Wednesday, August 31, 2011
8/8 Viewing Journal
Nothing viewed this day, a development that comes in handy during a catch-up period like this. I just caught a TV promo for an upcoming family-targeted dolphin movie that revealed one thing the supreme acting deity Morgan Freeman can't do: make the exclamation "come on, fish!" sound anything but ridiculous. (The fact that it was directed towards a mammal doesn't help matters.) Just thought I'd share.
8/7 Viewing Journal (review of "Predators")
I remember talking to some people who caught the prequel/sequel/reboot/who-the-fuck-cares-at-the-end-of-the-day Predators (2010, Nimrod Antal) in its theatrical release who complained that a more-buffed-up-than-usual Adrien Brody copped a distractingly gravelly, guttural vocal tone for his anti-hero character. The thing is, those people are right in their descriptions of Brody's performance, but dead wrong in their judgment of it. Brody makes for an entirely credible and winning badass here, and unlike King Kong, which he seemed to get lost in (I'm still extremely fond of Peter Jackson's 2005 remake, in spite of Brody's bland contribution and the hilariously retrograde oogah-boogah Skull Island natives), this is a popcorn movie in which he makes some very interesting actorly choices, as if to forcefully remind viewers of his Oscar-winning status even in this shrug-inducing context. (I imagine the success of Midnight in Paris has rekindled some Brody love out there. "DALI!!")
Laurence Fishburne makes even stranger actorly choices in his extended cameo as a cuckoo-bananas survivor on the planet of the Predators. Other strong performance contributions are made by a steely, commandingly butch Alice Braga, and by Walton Goggins, who gets his biggest film showcase here after terrific TV work on The Shield and Justified.
There are other, very minor pleasures. The verdant jungle settings make this much less of an eyesore than the last Antal flick I saw, the typical-for-Screen-Gems, digitally-fuzzed-over Vacancy. A couple well-placed jolts and ferocious battle scenes keep the viewer alert enough.
But make no mistake: this is exactly what one would expect from a desperate, creatively bankrupt attempt to revitalize a franchise that should've been left to die years ago. Nothing more, nothing less. There is very little inspired dialogue aside from a few badass quips, and there are way too many scenes of characters skulking around aimlessly while wielding guns the size of suitcases. James Cameron made similar scenes crackle with tension in his sci-fi/action standard bearer Aliens, and I'd like to imagine Cameron watches a movie like Predators and weeps in frustration at what he has inadvertantly wrought. Grade: C+
Laurence Fishburne makes even stranger actorly choices in his extended cameo as a cuckoo-bananas survivor on the planet of the Predators. Other strong performance contributions are made by a steely, commandingly butch Alice Braga, and by Walton Goggins, who gets his biggest film showcase here after terrific TV work on The Shield and Justified.
There are other, very minor pleasures. The verdant jungle settings make this much less of an eyesore than the last Antal flick I saw, the typical-for-Screen-Gems, digitally-fuzzed-over Vacancy. A couple well-placed jolts and ferocious battle scenes keep the viewer alert enough.
But make no mistake: this is exactly what one would expect from a desperate, creatively bankrupt attempt to revitalize a franchise that should've been left to die years ago. Nothing more, nothing less. There is very little inspired dialogue aside from a few badass quips, and there are way too many scenes of characters skulking around aimlessly while wielding guns the size of suitcases. James Cameron made similar scenes crackle with tension in his sci-fi/action standard bearer Aliens, and I'd like to imagine Cameron watches a movie like Predators and weeps in frustration at what he has inadvertantly wrought. Grade: C+
8/6 Viewing Journal (reviews of "A Taste of Cherry" and "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy")
Since writer-director Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy, an insightful gem from earlier this year, skillfully married a high-concept premise with a series of adult, leisurely philosophical back-and-forths, I was delighted to discover that his Cannes Film Festival prize-winner A Taste of Cherry (1998, Abbas Kiarostami), the first of his older films I've caught up with, pulls off an identical balancing act. Now here's another auteur who will lead me to raise my eyebrow in anticipation when future work from him is announced in film-festival line-ups. (As can be expected, my eyebrow doctor loves it when festival line-ups are unveiled.)
