hating, conscience-stricken killer with eyebrows perpetually crinkled in quizzical curiosity in In Bruges), but has considerably less screentime than his half-dozen top-billed colleagues. I wanted more of him, frankly.
Brief appearances by Modern Family's Julie Bowen, Ioan Gruffud, The Wire's Wendell Pierce, and a certain comedy legend making a cameo appearance at film's end (it would be devilish to spoil who) add to the fun. But I enjoyed myself most whenever Spacey was onscreen. Some critics--from both "pro" and "con" camps--have accused Spacey of merely rehashing his Buddy Ackerman character from Swimming With Sharks to play the white-collar sadist who bullies Bateman's character here, which feels short-sighted to me. True, both roles demand that Spacey break out those sinister dramatic pauses that he does so well, but context is everything. Buddy was a man full of secrets, a character equally dramatic and comedic in conception, and Spacey responded with a performance of appropriate complexity. Dave Harken, Spacey's Horrible Bosses character, on the other hand, is a cartoonish psycho who requires the actor playing him to bring nothing more than a finely tuned sense of hammy wildness to the role--which Spacey delivers in spades. I can't think of another Spacey performance this is comparable to, but it does resemble fellow theatre veteran Christopher Walken's late-career comedic triumphs in its hilarious sense of exaggeration. Honestly, pretty much every overly haughty and prissy line reading of Spacey's cracked me up.
Not everything in the entire movie made me laugh, it should be clarified (one set piece involving Sudeikis in a private residence's bathroom is just crass--you'll know it when you see it), but a lot more than expected. After those two weeks, it was certainly a sight for sore eyes. Grade: B+
At a scant 69 minutes, Winnie the Pooh (2011, Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall) barely qualifies as a feature, but its charm quotient is off the charts. The characters from A.A. Milne's stories that Disney brought to adorable life in its The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh short collection some years back return here with a refreshing lack of modern touch-ups, and their cuteness is damn near paralyzing. Whenever the dim yet loyal Pooh Bear (voiced by Jim Cummings, who provides the red-shirted ursine hero with the right, gentle tones) finds his senses overtaken by an overwhelming hunger for honey (which happens quite often, as one might expect), it's hard to repress the urge to sigh, "awwww." (Of course, there's always the option of not repressing said urge, but good luck with not arousing the suspicion of the tots and parents surrounding you in the audience.)
For adults, there's not a high amount of narrative intrigue; Pooh's ongoing quest for honey is actually a major plot thread, believe it or not. But that's exactly how it should be with this franchise. Directors Anderson and Hall, along with Pixar honcho John Lasseter, who spear-headed this re-boot, keep the goings-on at Hundred Acre Wood as small-scaled and generally non-threatening as they've always been. And besides, there's plenty else here to stimulate older viewers, from genuinely clever wordplay to gorgeous, hand-drawn animation to an imaginative sense of play bound to awaken anyone's inner child.
The only caveat, really, is that miniscule running time, and I should emphasize that the movie decidedly does not feel any longer than that hour-and-change. So it would be best to catch Winnie the Pooh at a cheap matinee showing, or maybe you could theatre-hop into it after seeing Horrible Bosses, as some blog administrators have been rumored to do. If you wait for DVD, there's the benefit of watching it multiple times without having to tell your friends how many times you revisited it, which is not to say that this proudly literate treat is a pleasure worth feeling guilty over. Grade: B
7/14 Viewing Journal
I didn't watch anything this day, but since I caught up with Horrible Bosses, Winnie the Pooh, and a certain bespectacled wizard (no, not yours truly, but thanks for the guess!) over the two following days, I'll start on those reviews right away.
7/13 Viewing Journal (review of "Bye Bye Birdie")
It's surprising that it's taken me this long to catch up with the film adaptation of Bye Bye Birdie (1963, George Sidney), considering the knowledge of the stage musical I attained when covering my high school drama club's rehearsals of it as an intrepid school-paper arts reporter. (With several friends of mine acting in the school's Birdie production, I was frankly able to do as much hanging out as actual "reporting," but, hey, let's not split hairs, shall we?)
Perhaps subconsciously I had remembered that Bye Bye Birdie, aside from its catchy songs, is a feeble piece of musical theatre, defined by antiquated gender politics and low narrative stakes. What exactly does peachy small-town teen Kim McAfee (played in the film by Ann-Margret) hope to gain from winning a contest that allows her to share a kiss with her pop-star crush Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson)? Ten seconds of intense arousal, and...what else? Similarly, how is Kim's dad's (Paul Lynde, mugging up a storm) goal of seizing upon Kim and Conrad's televised kiss as a chance to pimp his brand of fertilizer to an audience of millions worthy of its own subplot? And I'm glad I had forgotten entirely about the villainous character of songwriter Albert's (Dick Van Dyke) mother, a vicious shrew of a woman utterly one-dimensional and mean-spirited in creative conception and played by a game Maureen Stapleton as well as any fine actress can play such a thin caricature.
Much like Stapleton, director Sidney (I wrote about his superior Scaramouche last week) does what he can with the material, which, luckily, turns out to be an awful lot. Sidney employs a gleefully '60s-kitsch-heavy style, full of whip pans, trippy bits of animation, aggressive camera movements, and even a framing device that features Ann-Margret breaking the fourth wall and shaking her ample bosom for the audience--all of which means that Bye Bye Birdie achieves intermittent exhilaration even if it's too dramatically puny to entirely satisfy. An energized nightclub crowd breaking into a hand-jiving rendition of "A Lot of Living to Do" is a particular highlight.
But one other central problem which the spirited musical numbers are tasked with disguising is the egregious miscasting of Pearson as Birdie. I hadn't heard of this actor before, and I'm not about to do too much research on him (it's fitting that there's no glamour photo accompanying his IMDB page), but his lack of charisma and affected gruff-old-man vocals are downright embarrassing. He comes off like Paul Schneider attempting a bad Jack Palance impression, which I realize sounds like all kinds of awesome, but trust me--it's just wrong in this context. I couldn't bid farewell to his take on Birdie soon enough. Grade: C+
Perhaps subconsciously I had remembered that Bye Bye Birdie, aside from its catchy songs, is a feeble piece of musical theatre, defined by antiquated gender politics and low narrative stakes. What exactly does peachy small-town teen Kim McAfee (played in the film by Ann-Margret) hope to gain from winning a contest that allows her to share a kiss with her pop-star crush Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson)? Ten seconds of intense arousal, and...what else? Similarly, how is Kim's dad's (Paul Lynde, mugging up a storm) goal of seizing upon Kim and Conrad's televised kiss as a chance to pimp his brand of fertilizer to an audience of millions worthy of its own subplot? And I'm glad I had forgotten entirely about the villainous character of songwriter Albert's (Dick Van Dyke) mother, a vicious shrew of a woman utterly one-dimensional and mean-spirited in creative conception and played by a game Maureen Stapleton as well as any fine actress can play such a thin caricature.
Much like Stapleton, director Sidney (I wrote about his superior Scaramouche last week) does what he can with the material, which, luckily, turns out to be an awful lot. Sidney employs a gleefully '60s-kitsch-heavy style, full of whip pans, trippy bits of animation, aggressive camera movements, and even a framing device that features Ann-Margret breaking the fourth wall and shaking her ample bosom for the audience--all of which means that Bye Bye Birdie achieves intermittent exhilaration even if it's too dramatically puny to entirely satisfy. An energized nightclub crowd breaking into a hand-jiving rendition of "A Lot of Living to Do" is a particular highlight.
But one other central problem which the spirited musical numbers are tasked with disguising is the egregious miscasting of Pearson as Birdie. I hadn't heard of this actor before, and I'm not about to do too much research on him (it's fitting that there's no glamour photo accompanying his IMDB page), but his lack of charisma and affected gruff-old-man vocals are downright embarrassing. He comes off like Paul Schneider attempting a bad Jack Palance impression, which I realize sounds like all kinds of awesome, but trust me--it's just wrong in this context. I couldn't bid farewell to his take on Birdie soon enough. Grade: C+
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
7/12 Viewing Journal (review of "Three Monkeys")
A Greek tragedy set in Turkey, Three Monkeys (2009, Nuri Bilge Ceylan) is so bleak it sometimes threatens to tip over into self-parody. Its central characters are doomed as soon as the narrative gears start turning, its pacing is extremely deliberate, and its color pallete favors grey skies and sepia skin tones. But Ceylan, a beloved world-cinema auteur who I'm just now starting to catch up with and who won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for this movie, is so in command aesthetically and narratively that he prevents Three Monkeys from becoming the standard-issue art-film downer it could've been in less confident hands.
What gets the story rolling on its emotionally downward trajectory is a hit-and-run accident that Servet (Ercan Kesal), a businessman with political ambitions, is determined to cover up. He convinces his chaffeur, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), to take the rap for the crime and serve a year or so of jail time in exhange for a generous payoff that will benefit Eyup's financially ailing family. When Eyup's wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), asks Servet for an advance on the bribe that will benefit her and Eyup's aimless twentysomething son (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), she embarks on an affair with the politician. As you might expect, this doesn't lead to a happy ending.