The high concept is this: Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi), a man who hasn't yet reached old age, drives around the outskirts of Tehran asking various strangers if they will help him commit suicide. He has dug a grave for himself out in the wilderness, and he plans to swallow a large amount of sleeping pills and climb into the grave at nightfall. His instructions to every prospective assistant are as follows: the following morning, throw a rock at his body, and if he turns out to be alive, pull him out of the grave, but if he's dead, cover the grave with dirt.
Heavy stuff, to be sure, but also powerfully wise and moving due to Kiarostami's profound powers of perception. The filmmaker makes a passionate plea for the value of every human life on Earth, and Ershadi's performance adds welcome complication. He makes Mr. Badii hard-edged and stubborn, a real, flesh-and-blood creation who must earn the audience's interest in his survival instead of lazily inviting it right off the bat.
Kiarostami only errs in the film's wildly self-indulgent final moments, but he also seems to realize that the only right ending to the film is one that realizes that the multiple, eloquent arguments for embracing life that Mr. Badii encounters are far richer than any traditional narrative payoff ever could be. Grade: A-
Comedy is subjective, and I recall one critic I greatly admire who gave the anarchic Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996, Kelly Makin) (umpteenth viewing, second on the big screen) a damning "F" grade. (He smeared my favorite film of 2000, the Coen Brothers comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, with the same grade. Grrr. Believe it or not, he's made some great calls too over the years.). But under Makin's inventive direction, Brain Candy stands in my mind as one of the flat-out funniest sketch-comedy extensions ever made, and by far the most visually sophisticated.
So, if you haven't seen it and wonder if you'll love or hate it, what should you expect from it going in? Well, a healthy amount of Dr. Strangelove's biting satire, a dose of mainstream-jostling, John Waters-style queer-positive subversion, and more than a few drops of the formal daring of film-comedy wizards such as the Coens and Wes Anderson. (I'd say the Coen film it most resembles is The Hudsucker Proxy, especially in the beautifully shot and cut, corporate-spoofing "red socks" sequence.) (Also, if you haven't seen it, it's about a pharmaceutical corporation, thus my oh-so-clever doctoral wording above.) More than anything, though, it reflects the very Canadian absurdity of sketch-comedy giants the Kids in the Hall. They specialize in the kind of gags that get funnier the more you think about them, which is rare to find these days. For example, when Dr. Chris Cooper (Kevin McDonald) checks in on batty, old patient Mrs. Hurdicure (Scott Thompson), who has taken an anti-depressant that is still in trials, she's being subjected to a test that requires her to swirl around in a zero-gravity, Lawnmower Man-type rig. What's most hilarious is reflecting on how nonsensical the touch is: how does the zero-gravity rig affect the anti-depressant's effects in any way, shape, or form? What did Cooper and his associates tell their superiors in order to secure funding for the rig? And so on.
Being in the minority that adores this comedy, I remember looking forward like few others were to Makin's follow-up, the Hugh Grant/James Caan vehicle Mickey Blue Eyes. Unfortunately, it turned out to be exactly the kind of dud that usually gets dumped into an end-of-summer release-date slot. But even if Makin turns out to end her career as a one-hit wonder, I would still say: what a hit! Grade: A
The high concept is this: Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi), a man who hasn't yet reached old age, drives around the outskirts of Tehran asking various strangers if they will help him commit suicide. He has dug a grave for himself out in the wilderness, and he plans to swallow a large amount of sleeping pills and climb into the grave at nightfall. His instructions to every prospective assistant are as follows: the following morning, throw a rock at his body, and if he turns out to be alive, pull him out of the grave, but if he's dead, cover the grave with dirt.
Heavy stuff, to be sure, but also powerfully wise and moving due to Kiarostami's profound powers of perception. The filmmaker makes a passionate plea for the value of every human life on Earth, and Ershadi's performance adds welcome complication. He makes Mr. Badii hard-edged and stubborn, a real, flesh-and-blood creation who must earn the audience's interest in his survival instead of lazily inviting it right off the bat.
Kiarostami only errs in the film's wildly self-indulgent final moments, but he also seems to realize that the only right ending to the film is one that realizes that the multiple, eloquent arguments for embracing life that Mr. Badii encounters are far richer than any traditional narrative payoff ever could be. Grade: A-
Comedy is subjective, and I recall one critic I greatly admire who gave the anarchic Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996, Kelly Makin) (umpteenth viewing, second on the big screen) a damning "F" grade. (He smeared my favorite film of 2000, the Coen Brothers comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, with the same grade. Grrr. Believe it or not, he's made some great calls too over the years.). But under Makin's inventive direction, Brain Candy stands in my mind as one of the flat-out funniest sketch-comedy extensions ever made, and by far the most visually sophisticated.
So, if you haven't seen it and wonder if you'll love or hate it, what should you expect from it going in? Well, a healthy amount of Dr. Strangelove's biting satire, a dose of mainstream-jostling, John Waters-style queer-positive subversion, and more than a few drops of the formal daring of film-comedy wizards such as the Coens and Wes Anderson. (I'd say the Coen film it most resembles is The Hudsucker Proxy, especially in the beautifully shot and cut, corporate-spoofing "red socks" sequence.) (Also, if you haven't seen it, it's about a pharmaceutical corporation, thus my oh-so-clever doctoral wording above.) More than anything, though, it reflects the very Canadian absurdity of sketch-comedy giants the Kids in the Hall. They specialize in the kind of gags that get funnier the more you think about them, which is rare to find these days. For example, when Dr. Chris Cooper (Kevin McDonald) checks in on batty, old patient Mrs. Hurdicure (Scott Thompson), who has taken an anti-depressant that is still in trials, she's being subjected to a test that requires her to swirl around in a zero-gravity, Lawnmower Man-type rig. What's most hilarious is reflecting on how nonsensical the touch is: how does the zero-gravity rig affect the anti-depressant's effects in any way, shape, or form? What did Cooper and his associates tell their superiors in order to secure funding for the rig? And so on.
Being in the minority that adores this comedy, I remember looking forward like few others were to Makin's follow-up, the Hugh Grant/James Caan vehicle Mickey Blue Eyes. Unfortunately, it turned out to be exactly the kind of dud that usually gets dumped into an end-of-summer release-date slot. But even if Makin turns out to end her career as a one-hit wonder, I would still say: what a hit! Grade: A
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
8/5 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," "Batman Begins," and "The Dark Knight")
After the sluggish likes of Captain America and Cowboys & Aliens, it's a welcome change of pace to encounter a summer action blockbuster that moves with as much swift forward momentum and storytelling economy as Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, Rupert Wyatt). This is definitely a case where a movie's unfortunate, unwieldy title thankfully does not serve as a reflection of the decidedly light-footed movie in question.
And director Wyatt, whose previous experience helming the British prison movie The Escapist makes him an inspired choice for the proceedings (there's a certain point around the halfway mark where Apes evolves into a prison movie of an unconventional sort), finds all sorts of creative ways to accentuate movement and pace, from his furious cross-cutting between scientist Will Rodman's (James Franco) pitch to his superiors for human trials on an Alzheimer's cure and the movie's first action scene (Bright Eyes' rampage) to the way his camera swirls and flies around to keep up with agile chimp Caesar (played by Andy Serkis in a motion-capture performance).
But, as anyone who's had the pleasure of meeting Caesar knows, Rise isn't just an empty display of kinetics. Franco and John Lithgow form an affecting bond as Will and his Alzheimer's-afflicted father, and Caesar's simultaneously rousing and tragic, well, rise makes for one of the summer's best and most fascinating character arcs. As Caesar, Serkis is wonderfully nuanced, though talk of an outside-of-the-box Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work here is a case of stretching well-deserved praise a little too hyperbolically far. (I don't have any problem with vocal and/or motion-capture performances being nominated though, and I personally would've nominated Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo, Ed Asner in Up, and, more to the point, Zoe Saldana in Avatar in their respective years of consideration.)