Ceylan has a striking, painterly eye, but what's most impressive is how he's able to simultaneously move things forward at a very slow crawl and maintain a level of simmering tension that threatens to rise to boiling level at any time. This is particularly true after Eyup is released from prison, and the viewer knows he's bound to find about his wife's indiscretion at some point. Ceylan cleverly plays with that expectation, toying with the audience, but the sad, expressive performances he gets from Bingol and Aslan as husband and wife distinguish him as more than just a visually accomplished sadist.
I'm curious to see if Ceylan's other celebrated films, including Distant and Climates (for Coen Brothers fans, the latter is the art film that Josh Brolin's cowpoke sees and approves of in Joel and Ethan Coen's short for Chacun Son Cinema--check it out on YouTube if you haven't yet), present a fuller emotional spectrum, which I don't mean as too much of a knock on Three Monkeys. Its filmmaking is too impressive to put any cinephile in too bad a mood. Grade: B
Note: It's refreshing to be entirely caught up on this blog. I should mention that my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will appear in the 7/16 Viewing Journal, because, hey, it's bound to get more hits than my review of a fatalistic Turkish drama, right?
What gets the story rolling on its emotionally downward trajectory is a hit-and-run accident that Servet (Ercan Kesal), a businessman with political ambitions, is determined to cover up. He convinces his chaffeur, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), to take the rap for the crime and serve a year or so of jail time in exhange for a generous payoff that will benefit Eyup's financially ailing family. When Eyup's wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), asks Servet for an advance on the bribe that will benefit her and Eyup's aimless twentysomething son (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), she embarks on an affair with the politician. As you might expect, this doesn't lead to a happy ending.
Ceylan has a striking, painterly eye, but what's most impressive is how he's able to simultaneously move things forward at a very slow crawl and maintain a level of simmering tension that threatens to rise to boiling level at any time. This is particularly true after Eyup is released from prison, and the viewer knows he's bound to find about his wife's indiscretion at some point. Ceylan cleverly plays with that expectation, toying with the audience, but the sad, expressive performances he gets from Bingol and Aslan as husband and wife distinguish him as more than just a visually accomplished sadist.
I'm curious to see if Ceylan's other celebrated films, including Distant and Climates (for Coen Brothers fans, the latter is the art film that Josh Brolin's cowpoke sees and approves of in Joel and Ethan Coen's short for Chacun Son Cinema--check it out on YouTube if you haven't yet), present a fuller emotional spectrum, which I don't mean as too much of a knock on Three Monkeys. Its filmmaking is too impressive to put any cinephile in too bad a mood. Grade: B
Note: It's refreshing to be entirely caught up on this blog. I should mention that my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will appear in the 7/16 Viewing Journal, because, hey, it's bound to get more hits than my review of a fatalistic Turkish drama, right?
7/11 Viewing Journal (review of "Handsome Harry")
One of the many virtues of American independent film is that it provides character actors who are too anonymous and not bankable enough to be entrusted with carrying a studio film a chance to shine in leading roles. Jamey Sheridan, a square-jawed actor with nearly 60 credits to his name who is perhaps best known for playing the satanic villain Randall Flagg in the TV mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand, gets such an opportunity in Handsome Harry (2010, Bette Gordon), which he also co-produced. And, to put it bluntly, I had no idea he could be so good.
Sheridan just slides right into the role of Harry Sweeney as if it was a second skin. Harry is an electrician nearing retirement who, on a day when his adult son is visiting, gets a surprise call from Tommy Kelley (Steve Buscemi), an old friend who served with him in the Navy decades ago and who is now on his deathbed. Tommy's dying request is that Harry find David Kagan, another ex-Navy man who Harry, Tommy, and a few other sailors beat to near-death during their service after David made a pass at Harry, and seek forgiveness on behalf of all the assailants.
Harry embarks on a road trip to reunite with the other veterans involved in David's beating, which gives Sheridan the chance to play opposite other skilled character actors of a certain age (including John Savage and Aidan Quinn) and allows the provocative themes inherent in the premise--the way late-in-life regret can gnaw at the soul; the connection between military-bred ideas of masculinity and homophobia--to blossom. But unfortunately, to put it in apt military parlance, Handsome Harry is not all that it can be. Harry's motivation for seeking out everyone involved in the crime instead of just traveling directly to where David is remains fuzzy, rendering the movie's on-the-road mid-section overly schematic. And while the scenes that pair Harry with each old Navy buddy are well-acted, they also careen from relaxed understatement to overwrought hysteria with wild abandon (I didn't need Harry and Quinn's initially-in-denial character to engage in fisticuffs, for example).
Near the beginning of the third act is a major revelation that Gordon and writer Nicholas T. Proferes seem to have only withheld to play coy with the audience, but luckily, this is also where the movie begins to breathe a bit more. Harry attempts to get his post-retirement life in order, and then comes his climactic reunion with the now openly gay David (Campbell Scott). No disrespect to Sheridan's lived-in star performance, but during this pivotal scene, all I could think was, "why doesn't Campbell Scott work more, damnit?!" An actor who exudes intelligence, wit, and sophistication no matter what scripted lines are coming out of his mouth, Scott used to score great leading roles in indies ranging from The Spanish Prisoner to Roger Dodger, but he's lately been off the film-world radar for some reason. I wish he had more than 15 minutes of screentime in Handsome Harry, but my goodness, he makes every one of those minutes count. Grade: B-
Sheridan just slides right into the role of Harry Sweeney as if it was a second skin. Harry is an electrician nearing retirement who, on a day when his adult son is visiting, gets a surprise call from Tommy Kelley (Steve Buscemi), an old friend who served with him in the Navy decades ago and who is now on his deathbed. Tommy's dying request is that Harry find David Kagan, another ex-Navy man who Harry, Tommy, and a few other sailors beat to near-death during their service after David made a pass at Harry, and seek forgiveness on behalf of all the assailants.
Harry embarks on a road trip to reunite with the other veterans involved in David's beating, which gives Sheridan the chance to play opposite other skilled character actors of a certain age (including John Savage and Aidan Quinn) and allows the provocative themes inherent in the premise--the way late-in-life regret can gnaw at the soul; the connection between military-bred ideas of masculinity and homophobia--to blossom. But unfortunately, to put it in apt military parlance, Handsome Harry is not all that it can be. Harry's motivation for seeking out everyone involved in the crime instead of just traveling directly to where David is remains fuzzy, rendering the movie's on-the-road mid-section overly schematic. And while the scenes that pair Harry with each old Navy buddy are well-acted, they also careen from relaxed understatement to overwrought hysteria with wild abandon (I didn't need Harry and Quinn's initially-in-denial character to engage in fisticuffs, for example).
Near the beginning of the third act is a major revelation that Gordon and writer Nicholas T. Proferes seem to have only withheld to play coy with the audience, but luckily, this is also where the movie begins to breathe a bit more. Harry attempts to get his post-retirement life in order, and then comes his climactic reunion with the now openly gay David (Campbell Scott). No disrespect to Sheridan's lived-in star performance, but during this pivotal scene, all I could think was, "why doesn't Campbell Scott work more, damnit?!" An actor who exudes intelligence, wit, and sophistication no matter what scripted lines are coming out of his mouth, Scott used to score great leading roles in indies ranging from The Spanish Prisoner to Roger Dodger, but he's lately been off the film-world radar for some reason. I wish he had more than 15 minutes of screentime in Handsome Harry, but my goodness, he makes every one of those minutes count. Grade: B-
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
7/10 Viewing Journal (review of "Charlie St. Cloud")
Utterly phony treacle to its very core, Charlie St. Cloud (2010, Burr Steers) is an insult to those of us who enjoy cozying up to a good studio tearjerker. Key character relationships intended to provide an emotional anchor are defined solely by boilerplate exposition, and are further marred by a glaring lack of emotional logic.
Take the bond between former champion sailor Charlie (Zac Efron) and his dead little brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan), who he can see as a ghost due to the near-death experience he had in the same car accident that claimed Sam's life. Charlie has rejected a life of nautical glory to work in the cemetery where Sam is buried, and for five years, he has kept his promise to Sam to meet up with him every day at sundown and play catch with him. When Charlie nearly misses one of his playdates with Sam because he's spending time with Obligatory Love Interest Tess (Amanda Crew), Sam erupts in a petulant tantrum. Now, if a silly late-film bit of exposition establishes that Sam has aged five years in the afterlife even though he appears the age he was when he died to Charlie, then that means Sam is now at the maturity level of a boy in his late teens. So if Sam possesses a young-adult level of empathetic awareness and loves Charlie very much, why the hell would he cry like a baby at the prospect of Charlie skipping one day of playing catch to spend time with a potential girlfriend? And what kind of loving brother would insist that Charlie give up his long-term career goals just to meet his daily ball-tossing requirements anyway?
Charlie's romance with Tess is equally wobbly in its development. Basically, we're asked to buy that Tess falls for Charlie merely because he's not the creep her father (Donal Logue) painted him out to be. Oh, and there's a dinner-date scene which establishes that Tess is a football fanatic while Charlie's favorite pastime is baseball. Because opposites attract, you see.
Sure, Efron's as cute as a million bunny rabbits, and perhaps the attractive medium close-ups that implicitly compare the baby blues of his eyes to the vast ocean framed in the background (cinematographer Enrique Chediak, who recently collaborated with fellow d.p. Anthony Dod Mantle to great effect on 127 Hours, refuses to phone it in here, bless 'im) will be enough to sustain his fan base. But he has yet to prove himself as anything other than a talented song-and-dance man (if only studios still turned out musicals with Golden Age-reminiscent regularity!) who can sometimes fluorish in a non-musical project as long as his scene partners keep him on his toes (as happened throughout Richard Linklater's excellent Me and Orson Welles). Here, the bland Crew gives him little to play off of, and seasoned pros Logue, Kim Basinger, and Ray Liotta pop up too briefly to give him any real kind of assist. He's mostly adequate in emotionally demanding scenes, but more often than not, he merely poses with a laughably Derek Zoolander-esque air of self-regard. I remember reading an interview with John Waters wherein the bad-taste maestro behind Pink Flamingos wittily predicted that Efron would one day win an Oscar for playing against type as a junkie. After star-vehicle duds like 17 Again and now this, I'm starting to seriously doubt Waters' clairvoyant abilities. Grade: D+
Take the bond between former champion sailor Charlie (Zac Efron) and his dead little brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan), who he can see as a ghost due to the near-death experience he had in the same car accident that claimed Sam's life. Charlie has rejected a life of nautical glory to work in the cemetery where Sam is buried, and for five years, he has kept his promise to Sam to meet up with him every day at sundown and play catch with him. When Charlie nearly misses one of his playdates with Sam because he's spending time with Obligatory Love Interest Tess (Amanda Crew), Sam erupts in a petulant tantrum. Now, if a silly late-film bit of exposition establishes that Sam has aged five years in the afterlife even though he appears the age he was when he died to Charlie, then that means Sam is now at the maturity level of a boy in his late teens. So if Sam possesses a young-adult level of empathetic awareness and loves Charlie very much, why the hell would he cry like a baby at the prospect of Charlie skipping one day of playing catch to spend time with a potential girlfriend? And what kind of loving brother would insist that Charlie give up his long-term career goals just to meet his daily ball-tossing requirements anyway?
Charlie's romance with Tess is equally wobbly in its development. Basically, we're asked to buy that Tess falls for Charlie merely because he's not the creep her father (Donal Logue) painted him out to be. Oh, and there's a dinner-date scene which establishes that Tess is a football fanatic while Charlie's favorite pastime is baseball. Because opposites attract, you see.
Sure, Efron's as cute as a million bunny rabbits, and perhaps the attractive medium close-ups that implicitly compare the baby blues of his eyes to the vast ocean framed in the background (cinematographer Enrique Chediak, who recently collaborated with fellow d.p. Anthony Dod Mantle to great effect on 127 Hours, refuses to phone it in here, bless 'im) will be enough to sustain his fan base. But he has yet to prove himself as anything other than a talented song-and-dance man (if only studios still turned out musicals with Golden Age-reminiscent regularity!) who can sometimes fluorish in a non-musical project as long as his scene partners keep him on his toes (as happened throughout Richard Linklater's excellent Me and Orson Welles). Here, the bland Crew gives him little to play off of, and seasoned pros Logue, Kim Basinger, and Ray Liotta pop up too briefly to give him any real kind of assist. He's mostly adequate in emotionally demanding scenes, but more often than not, he merely poses with a laughably Derek Zoolander-esque air of self-regard. I remember reading an interview with John Waters wherein the bad-taste maestro behind Pink Flamingos wittily predicted that Efron would one day win an Oscar for playing against type as a junkie. After star-vehicle duds like 17 Again and now this, I'm starting to seriously doubt Waters' clairvoyant abilities. Grade: D+
7/9 Viewing Journal (review of "Scaramouche")
While the period swashbuckler Scaramouche (1952, George Sidney) is hardly radical in its take on the swords-and-puffy-shirts genre, it has enough stealthy surprises up its (puffy) sleeve to keep the viewer pleasantly off-balance.
The opening scenes, though distinguished by Sidney and his crew's handsome recreation of revolution-era France, contain the kind of flowery dialogue (penned by writers Ronald Millar and George Froeschel) and noble protestations of honor that lead one to worry that nothing more than the most generic period diversion imaginable lies ahead. You start to wonder if smelling salts will be necessary.
But a little under a half-hour in, the movie suddenly springs to life. That's when hero Andre Moreau (Stewart Granger), after being branded a traitor for his friendship with the author of a revolution-stoking pamphlet, hides from the authorities by dashing into a theatre and pretending to be the masked clown Scaramouche, and proves to be so skilled an amateur thespian that he decides to pursue a training-for-revenge-by-day/acting-by-night regimen. Sidney's injection of backstage farce, a form he pulled off with panache in his film version of Kiss Me Kate, into the basic mold of a swashbuckling adventure is entirely unexpected, and infuses the film with an infectious comedic spirit and a zesty unpredictability.
The movie just gets better and more involving from there, and I was startled at how invested I became in the central quartet of archetypal-by-nature characters. Granger, looking like a cross between Gaston from Disney's Beauty and the Beast and comedian Rob Riggle, plays Andre with booming-voiced gusto. Mel Ferrer is the spitting image of aristocratic sadism as his opposite number, the villainous Marquis de Maynes. As Aline, the Marquis de Maynes' ward, who is intensely smitten with Andre (though, unbeknownst to her, Andre is her bastard brother), Janet Leigh brings the right wide-eyed passion and kittenish innocence. But the most enjoyable performance is delivered by Eleanor Parker, who would invite comparisons with a firecracker even if she didn't have a giant, orange mane of hair, as Andre's actress girlfriend Lenore. Suspecting that Andre is spending his time away from the theatre cuddling up to Aline, when what he's really doing is perfecting his swordfighting technique, Lenore erupts in jealous rages that are almost action scenes unto themselves.
The paradox of Scaramouche is that it boasts some dazzlingly choreographed duels--including a stunning seven-minute-long climax that follows Andre and the Marquis de Maynes as they swordfight within the lobby and among the balconies of a grand opera house--but it would also work just fine as a film if all of its blade-clashing set pieces and horseback chase scenes were excised completely. The farcical romantic complications that beset the four main characters are so deftly written they would work just as well outside of a genre context.
For Scaramouche to go from being a tad stuffy in the early going to ultimately triumph as one of my great recent Turner Classic Movies discoveries is quite the impressive turnaround. Unlike, say, the fourth and most recent Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, it offers old-fashioned entertainment as concerned with the essentials of story and character as it is with showcasing feats of derring-do. Grade: A-
The opening scenes, though distinguished by Sidney and his crew's handsome recreation of revolution-era France, contain the kind of flowery dialogue (penned by writers Ronald Millar and George Froeschel) and noble protestations of honor that lead one to worry that nothing more than the most generic period diversion imaginable lies ahead. You start to wonder if smelling salts will be necessary.
But a little under a half-hour in, the movie suddenly springs to life. That's when hero Andre Moreau (Stewart Granger), after being branded a traitor for his friendship with the author of a revolution-stoking pamphlet, hides from the authorities by dashing into a theatre and pretending to be the masked clown Scaramouche, and proves to be so skilled an amateur thespian that he decides to pursue a training-for-revenge-by-day/acting-by-night regimen. Sidney's injection of backstage farce, a form he pulled off with panache in his film version of Kiss Me Kate, into the basic mold of a swashbuckling adventure is entirely unexpected, and infuses the film with an infectious comedic spirit and a zesty unpredictability.
The movie just gets better and more involving from there, and I was startled at how invested I became in the central quartet of archetypal-by-nature characters. Granger, looking like a cross between Gaston from Disney's Beauty and the Beast and comedian Rob Riggle, plays Andre with booming-voiced gusto. Mel Ferrer is the spitting image of aristocratic sadism as his opposite number, the villainous Marquis de Maynes. As Aline, the Marquis de Maynes' ward, who is intensely smitten with Andre (though, unbeknownst to her, Andre is her bastard brother), Janet Leigh brings the right wide-eyed passion and kittenish innocence. But the most enjoyable performance is delivered by Eleanor Parker, who would invite comparisons with a firecracker even if she didn't have a giant, orange mane of hair, as Andre's actress girlfriend Lenore. Suspecting that Andre is spending his time away from the theatre cuddling up to Aline, when what he's really doing is perfecting his swordfighting technique, Lenore erupts in jealous rages that are almost action scenes unto themselves.
The paradox of Scaramouche is that it boasts some dazzlingly choreographed duels--including a stunning seven-minute-long climax that follows Andre and the Marquis de Maynes as they swordfight within the lobby and among the balconies of a grand opera house--but it would also work just fine as a film if all of its blade-clashing set pieces and horseback chase scenes were excised completely. The farcical romantic complications that beset the four main characters are so deftly written they would work just as well outside of a genre context.