A handful of clumsy performances and individual scenes keep Rise from approaching popcorn-movie greatness (for that, keep reading this very post!). Tom Felton, best known as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, is just terrible as one of the chief villains, offering a hilariously mangled approximation of an American accent. Out of his marble mouth, the word "good" takes on an extra syllable (seriously, he adds a "y" in there somewhere). And a scene in which he and a group of buddies, apparently soused out of their minds after drinking a six-pack of Mirror Pond Pale Ale (!), abuse a group of caged chimps is too ineptly acted and staged to summon the intended outrage.
However, that's not to say the movie doesn't tremble with deeply felt outrage elsewhere. Suffice it to say, if you only see one film this summer that positions chimp abuse as a metaphor for the darker side of human nature, see Project Nim, but if Roadside Attractions' catastrophic (excuse for a) release of Nim kept it from playing in your city, by all means, see Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Grade: B+
I remember shortly before the release of Batman Begins (2005, Christopher Nolan) (eigth viewing, fifth on the big screen), writer-director Nolan cited epic maestro David Lean as a primary influence on his superhero origin story. I can pinpoint the exact moment in his film when that lofty comparison begins to make absolute sense: Bruce Wayne, after being trained to conquer his fear by dubious mentors the League of Shadows, returns to an underground cave where his phobia of bats first manifested itself. As an enormous swarm of bats begin to surround Bruce, who is scarcely less sick-in-the-head than Lean anti-heroes T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia) and Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai), he boldly stands still and allows the swarm to flutter against him. Nolan cuts to wider and wider shots of the bat-filled tableau, and the Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard score reaches its most operatic crescendo. To DC fanboys, this plays as "the birth of the Batcave," but for me, as with Lean's epics, the grandeur of the filmmaking and how it reflects the neurotic brand of heroism represented by the protagonist overwhelms rudimentary plot concerns.
And this repeat viewing reminds me of something else silly about certain fanboys: many complained that Begins' biggest shortcoming lay in the villains department, but that's ridiculously not the case. Cillian Murphy's deliciously off-kilter verbal cadences underline the Scarecrow's malevolent nerdiness, Tom Wilkinson's intentionally broad American accent (take that, Draco!) adds color to his mobster, and Liam Neeson's silky authority as a League of Shadows figurehead nicely compensates for some unfortunate facial hair. They're all terrific, though I wouldn't make a case for any of them giving the single best performance ever featured in a comic-book adaptation. Grade: A
I would, on the other hand, make a case for Heath Ledger giving the single best performance ever featured in a comic-book adaptation, in Begins follow-up The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan) (umpteenth viewing, fifth or sixth on the big screen). Also, his performance is one of the few in film history to approximate the thrilling rush of unpredictability more typically inherent to live theatre. There's much more to say about both his performance and the film itself, which I hope to get to in a later blog post. I'm not going in-depth now not just because I've fallen behind in blogging, but also because a proper tribute to Ledger's monumental performance would be both creatively rewarding and emotionally draining to write.
The film itself stands as the most queasily unrelenting popcorn movie ever unleashed on a surprised (but also, clearly thrilled) public. (See: my comment in my Bellflower review on moviegoer masochism.) It just does not stop until your last nerve is fried to jelly.
Its final couple minutes manage to trump Begins' batcave intro when it comes to delivering Lean-esque warped grandeur; it's honestly hard for me to breathe during the conclusion. Batman/Bruce makes a final choice that cements his status as the most simultaneously noble and clinically insane of all superheroes, while amped-up cross-cutting and Gordon's monologue (how good is Gary Oldman in this, by the way?) accompany him carrying out that selfless/nutsoid choice. Then, bam, the closing-credits title card smacks you upside the head. Then, finally, you exhale. Perfect. So perfect that I almost believe Nolan should've ended the series with it, but like anyone else, I'm counting the days until the July 2012 relase of The Dark Knight Rises. Grade: A
[Note: It seems to be an unspoken rule in the critical community never to use the "A+," and since I am but a freelancer, I won't challenge the orthodoxy. But I believe The Dark Knight would be fully and genuinely deserving of that grade.]