For Scaramouche to go from being a tad stuffy in the early going to ultimately triumph as one of my great recent Turner Classic Movies discoveries is quite the impressive turnaround. Unlike, say, the fourth and most recent Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, it offers old-fashioned entertainment as concerned with the essentials of story and character as it is with showcasing feats of derring-do. Grade: A-
Sunday, July 10, 2011
7/8 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Broadway Danny Rose" and "Zelig")
There's an unforgettable shot near the end of Broadway Danny Rose (1984, Woody Allen) (second viewing, first on the big screen) that deftly plays upon how sympathetic the title character--a talent agent stuck on the lower rungs of New York's show-business ladder and played by Allen himself--has become to the audience over the course of the 70-odd preceding minutes. The shot begins wide, with the camera perched from a distance as Danny Rose, lounge singer Lou (Nick Apollo Forte), and Lou's mistress Tina (Mia Farrow) exit a hotel's ballroom chatting. As the trio walks down the hall and closer towards the camera, Lou and Tina begin turning a corner and edging out of the frame, gradually leaving Danny by himself. And just as Lou lays a bombshell of bad news upon Danny--bam!--Allen's shocked face dominates the frame in close-up.
This shot is indicative of the unfussy yet impressively rigorous visual design of Allen and director of photography Gordon Willis (working in gorgeous black-&-white, as he did on Allen's Manhattan); this is certainly one of the best-looking of Allen's '80s films.
Yet the shot's shift in visual emphasis would mean nothing without the brilliantly conceived character it ends up highlighting in its final few seconds. The plot of Broadway Danny Rose is a riff on the "pushover mensch learns to fight for what he wants after falling for his boss' mistress" storyline Billy Wilder offered up in The Apartment, but Allen, never one to lazily regurgitate his influences, makes Danny Rose and Farrow's Tina Vitale original creations in their own right. Arguably America's wittiest screenwriter, Allen gives Danny hilariously obsequious patter to soothe his clients' nerves ("I don't mean to sound didactic or facetious here," is how he repeatedly softens criticism), and, as an actor, he's wonderfully ingratiating in the role. Farrow, his onscreen equal, clearly relishes the chance to play Tina's brassy, tacky surface personality, but is just as adept at plumbing the guilt-ridden melancholy that plagues Tina in the film's final reel.
It would be criminal to spoil Danny and Tina's ultimate fate, but it's giving away nothing to say that it is spelled out via--you guessed it--one mobile, very pretty, and economically expressive shot. Grade: A-
Being a ginormous fan of Allen's, I had been reluctant to revisit Zelig (1983, Woody Allen) (second-ish viewing, first on the big screen), the only film of his I had previously chosen to stop watching mid-film. A mockumentary about Leonard Zelig, a media-trumpeted "human chameleon" who can alter his appearance to resemble whoever he happens to be conversing with at any given time, Zelig struck me on first (only half-completed) viewing as a one-joke comedy so intent on running its single gag into the ground that even the resonant subtextual notion that every one of us wishes we could fit in socially all the time couldn't keep me watching. The "hey, look, Zelig's in blackface among black jazz musicians now" tomfoolery just got friggin' old after a while.
Now that I've seen the film in its entirety, I'll happily concede that it's a formally one-of-a-kind and satirically sharp comedy. But to me, Zelig is still far from being one of Allen's best films; it's just a damned interesting one.
The mockumentary form Allen adheres to is both a strength and a liability, as it turns out. There's no denying Allen's great skill in using still photography, talking-head interviews, and cleverly doctored archival footage (at one point, we see Zelig trying to get somebody's attention while standing behind a bellowing Adolf Hitler) to tell a fictional story in an unconventional way. But the form keeps the viewer at an emotional distance (the film's ending, intended to be extremely moving, provoked nothing more than me thinking "aww, that's kinda sweet" to myself), and both the inescapably gimmicky nature of it and the brisk pace it requires make the movie feel, exhaustingly, a full 40 minutes longer than its brief 79 minutes.
Luckily, though, my snap assessment of Zelig as a one-joke affair proved to be inaccurate. Once the title character is cured of his peculiar ailment by Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow), the rest of the movie explores the satisfaction of staying true to yourself (one of the biggest laughs comes when Zelig has his first disagreement with somebody, over the trifling matter of the day's weather), and, with biting wit and insight, the way the public can turn against a media sensation it enshrined only 15 minutes ago. So Leonard Zelig can be seen, via just one of many allegorical interpretations, as a precursor to the built-up-then-torn-down likes of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. And who says Woody Allen isn't versatile? Grade: B
This shot is indicative of the unfussy yet impressively rigorous visual design of Allen and director of photography Gordon Willis (working in gorgeous black-&-white, as he did on Allen's Manhattan); this is certainly one of the best-looking of Allen's '80s films.
Yet the shot's shift in visual emphasis would mean nothing without the brilliantly conceived character it ends up highlighting in its final few seconds. The plot of Broadway Danny Rose is a riff on the "pushover mensch learns to fight for what he wants after falling for his boss' mistress" storyline Billy Wilder offered up in The Apartment, but Allen, never one to lazily regurgitate his influences, makes Danny Rose and Farrow's Tina Vitale original creations in their own right. Arguably America's wittiest screenwriter, Allen gives Danny hilariously obsequious patter to soothe his clients' nerves ("I don't mean to sound didactic or facetious here," is how he repeatedly softens criticism), and, as an actor, he's wonderfully ingratiating in the role. Farrow, his onscreen equal, clearly relishes the chance to play Tina's brassy, tacky surface personality, but is just as adept at plumbing the guilt-ridden melancholy that plagues Tina in the film's final reel.
It would be criminal to spoil Danny and Tina's ultimate fate, but it's giving away nothing to say that it is spelled out via--you guessed it--one mobile, very pretty, and economically expressive shot. Grade: A-
Being a ginormous fan of Allen's, I had been reluctant to revisit Zelig (1983, Woody Allen) (second-ish viewing, first on the big screen), the only film of his I had previously chosen to stop watching mid-film. A mockumentary about Leonard Zelig, a media-trumpeted "human chameleon" who can alter his appearance to resemble whoever he happens to be conversing with at any given time, Zelig struck me on first (only half-completed) viewing as a one-joke comedy so intent on running its single gag into the ground that even the resonant subtextual notion that every one of us wishes we could fit in socially all the time couldn't keep me watching. The "hey, look, Zelig's in blackface among black jazz musicians now" tomfoolery just got friggin' old after a while.
Now that I've seen the film in its entirety, I'll happily concede that it's a formally one-of-a-kind and satirically sharp comedy. But to me, Zelig is still far from being one of Allen's best films; it's just a damned interesting one.
The mockumentary form Allen adheres to is both a strength and a liability, as it turns out. There's no denying Allen's great skill in using still photography, talking-head interviews, and cleverly doctored archival footage (at one point, we see Zelig trying to get somebody's attention while standing behind a bellowing Adolf Hitler) to tell a fictional story in an unconventional way. But the form keeps the viewer at an emotional distance (the film's ending, intended to be extremely moving, provoked nothing more than me thinking "aww, that's kinda sweet" to myself), and both the inescapably gimmicky nature of it and the brisk pace it requires make the movie feel, exhaustingly, a full 40 minutes longer than its brief 79 minutes.
Luckily, though, my snap assessment of Zelig as a one-joke affair proved to be inaccurate. Once the title character is cured of his peculiar ailment by Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow), the rest of the movie explores the satisfaction of staying true to yourself (one of the biggest laughs comes when Zelig has his first disagreement with somebody, over the trifling matter of the day's weather), and, with biting wit and insight, the way the public can turn against a media sensation it enshrined only 15 minutes ago. So Leonard Zelig can be seen, via just one of many allegorical interpretations, as a precursor to the built-up-then-torn-down likes of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. And who says Woody Allen isn't versatile? Grade: B
7/7 Viewing Journal (review of "Cover Girl")
About 60 years before director Tim Burton and a team of visual-effects wizards crafted musical numbers using dozens of duplicates of the same actor (Deep Roy as the Oompa Loompas) dancing in unison for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, filmmaker Charles Vidor utilized trick photography to have one Gene Kelly dance alongside another in the most elaborate, jaw-dropping musical set piece in Cover Girl (1944, Charles Vidor). As can reasonably be expected, the visual effects aren't as sophisticated as those on display in Burton's '05 film--the Gene Kelly inserted into the scene looks more ghost-like than the Kelly who was physically there shooting the number--but what makes this sequence soar is how precisely each Kelly plays off of each other. Imagining how many hours Kelly must have spent perfecting each dance move for both onscreen manifestations of himself is simply mind-boggling.
This groundbreaking dance sequence may be the best reason to see the buoyant, irresistible Cover Girl, but it's hardly the only one. Co-leads Kelly and Rita Hayworth are both effortlessly charming, while Vidor and his crack technical team (specific shout-outs go to cinematographers Allen M. Davey and Rudolph Mate and costume designers Travis Banton, Muriel King, and Gwen Wakeling) create a Technicolor dreamworld that is euphoric to get lost in. While not a truly essential Kelly musical like Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, or It's Always Fair Weather, Cover Girl occupies that vast second tier of the star's work made up of lightweight entertainments that are as impeccably crafted as they are fun to watch. Grade: A-
This groundbreaking dance sequence may be the best reason to see the buoyant, irresistible Cover Girl, but it's hardly the only one. Co-leads Kelly and Rita Hayworth are both effortlessly charming, while Vidor and his crack technical team (specific shout-outs go to cinematographers Allen M. Davey and Rudolph Mate and costume designers Travis Banton, Muriel King, and Gwen Wakeling) create a Technicolor dreamworld that is euphoric to get lost in. While not a truly essential Kelly musical like Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, or It's Always Fair Weather, Cover Girl occupies that vast second tier of the star's work made up of lightweight entertainments that are as impeccably crafted as they are fun to watch. Grade: A-
7/6 Viewing Journal (review of "The Rookie")
A rousing star turn by Clint Eastwood, in his badass prime as a seen-it-all Polish-American cop showing a new recruit (Charlie Sheen, not really "winning" nor losing here, just doing his usual young-upstart-with-a-chip-on-his-shoulder thing) the ropes, is the main attraction in The Rookie (1990, Clint Eastwood) (second viewing). Auteurist fans of Eastwood's remarkably assured directing career should note that this is the last behind-the-camera gig he completed before taking the reins on his masterpiece Unforgiven. As such, it's no surprise that Eastwood and director of photography Jack Green's keen sense of visual composition bolster the formulaic if highly entertaining cop-movie proceedings, but on the other hand, it's a huge surprise that Eastwood would tackle a movie with no ambition other than offering the audience a good time right before making the thematically dense film that would alter critical and Academy perception of him for all time.
But, regardless of historical context, The Rookie delivers on that promise of a good time. Eastwood isn't entirely at home staging scenes of hand-to-hand combat (the editing gets uncharacteristically choppy and blurry when characters engage in fisticuffs), but he starts the movie off with a beautifully choreographed freeway chase that gets the pulse quickening right off the bat. If the pulse rate slows here and there as the movie goes on, it's because a genre flick this basic doesn't need a full two hours to unfold. But that generous running time does allow for plenty of satisfying, hard-R action, a number of priceless one-liners barked out by the craggy Clint, and some deliciously over-the-top sneering from Raul Julia as the villain--enough to make this particular day. Grade: B
But, regardless of historical context, The Rookie delivers on that promise of a good time. Eastwood isn't entirely at home staging scenes of hand-to-hand combat (the editing gets uncharacteristically choppy and blurry when characters engage in fisticuffs), but he starts the movie off with a beautifully choreographed freeway chase that gets the pulse quickening right off the bat. If the pulse rate slows here and there as the movie goes on, it's because a genre flick this basic doesn't need a full two hours to unfold. But that generous running time does allow for plenty of satisfying, hard-R action, a number of priceless one-liners barked out by the craggy Clint, and some deliciously over-the-top sneering from Raul Julia as the villain--enough to make this particular day. Grade: B
7/5 Viewing Journal (review of "Drama/Mex")
In this post-Pulp Fiction world, there's obviously nothing novel about a film wherein a handful of characters leading disparate lives see their paths unexpectedly cross within a 24-hour period. And after Amores Perros became an international success a decade ago, the idea of setting such an intersecting-narratives portrait in Mexico even began to feel derivative. But the Acapulco-set Drama/Mex (2007, Gerardo Naranjo) is worth a look anyway, for infusing this structure with low-key intimacy and rejecting Paul Haggis-level melodramatic overstatement at every turn.
Unlike in Haggis' Crash or even Amores Perros, nothing especially traumatic or earth-shattering occurs when a gaggle of indecisive souls--including Jaime (Fernando Becerril), an aging family man contemplating suicide; Jessica (Miriana Moro), a teenage urchin considering thievery and servicing tourists with "happy ending" massages as a way to get by; and Fernanda (Diana Garcia), a young woman torn between her still-infatuated n'er-do-well ex (Emilio Valdes) and her more respectable current boyfriend (Juan Pablo Castaneda)--collide. Small lessons are learned, and the sun rises the next morning just as it always does.
The one downside to this modest approach is that the film feels slight, like something a talented writer-director would do with limited financial means en route to more ambitious projects (and thankfully, that's exactly what this seems to be; Naranjo's subsequent two films, I'm Gonna Explode and the yet-to-be-released-in-the-U.S. Miss Bala have played at prestigious film festivals, and the acclaim they garnered is what led me to check out this earlier effort). The bigger upside is that there's no whiff of dramatic contrivance to Naranjo's approach; he seems genuinely interested in studying the human need to move beyond reckless impulse rather than in stacking narrative blocks willy-nilly.
He and cinematographer Tobias Datum favor handheld close-ups that gaze deep into the characters' eyes. This is especially rewarding whenever Becerril is onscreen as the tormented Jaime. Naranjo's script eschews backstory to such a degree that we're not entirely sure why Jaime wants to take his life, but one look at Becerril's haunted gaze and pockmarked visage and we're given all the explanation we need. Grade: B
Unlike in Haggis' Crash or even Amores Perros, nothing especially traumatic or earth-shattering occurs when a gaggle of indecisive souls--including Jaime (Fernando Becerril), an aging family man contemplating suicide; Jessica (Miriana Moro), a teenage urchin considering thievery and servicing tourists with "happy ending" massages as a way to get by; and Fernanda (Diana Garcia), a young woman torn between her still-infatuated n'er-do-well ex (Emilio Valdes) and her more respectable current boyfriend (Juan Pablo Castaneda)--collide. Small lessons are learned, and the sun rises the next morning just as it always does.
The one downside to this modest approach is that the film feels slight, like something a talented writer-director would do with limited financial means en route to more ambitious projects (and thankfully, that's exactly what this seems to be; Naranjo's subsequent two films, I'm Gonna Explode and the yet-to-be-released-in-the-U.S. Miss Bala have played at prestigious film festivals, and the acclaim they garnered is what led me to check out this earlier effort). The bigger upside is that there's no whiff of dramatic contrivance to Naranjo's approach; he seems genuinely interested in studying the human need to move beyond reckless impulse rather than in stacking narrative blocks willy-nilly.
He and cinematographer Tobias Datum favor handheld close-ups that gaze deep into the characters' eyes. This is especially rewarding whenever Becerril is onscreen as the tormented Jaime. Naranjo's script eschews backstory to such a degree that we're not entirely sure why Jaime wants to take his life, but one look at Becerril's haunted gaze and pockmarked visage and we're given all the explanation we need. Grade: B
Saturday, July 9, 2011
7/3 - 7/4 Viewing Journal
I went movie-less on the 4th of July and the day immediately preceding it. I apologize for the delay in updates, and I'm fairly confident I'll catch up over the weekend.
7/2 Viewing Journal (review of "The Great Muppet Caper")
There are very few pop-cultural institutions I can claim to have been a fan of since before I can speak, but Jim Henson's lovable Muppets qualify as one of them. So naturally, I couldn't pass up the chance to revisit The Great Muppet Caper (1981, Jim Henson) (umpteenth viewing, first in at least 20 years) when it popped up on HD cable, and I'm glad to report it holds up quite well indeed.
While lacking in unforgettably sweet moments like Kermit's "Rainbow Connection" bike ride in The Muppet Movie or the wedding finale of The Muppets Take Manhattan, Caper still overflows with surprisingly sophisticated humor, and is generous enough to grant Miss Piggy--not the most easily sympathetic of Henson's felt creations--pleasing notes of romantic vulnerability and motorcycle-straddling heroism.
The jokes here range from the cleverly self-referential (i.e. Kermit and Fozzie commenting on the entire opening credits as they unfold; Peter Ustinov and Oscar the Grouch bonding over their limited cameo status) to the agreeably absurd (Kermit and Fozzie are cast as identical twins!). The excellent human cast--including Jack Warden, Diana Rigg, and the recently passed Peter Falk--acts totally natural opposite non-breathing co-stars, and if Charles Grodin tosses away all dignity in his role, well, who wouldn't when playing a jewel thief infatuated with Miss Piggy? Dignity has no place in such a performing context. Grade: B+
While lacking in unforgettably sweet moments like Kermit's "Rainbow Connection" bike ride in The Muppet Movie or the wedding finale of The Muppets Take Manhattan, Caper still overflows with surprisingly sophisticated humor, and is generous enough to grant Miss Piggy--not the most easily sympathetic of Henson's felt creations--pleasing notes of romantic vulnerability and motorcycle-straddling heroism.