And director Wyatt, whose previous experience helming the British prison movie The Escapist makes him an inspired choice for the proceedings (there's a certain point around the halfway mark where Apes evolves into a prison movie of an unconventional sort), finds all sorts of creative ways to accentuate movement and pace, from his furious cross-cutting between scientist Will Rodman's (James Franco) pitch to his superiors for human trials on an Alzheimer's cure and the movie's first action scene (Bright Eyes' rampage) to the way his camera swirls and flies around to keep up with agile chimp Caesar (played by Andy Serkis in a motion-capture performance).
But, as anyone who's had the pleasure of meeting Caesar knows, Rise isn't just an empty display of kinetics. Franco and John Lithgow form an affecting bond as Will and his Alzheimer's-afflicted father, and Caesar's simultaneously rousing and tragic, well, rise makes for one of the summer's best and most fascinating character arcs. As Caesar, Serkis is wonderfully nuanced, though talk of an outside-of-the-box Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work here is a case of stretching well-deserved praise a little too hyperbolically far. (I don't have any problem with vocal and/or motion-capture performances being nominated though, and I personally would've nominated Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo, Ed Asner in Up, and, more to the point, Zoe Saldana in Avatar in their respective years of consideration.)
A handful of clumsy performances and individual scenes keep Rise from approaching popcorn-movie greatness (for that, keep reading this very post!). Tom Felton, best known as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, is just terrible as one of the chief villains, offering a hilariously mangled approximation of an American accent. Out of his marble mouth, the word "good" takes on an extra syllable (seriously, he adds a "y" in there somewhere). And a scene in which he and a group of buddies, apparently soused out of their minds after drinking a six-pack of Mirror Pond Pale Ale (!), abuse a group of caged chimps is too ineptly acted and staged to summon the intended outrage.
However, that's not to say the movie doesn't tremble with deeply felt outrage elsewhere. Suffice it to say, if you only see one film this summer that positions chimp abuse as a metaphor for the darker side of human nature, see Project Nim, but if Roadside Attractions' catastrophic (excuse for a) release of Nim kept it from playing in your city, by all means, see Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Grade: B+
I remember shortly before the release of Batman Begins (2005, Christopher Nolan) (eigth viewing, fifth on the big screen), writer-director Nolan cited epic maestro David Lean as a primary influence on his superhero origin story. I can pinpoint the exact moment in his film when that lofty comparison begins to make absolute sense: Bruce Wayne, after being trained to conquer his fear by dubious mentors the League of Shadows, returns to an underground cave where his phobia of bats first manifested itself. As an enormous swarm of bats begin to surround Bruce, who is scarcely less sick-in-the-head than Lean anti-heroes T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia) and Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai), he boldly stands still and allows the swarm to flutter against him. Nolan cuts to wider and wider shots of the bat-filled tableau, and the Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard score reaches its most operatic crescendo. To DC fanboys, this plays as "the birth of the Batcave," but for me, as with Lean's epics, the grandeur of the filmmaking and how it reflects the neurotic brand of heroism represented by the protagonist overwhelms rudimentary plot concerns.
And this repeat viewing reminds me of something else silly about certain fanboys: many complained that Begins' biggest shortcoming lay in the villains department, but that's ridiculously not the case. Cillian Murphy's deliciously off-kilter verbal cadences underline the Scarecrow's malevolent nerdiness, Tom Wilkinson's intentionally broad American accent (take that, Draco!) adds color to his mobster, and Liam Neeson's silky authority as a League of Shadows figurehead nicely compensates for some unfortunate facial hair. They're all terrific, though I wouldn't make a case for any of them giving the single best performance ever featured in a comic-book adaptation. Grade: A
I would, on the other hand, make a case for Heath Ledger giving the single best performance ever featured in a comic-book adaptation, in Begins follow-up The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan) (umpteenth viewing, fifth or sixth on the big screen). Also, his performance is one of the few in film history to approximate the thrilling rush of unpredictability more typically inherent to live theatre. There's much more to say about both his performance and the film itself, which I hope to get to in a later blog post. I'm not going in-depth now not just because I've fallen behind in blogging, but also because a proper tribute to Ledger's monumental performance would be both creatively rewarding and emotionally draining to write.