The jokes here range from the cleverly self-referential (i.e. Kermit and Fozzie commenting on the entire opening credits as they unfold; Peter Ustinov and Oscar the Grouch bonding over their limited cameo status) to the agreeably absurd (Kermit and Fozzie are cast as identical twins!). The excellent human cast--including Jack Warden, Diana Rigg, and the recently passed Peter Falk--acts totally natural opposite non-breathing co-stars, and if Charles Grodin tosses away all dignity in his role, well, who wouldn't when playing a jewel thief infatuated with Miss Piggy? Dignity has no place in such a performing context. Grade: B+
7/1 Viewing Journal (review of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon")
Apparently, any critic worth his or her salt is required to bitch and moan about a) any movie based on a line of toys, b) any movie directed by the sexist, homophobic, racist military fetishist Michael Bay, and c) any movie that combines "a" and "b." So, to fulfill my professional obligation, let me start with the bad news: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011, Michael Bay) contains plenty of the offensive humor one has come to expect from Bay (Why put gay-panic set pieces and misogynist good-guy robots in what is essentially a kids' movie?), and its plot is so messy and convoluted that it involves everything from Apollo 11 to Chernobyl to a speakeasy frequented by Russian cosmonauts to Optimus Prime's mentor, Sentinel Prime (given gravelly vocal majesty by Leonard Nimoy)--and don't even ask how all those elements tie together, because I couldn't even begin to tell you. It's strange to think that the first Transformers, with its relatively streamlined, Spielberg-influenced suburban-boy-and-his-alien-pal story, actually came out not so long ago.
Four years ago, to be exact, which is also around the time star Shia LaBeouf could last be counted on to anchor a film with dependable charm and quick-witted self-deprecation. True, it's not his fault that that the Transformers series' writers have turned his character, Sam Witwicky, from the good-natured nerd of the first film to a whiny, macho twerp, but there's still no excusing LaBeouf's needlessly manic, overamped performance here. As Sam's new girlfriend, Carly, Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley--replacing Megan Fox, arguably the most robotic figure within the first two films--at least offers livelier line readings than her predecessor, though she's still as vacant-eyed a presence as Fox. And poor Patrick Dempsey, as Carly's rich boss, is asked by certain plot developments to stretch beyond his limited "McDreamy" range but proves woefully unable to do so. That leaves the real acting to John Malkovich, who partially redeems an overly broad comic-relief character through sheer force of his weirdness, and the ever-reliable Frances McDormand, who plays a national-security bigwig with no-nonsense authority.
For the film's first 90 minutes, there are enough exciting bursts of action and compellingly odd detours (at one point, when a band of Decepticons breaks into a NASA functionary's house to terrorize his family, Bay seems to be doing his Michael Haneke impression--call it Funny Hasbro Games) to distract from the uneven acting, abhorrent politics, and pointlessly complicated plotting. And it turns out that the last hour makes wading through Bay's more unsavory, non-action-related excesses for the lengthy introductory passages feel like a necessary viewer sacrifice.
And thankfully, this is where the good news that the knee-jerk, Bay-hating critics out there don't want you to know about comes in. For its final 60 minutes, Transformers: DOTM offers giddy, non-stop, spectacular 3D action on a scale so collosal that the film--stupid first half and all--demands to be seen on the biggest screen available.
Setting up the gargantuan climax is the Decepticons' plan of using downtown Chicago as the site where their home planet will start encroaching upon Earth, which allows Bay to stage a massive Autobot-vs.-Decepticon war in the Windy City that ranks as one of the most technically ambitious and accomplished action sequences ever caught on film (in the past few years, only Avatar, Inception and the criminally underseen 13 Assassins have rivaled the scope and logistical complexity of this hour-long robot rumble).
Some detractors have accused Bay throughout his career of editing his action scenes at such a rapid clip that it's impossible to tell who's fighting who and where at any given moment, which is unfair, since Bay's cutting, while hardly slow, never collapses into visually illegible chaos the way his many imitators' action editing does. Nevertheless, Bay has now delivered a film which should silence those detractors once and for all. The demands of shooting in 3D has disciplined Bay's action staging so that many of the battles here unfold in fluid, complicated long takes.
Bay also exploits the added layers of depth within the 3D frame to stunning effect. When a group of NAVY Seals soar along the Chicago skyline in "jump suits" that allow them to fly around before parachuting downward, the visual distance between the para-troopers and the skyscrapers surrounding them creates an eye-popping effect.
Speaking of effects, there's simply no understating the contribution the visual-effects team has made to this installment. The sight of Chicago landmarks in ruins or crackling with flames is so believable as captured by Bay's team of technicians that one almost feels an urge to check in on the Midwest metropolis' current health upon exiting the theatre.
If some may still scoff at such "seeing is believing" cinematic magic on Bay's part, perhaps it's because the director can't offer anything more than blockbuster trickery. And in these mayhem-heavy summer months, one can't be faulted for wanting an easy-to-follow story and three-dimensional characters to go along with the carnage. But just because Transformers: DOTM is an empty achievement doesn't mean it's no achievement at all. You could call it the most feebly scripted groundbreaking action movie of all time just as accurately as you could call it the most overlong yet artfully crafted visual-effects reel ever released in 4,000 theatres. For now, I'll just call it one hell of a spectacle. Grade: B
Four years ago, to be exact, which is also around the time star Shia LaBeouf could last be counted on to anchor a film with dependable charm and quick-witted self-deprecation. True, it's not his fault that that the Transformers series' writers have turned his character, Sam Witwicky, from the good-natured nerd of the first film to a whiny, macho twerp, but there's still no excusing LaBeouf's needlessly manic, overamped performance here. As Sam's new girlfriend, Carly, Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley--replacing Megan Fox, arguably the most robotic figure within the first two films--at least offers livelier line readings than her predecessor, though she's still as vacant-eyed a presence as Fox. And poor Patrick Dempsey, as Carly's rich boss, is asked by certain plot developments to stretch beyond his limited "McDreamy" range but proves woefully unable to do so. That leaves the real acting to John Malkovich, who partially redeems an overly broad comic-relief character through sheer force of his weirdness, and the ever-reliable Frances McDormand, who plays a national-security bigwig with no-nonsense authority.
For the film's first 90 minutes, there are enough exciting bursts of action and compellingly odd detours (at one point, when a band of Decepticons breaks into a NASA functionary's house to terrorize his family, Bay seems to be doing his Michael Haneke impression--call it Funny Hasbro Games) to distract from the uneven acting, abhorrent politics, and pointlessly complicated plotting. And it turns out that the last hour makes wading through Bay's more unsavory, non-action-related excesses for the lengthy introductory passages feel like a necessary viewer sacrifice.
And thankfully, this is where the good news that the knee-jerk, Bay-hating critics out there don't want you to know about comes in. For its final 60 minutes, Transformers: DOTM offers giddy, non-stop, spectacular 3D action on a scale so collosal that the film--stupid first half and all--demands to be seen on the biggest screen available.
Setting up the gargantuan climax is the Decepticons' plan of using downtown Chicago as the site where their home planet will start encroaching upon Earth, which allows Bay to stage a massive Autobot-vs.-Decepticon war in the Windy City that ranks as one of the most technically ambitious and accomplished action sequences ever caught on film (in the past few years, only Avatar, Inception and the criminally underseen 13 Assassins have rivaled the scope and logistical complexity of this hour-long robot rumble).
Some detractors have accused Bay throughout his career of editing his action scenes at such a rapid clip that it's impossible to tell who's fighting who and where at any given moment, which is unfair, since Bay's cutting, while hardly slow, never collapses into visually illegible chaos the way his many imitators' action editing does. Nevertheless, Bay has now delivered a film which should silence those detractors once and for all. The demands of shooting in 3D has disciplined Bay's action staging so that many of the battles here unfold in fluid, complicated long takes.
Bay also exploits the added layers of depth within the 3D frame to stunning effect. When a group of NAVY Seals soar along the Chicago skyline in "jump suits" that allow them to fly around before parachuting downward, the visual distance between the para-troopers and the skyscrapers surrounding them creates an eye-popping effect.
Speaking of effects, there's simply no understating the contribution the visual-effects team has made to this installment. The sight of Chicago landmarks in ruins or crackling with flames is so believable as captured by Bay's team of technicians that one almost feels an urge to check in on the Midwest metropolis' current health upon exiting the theatre.
If some may still scoff at such "seeing is believing" cinematic magic on Bay's part, perhaps it's because the director can't offer anything more than blockbuster trickery. And in these mayhem-heavy summer months, one can't be faulted for wanting an easy-to-follow story and three-dimensional characters to go along with the carnage. But just because Transformers: DOTM is an empty achievement doesn't mean it's no achievement at all. You could call it the most feebly scripted groundbreaking action movie of all time just as accurately as you could call it the most overlong yet artfully crafted visual-effects reel ever released in 4,000 theatres. For now, I'll just call it one hell of a spectacle. Grade: B
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
6/30 Viewing Journal (reviews of "A Perfect Couple" and "The New World")
A refreshingly offbeat romantic comedy, A Perfect Couple (1979, Robert Altman) benefits from the stubbornly unconventional approach of maverick director Altman. A master of anarchic, satiric ensemble comedies defined by a wickedly caustic yet generously forgiving view of human nature, a distrust of authority, and a slow-zoom-happy observational style (such as M*A*S*H and Nashville), Altman is definitely working in a minor key with Couple, but he has frisky fun defying genre expectations while still respecting the innate sincerity of the romcom form.
Altman's desire to toy with formula manifests itself in his casting of the two leads. Jowly, middle-aged character actor Paul Dooley, nobody's idea of a typical Casanova figure, is paired with Marta Heflin, whose rail-thin build and ethereal presence make her a dead ringer for another of Altman's muses, Shelley Duvall. When their characters, Alex and Sheila, are glimpsed in the first scene enjoying a symphonic performance from their box at the Hollywood Bowl, a viewer can't be faulted for assuming that they're, say, an uncle and an older niece instead of a couple in the middle of a pleasant if occasionally awkward first date.
As is typical of sly fox Altman, he lets background information about Alex and Sheila arise gradually and realistically instead of stuffing early scenes with artificial character exposition. So we learn after that leisurely first-date sequence that Alex and Sheila are lonely singletons who come from two totally different worlds. Alex is part of a wealthy Greek-American dynasty so tight-knit that the adult children--Alex included--still live under the roof of the imposing family mansion, while Sheila is a member of a proudly counterculture rock band called Keepin' 'Em Off the Streets whose members live commune-style in a vast loft.
In performance set pieces showcasing Sheila's band, Altman allows the music to beautifully guide his camerawork and editing style, as he has done in some of his best work. But what can't be said about Nashville and A Prairie Home Companion is that the music powering those films is flat-out lousy when divorced from Altman's remarkably fluid filmmaking--and that's sadly the case here, but only in the Keepin 'Em-heavy third act is the band's cheesiness much of an irritant.
And no amount of dated rockin' prevents Altman from infusing his love story with welcome unpredictability and emotional complexity. Though the famously left-leaning director has fun with the culture clash between Sheila's hippie brethren and Alex's old-world values, what concerns him most here transcends politics--namely, the way in which two insecure grown-ups in love allow themselves to be kept apart by ties to possessive families (biological and otherwise). That Altman creates such a humanly plausible obstacle in the way of Alex and Sheila's blissful union only makes us root for his two lovebirds to find a "happily ever after" conclusion all the more. Grade: B+
An unconventionally expressed romanticism also dominates my second film of the day, the lushly gorgeous and strangely touching historical epic The New World (2005, Terrence Malick) (third viewing, second of "Extended Cut" DVD). An elusive, one-of-a-kind genius who has made only five films in the span of nearly 40 years and who specializes in boldly abstract tone poems that juxtapose unforced (and sometimes, seemingly unscripted) human behavior with the splendors of the natural world, Malick here tackles the story of Native American teenager Pocahontas' (Q'orianka Kilcher) transition from her romance with Captain John Smith (a soulful Colin Farrell) to her marriage to tobacco farmer John Rolfe (Christian Bale, tapping his rarely utilized gift for understated decency) with uncompromised artistry.
As it happens, compromise is one of the key themes under study here. Pocahontas' idyllic frolics with Captain Smith occur on her turf, a leafy, unspoiled Eden that European migrants haven't yet turned into the industrialized America. When events transpire that lead Pocahontas to believe incorrectly that Smith has died, she must decide whether to give in to the attentions of the besotted Rolfe, which could compromise not only her passionate attachment to Smith, but also her connection to her people and her land. If she travels with Rolfe to his bustling, densely populated homeland of England, will she be betraying her family and her deeply rooted sense of what is natural and true in the world?
That question leads to another of this film's many layers--the idea that the very title The New World takes on different meanings when applied to different characters. The first two-thirds of the film are guided by Smith's subjectivity. When he steps foot on American shores and is immediately taken with the wild landscapes and the purity of Pocahontas' soul, we see how he views this "new world" as a site where he can atone for past criminal misdeeds and find spiritual rejuvenation. Then, Malick audaciously switches narrative focus so that the movie's final third is filtered through Pocahontas' point-of-view. As she arrives in an English port, we see what her "new world" is--a land where animals are caged instead of roaming free, and kings treasure gold over a communion with nature, but not one entirely devoid of the possibility for contentment.
The last half-hour of The New World takes on an emotional urgency that's somewhat of a surprise coming from a movie that moves with such a serene, drifting rhythm. Pocahontas discovers that Smith is still alive, and is thrown into a romantic triangle that resembles the one at the center of Malick's '78 stunner Days of Heaven (though, as a sign of Malick's maturing wisdom, Rolfe is much less villainous an "other man" than Sam Shepard's landowner was in that past work). Once Pocahontas makes her choice, the remainder of the film finds her keeping the spirit of her people alive on European land--she spends her days in a topiary maze instead of in palace interiors.
This triumphant final affirmation of all the freedom and integrity that the Pocahontas character represents wouldn't be nearly as moving without the particpation of Kilcher. Throughout his career, Malick has made a productive habit of finding previously untested actresses and giving them a chance to emote with a staggering lack of affect or artificiality, and Kilcer is no exception (another Malick discovery, Jessica Chastain, is delicate perfection as a Texas matriarch in his current masterpiece The Tree of Life). With its free-associative flow and rejection of historical-narrative shorthand (the name "Pocahontas" is never even uttered onscreen), The New World is not for everybody, but for those open to it, the film--and Kilcher's performance--is a unique heartbreaker. Grade: A
Altman's desire to toy with formula manifests itself in his casting of the two leads. Jowly, middle-aged character actor Paul Dooley, nobody's idea of a typical Casanova figure, is paired with Marta Heflin, whose rail-thin build and ethereal presence make her a dead ringer for another of Altman's muses, Shelley Duvall. When their characters, Alex and Sheila, are glimpsed in the first scene enjoying a symphonic performance from their box at the Hollywood Bowl, a viewer can't be faulted for assuming that they're, say, an uncle and an older niece instead of a couple in the middle of a pleasant if occasionally awkward first date.
As is typical of sly fox Altman, he lets background information about Alex and Sheila arise gradually and realistically instead of stuffing early scenes with artificial character exposition. So we learn after that leisurely first-date sequence that Alex and Sheila are lonely singletons who come from two totally different worlds. Alex is part of a wealthy Greek-American dynasty so tight-knit that the adult children--Alex included--still live under the roof of the imposing family mansion, while Sheila is a member of a proudly counterculture rock band called Keepin' 'Em Off the Streets whose members live commune-style in a vast loft.
In performance set pieces showcasing Sheila's band, Altman allows the music to beautifully guide his camerawork and editing style, as he has done in some of his best work. But what can't be said about Nashville and A Prairie Home Companion is that the music powering those films is flat-out lousy when divorced from Altman's remarkably fluid filmmaking--and that's sadly the case here, but only in the Keepin 'Em-heavy third act is the band's cheesiness much of an irritant.
And no amount of dated rockin' prevents Altman from infusing his love story with welcome unpredictability and emotional complexity. Though the famously left-leaning director has fun with the culture clash between Sheila's hippie brethren and Alex's old-world values, what concerns him most here transcends politics--namely, the way in which two insecure grown-ups in love allow themselves to be kept apart by ties to possessive families (biological and otherwise). That Altman creates such a humanly plausible obstacle in the way of Alex and Sheila's blissful union only makes us root for his two lovebirds to find a "happily ever after" conclusion all the more. Grade: B+
An unconventionally expressed romanticism also dominates my second film of the day, the lushly gorgeous and strangely touching historical epic The New World (2005, Terrence Malick) (third viewing, second of "Extended Cut" DVD). An elusive, one-of-a-kind genius who has made only five films in the span of nearly 40 years and who specializes in boldly abstract tone poems that juxtapose unforced (and sometimes, seemingly unscripted) human behavior with the splendors of the natural world, Malick here tackles the story of Native American teenager Pocahontas' (Q'orianka Kilcher) transition from her romance with Captain John Smith (a soulful Colin Farrell) to her marriage to tobacco farmer John Rolfe (Christian Bale, tapping his rarely utilized gift for understated decency) with uncompromised artistry.
As it happens, compromise is one of the key themes under study here. Pocahontas' idyllic frolics with Captain Smith occur on her turf, a leafy, unspoiled Eden that European migrants haven't yet turned into the industrialized America. When events transpire that lead Pocahontas to believe incorrectly that Smith has died, she must decide whether to give in to the attentions of the besotted Rolfe, which could compromise not only her passionate attachment to Smith, but also her connection to her people and her land. If she travels with Rolfe to his bustling, densely populated homeland of England, will she be betraying her family and her deeply rooted sense of what is natural and true in the world?
That question leads to another of this film's many layers--the idea that the very title The New World takes on different meanings when applied to different characters. The first two-thirds of the film are guided by Smith's subjectivity. When he steps foot on American shores and is immediately taken with the wild landscapes and the purity of Pocahontas' soul, we see how he views this "new world" as a site where he can atone for past criminal misdeeds and find spiritual rejuvenation. Then, Malick audaciously switches narrative focus so that the movie's final third is filtered through Pocahontas' point-of-view. As she arrives in an English port, we see what her "new world" is--a land where animals are caged instead of roaming free, and kings treasure gold over a communion with nature, but not one entirely devoid of the possibility for contentment.