The film itself stands as the most queasily unrelenting popcorn movie ever unleashed on a surprised (but also, clearly thrilled) public. (See: my comment in my Bellflower review on moviegoer masochism.) It just does not stop until your last nerve is fried to jelly.
Its final couple minutes manage to trump Begins' batcave intro when it comes to delivering Lean-esque warped grandeur; it's honestly hard for me to breathe during the conclusion. Batman/Bruce makes a final choice that cements his status as the most simultaneously noble and clinically insane of all superheroes, while amped-up cross-cutting and Gordon's monologue (how good is Gary Oldman in this, by the way?) accompany him carrying out that selfless/nutsoid choice. Then, bam, the closing-credits title card smacks you upside the head. Then, finally, you exhale. Perfect. So perfect that I almost believe Nolan should've ended the series with it, but like anyone else, I'm counting the days until the July 2012 relase of The Dark Knight Rises. Grade: A
[Note: It seems to be an unspoken rule in the critical community never to use the "A+," and since I am but a freelancer, I won't challenge the orthodoxy. But I believe The Dark Knight would be fully and genuinely deserving of that grade.]
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Quick Update
Sorry, readers, for falling behind in my Viewing Journal updates. As I've segued this week from job-hunting to setting up work with a new freelance employer (good news, obviously), my brain has been fried by constant Kinko's trips, setting up macro-enabled format templates, and other such tasks. By Friday or Monday, I'll return to my regular cycle of balancing freelance work, job-hunting, and blog write-ups. So expect Viewing Journal updates to return with increased regularity around then, including reviews of box-office champ Rise of the Planet of the Apes, box-office failure (sigh) Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, and Abbas Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winner A Taste of Cherry. (Yes, my taste really is that wide-ranging, if I may say so without sounding immodest.)
Saturday, August 13, 2011
8/4 Viewing Journal
No movies to write up, but on this Thursday, an episode of Louie aired that caused the phrase "great Dane Cook performance" to shed its oxymoronic status, and an episode of Futurama aired featuring a flashback in which Dr. Zoidberg was young, beloved by his Planet Express colleagues, and rockin' a Fonzie-esque pompadour ("It was a different time!" the hapless doctor explains, nearly apologetically, in the present day). So all was right with the world, it seems in retrospect.
Friday, August 12, 2011
8/3 Viewing Journal (reviews of "Rango" and "Wild Target")
Revisiting Rango (2011, Gore Verbinski) (second viewing), I didn't get the same tequila-shot-esque buzz that I felt after seeing it the first time, but it wouldn't be just to lower my letter-grade rating of it. That's because only one element--writer John Logan's (The Aviator) ornate, Coen Brothers-influenced dialogue--actually felt weaker this time out on an objective level. (There's still no denying that Logan has done some clever work here--you gotta admire an animated movie that correctly and wittily uses the phrase "paradigm shift"--but it lacks the precision and detail that makes the Coens' dialogue surprising even on repeat viewings.) This is really just a case of being subjectively delighted by a mainstream, ostensibly child-targeted entertainment's loopy weirdness on initial viewing in a way that can't be duplicated in a DVD rewatching down the line.
Objectively, that loopy weirdness didn't go anywhere, and that's a very good thing. A Western riff that foregrounds its lizard protagonist's existential woes is a strange thing in and of itself, but director Verbinski and Logan don't stop there. They merrily inject some of Chinatown into the movie's DNA (and what makes it odd is that they don't just name-check the film noir classic in the lazy manner typical of DreamWorks Animation's lesser fare; they weave the Polanski film's portrait of water-industry corruption into the narrative and even make Ned Beatty's turtle villain a dead ringer for John Huston's Noah Cross) and pay homage to Clint Eastwood in the most surreal way imaginable.
Seeming to enjoy his freedom from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (only the second entry, Dead Man's Chest, felt fully liberated and goofy to me--yeah, I know I'm in the minority there), Verbinski does arguably his best visual work here; the deep-focus compositions successfully evoke obvious influence Sergio Leone. Verbinski's Pirates cohort Johnny Depp, who voices the heroic lizard, also responds well to the departure from Captain Jack Sparrow. His manic, rapid-fire verbal energy and occasional massive shifts in pitch (for example, when the lizard is play-acting different roles in his terrarium in the movie's opening scene) make this a voice-over performance worthy of comparison to his great, imaginative in-the-flesh work.