The last half-hour of The New World takes on an emotional urgency that's somewhat of a surprise coming from a movie that moves with such a serene, drifting rhythm. Pocahontas discovers that Smith is still alive, and is thrown into a romantic triangle that resembles the one at the center of Malick's '78 stunner Days of Heaven (though, as a sign of Malick's maturing wisdom, Rolfe is much less villainous an "other man" than Sam Shepard's landowner was in that past work). Once Pocahontas makes her choice, the remainder of the film finds her keeping the spirit of her people alive on European land--she spends her days in a topiary maze instead of in palace interiors.
This triumphant final affirmation of all the freedom and integrity that the Pocahontas character represents wouldn't be nearly as moving without the particpation of Kilcher. Throughout his career, Malick has made a productive habit of finding previously untested actresses and giving them a chance to emote with a staggering lack of affect or artificiality, and Kilcer is no exception (another Malick discovery, Jessica Chastain, is delicate perfection as a Texas matriarch in his current masterpiece The Tree of Life). With its free-associative flow and rejection of historical-narrative shorthand (the name "Pocahontas" is never even uttered onscreen), The New World is not for everybody, but for those open to it, the film--and Kilcher's performance--is a unique heartbreaker. Grade: A
Friday, July 1, 2011
6/29 Viewing Journal
I didn't see any movies this past Wednesday, so what better time than now to pimp a recent Metromix feature I wrote on film franchises replacing actors mid-series (jumping off from Rosie Huntington-Whiteley taking over for a fired Megan Fox in Transformers: Dark of the Moon)?
Here's the piece: http://newyork.metromix.com/movies/essay_photo_gallery/when-stars-get-replaced/2689914/content
And check back for my review of the third Transformers movie in my 7/1 Viewing Journal entry.
Here's the piece: http://newyork.metromix.com/movies/essay_photo_gallery/when-stars-get-replaced/2689914/content
And check back for my review of the third Transformers movie in my 7/1 Viewing Journal entry.
6/28 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Cars 2," "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," and "Velvet Goldmine")
The first of the feature films made by the wizards at Pixar Animation Studios to feel like considerably less than the sum of its parts, Cars 2 (2011, John Lasseter) offers sleek, surface-level fun but ultimately registers as a disappointingly hollow experience. To be sure, when a group of filmmakers has 9 films that lie within the great-to-masterpiece range to their credit out of the 12 they've yet made--as Pixar has--it's hard to get too upset, especially since there's no sign in Cars 2 that Pixar honcho Lasseter and company intended to coast. They've crafted a reasonably well-made and amusing bit of summer-movie fluff, but the “Pixar touch” seems to have eluded them this time out.
Maybe there was cause for concern before this sequel’s release, considering that the first Cars is another of the studio’s rare less-than-great efforts, but that 2006 offering is still solid, oft-underrated stuff—admirably leisurely, containing a handful of Pixar’s trademark emotionally piercing moments, and properly reverential towards legendary star Paul Newman. Newman’s role of Doc Hudson, a Hudson Hornet who has chosen the quiet life after a career spent amassing numerous awards (conspicuously like Newman himself), tragically ended up being his last.
Cars 2 pays tribute to the star early on, in a heartfelt scene that left this Newman fan misty-eyed (“Champion of the World” indeed). Nothing else in the remainder of the film is nearly as moving, which is surprising since Pixar’s skill at shaping a narrative’s emotional backbone is arguably peerless. It’s not for a lack of ideas on Lasseter’s part. One imagines the director reading reviews of the first Car, noting the vitriol directed towards the enthusiastic-hillbilly tow truck character Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy), and feeling emboldened to mount a defense of his and Larry’s creation in the form of a sequel that argues that Mater’s a swell guy (car?) in spite of his foolishness. Trouble is, while Mater can be cute in small doses, he becomes something of a pill when placed front and center, as he is here. Another promising notion of Lasseter’s that falters in the execution is his aim to explore the thorny truism that any close friendship requires a high tolerance for social embarrassment. When Mater shames best pal and champion racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson, amiable as usual, though this is hardly a showcase for his shaggy charms the way Woody Allen’s current Midnight in Paris is) by disrupting a party thrown in McQueen’s honor, we’re reminded of instances in which friends have taken too much advantage of open-bar privileges, to humiliating effect (we even see Mater pilfer an overabundance of free drinks at one point); heck, maybe we’ve been that friend on occasion. But Lasseter and writer Ben Queen smother this theme’s potential by spelling it out with on-the-nose obviousness, and they never raise the emotional or narrative stakes to the usual Pixar level.
Some Pixar virtues remain intact, thankfully: precisely crafted action sequences that unfold with Rube Goldberg-esque inventiveness; a jaw-dropping attention to visual detail (wait ‘till you see these animators’ take on car-centric versions of Tokyo, Paris, and Monte Carlo); pointed political subtext (in the form of a critique of the lengths anti-environmental reform groups will go to in order to dismantle their opponents’ credibility); and clever gags (I especially liked the riff on the confusion over how to watch a free “sneak preview” on a hotel’s pay-per-view movie channel without accidentally ordering and paying for the whole movie). Cars 2 entertained me from beginning to end, but when the closing credits began to roll, I was startled to realize I didn’t feel anything. Oh, well. The copious tears shed over Pixar’s best work will have to suffice for now. Grade: B-
[Note: I would’ve given the five-minute-or-so-long short preceding Cars 2, Toy Story Hawaiian Vacation, a straight “A.” Oddly, its attempt to humanize a franchise’s comic-relief character (in this case, Ken, Barbie’s metrosexual boyfriend from Toy Story 3) is far more affecting and successful than Cars 2’s effort to humanize Mater in spite of its being a whopping 102 minutes shorter than Cars 2. Plus, every single joke hits its target.]
David Bowie at his most androgynous and theatrical + the uniquely ragged stylistic approach of director D.A. Pennebaker + frequent glimpses of clearly stoned-out-of-their-mind fans = concert-movie bliss. ‘Nuff said about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973, D.A. Pennebaker). Grade: A-
The reasoning behind L.A. repertory theatre the New Beverly’s decision to program a double feature of Ziggy Stardust with the dazzling, truly invigorating pop epic Velvet Goldmine (1998, Todd Haynes) (third viewing, first on the big screen) becomes clear just a few minutes into Haynes’ film, when Johnathan Rhys Meyers takes the stage as bisexual glam rock idol Brian Slade. With his glittery, feathery get-up and garish make-up, Slade is clearly intended as a fictional stand-in for the Ziggy-era Bowie (the Oscar nominated costume design, which makes Lady Gaga’s wardrobe look restrained in comparison, comes courtesy of Sandy Powell).
Haynes, a pioneer of the New Queer Cinema movement and former semiotics major at Brown University, delights in layering his dense, challenging films with all manner of real-world references and cinematic allusions. So not only is there a Bowie figure in his glam rock portrait, there’s also a Lou Reed/Iggy Pop hybrid named Curt Wild, who hooks up with Slade creatively and between the sheets, and who is played by Ewan McGregor (in a performance that rings emotionally true, even if it took McGregor until this year’s Beginners to nail a plausible American accent). Haynes’ boldest film-geek homage is his self-aware adoption of Citizen Kane’s narrative structure, which toggles back and forth between a reporter’s (Christian Bale in place of Joseph Cotton) present-day investigation into a fallen idol’s history (Rhys Meyers’ Slade replacing Orson Welles’ Charles Foster Kane) and flashbacks to the idol’s past prompted by his associates’ memories of him. There’s also some of GoodFellas’ DNA in the film, with the kinetic forward momentum, awesome soundtrack filled wall-to-wall with tunes, and immersion in a peculiar, little-explored milieu recalling Scorsese’s classic. One is bound, too, to think back on earlier films that succeeded in merging high art with high camp, such as Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise and Ken Russell’s Tommy.
But there’s no denying that Haynes (whose other films include Far From Heaven and the visionary Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There) has a voice of his own, and it’s a damn strong one. Goldmine can be taken as an exhilarating, masterfully assembled cinematic collage on its own, and also as a continuation of Haynes’ career-long interest in fame, identity, and queer politics.
If Bale’s Arthur, whose teenage obsession with Slade leads him out of the closet, can be judged as a mostly positive result of Slade’s mainstreaming of queer culture, then Slade’s ex-wife, Mandy (a note-perfect Toni Collette, one among many actresses who have fluorished under Haynes’ direction; check out an Emmy-bound Kate Winslet in Haynes’ made-for-HBO Mildred Pierce for another) is a casualty of it. The beaming, affected-Brit-accented hipster we see proudly boasting about the “openness” of her marriage in the ‘70s-set scenes bears little resemblance to the embittered shell of a woman we see talking to Arthur in the present day. The Mandy character is proof that Haynes isn’t content to stay within his own gay-male subjectivity. He’s after something more even-handed here—a cautionary tale about the human souls that can get lost in mass-market image-making and the drive to commodify a marginalized culture.
“We set out to change the world, but we ended up just changing ourselves,” McGregor’s Wild observes to Arthur in one of the present-day scenes, echoing Haynes’ thesis. But there is great risk in making it sound like Goldmine is of only academic interest. Trippy, audacious, and wildly energetic, it’s a movie that practically courses through your veins as you watch it. Grade: A
[Note: Two Eddie Izzard movies in one day! Hurrah!]
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