But, alas, my main quibble from first viewing still stands: the movie is overlong and narratively repetitive even at the normally-far-from-indulgent running time of 107 minutes. This is a problem that has reared its head in even Verbinski's good movies. I remember joking with a friend and colleague that studios should make it part of Verbinski's contract to never exceed 100 minutes.
Still, while Rango offers too much of a good thing, it's the rare animated movie that takes advantage of the form's potential to appeal to grown-ups, and at considerable commercial risk too. I recall the movie getting a "C+" CinemaScore grade from audiences, which is pretty dire considering that any animated movie that holds kids' attention scores in the "A"-range. Who can blame parents for walking into a movie expecting a Disney-esque diversion and then being angry when they walk out of it having to explain to tykes what ol' Noah Cross was up to in Chinatown? Grade: B+
If you've seen and enjoyed the shrewd '90s hitman comedy Grosse Pointe Blank, then there's really no reason to bother with the countless lame rip-offs that followed in its wake. Wild Target (2010, Jonathan Lynn) is one of those disposable carbon copies of Grosse Pointe, arriving nearly 15 years after that John Cusack vehicle, and with all the freshness of a bowl of mothball soup.
Too bad, because a good movie could've been built around the central trio of actors here. Extraordinary, deadpan British character actor Bill Nighy (who voices Rattlesnake Jake in Rango!) is perfectly cast as Victor, a hitman lacking any kind of social life, and sharp, lovely Emily Blunt is just as well-suited to the role of Rose, a woman whose anger at being targeted by Victor overwhelms her gratefulness over his decision not to kill her. It's impressive that Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series) is able to score laughs while pitted against two veteran co-stars, but he is indeed quite funny playing Tony, a stoner who becomes Victor's protege through a series of events too labored to be worth getting into.
In smaller roles, Martin Freeman (from the original BBC The Office), as a cartoonishly dentured killer, and Eileen Atkins, as Victor's ruthless mother, also register strongly.
But no amount of good acting can save a movie that stands around wanting to be hip and irreverent without any idea of how to go about accomplishing that goal. A subplot in which Victor can't figure out if he's attracted to Rose or Tony because his monk-like existence has caused some sexual confusion is inorganically tacked on and timidly executed. I'd be more forgiving of a movie in which the protagonist casually hooked up with both Blunt and Grint; they're both lookers, if Grint less conventionally so. But I suppose certain prospective ticket buyers would be scared away by such a movie, and not alienating ticket buyers is one of this pointless film's few discernible reasons for existence. Grade: C
Objectively, that loopy weirdness didn't go anywhere, and that's a very good thing. A Western riff that foregrounds its lizard protagonist's existential woes is a strange thing in and of itself, but director Verbinski and Logan don't stop there. They merrily inject some of Chinatown into the movie's DNA (and what makes it odd is that they don't just name-check the film noir classic in the lazy manner typical of DreamWorks Animation's lesser fare; they weave the Polanski film's portrait of water-industry corruption into the narrative and even make Ned Beatty's turtle villain a dead ringer for John Huston's Noah Cross) and pay homage to Clint Eastwood in the most surreal way imaginable.
Seeming to enjoy his freedom from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (only the second entry, Dead Man's Chest, felt fully liberated and goofy to me--yeah, I know I'm in the minority there), Verbinski does arguably his best visual work here; the deep-focus compositions successfully evoke obvious influence Sergio Leone. Verbinski's Pirates cohort Johnny Depp, who voices the heroic lizard, also responds well to the departure from Captain Jack Sparrow. His manic, rapid-fire verbal energy and occasional massive shifts in pitch (for example, when the lizard is play-acting different roles in his terrarium in the movie's opening scene) make this a voice-over performance worthy of comparison to his great, imaginative in-the-flesh work.
But, alas, my main quibble from first viewing still stands: the movie is overlong and narratively repetitive even at the normally-far-from-indulgent running time of 107 minutes. This is a problem that has reared its head in even Verbinski's good movies. I remember joking with a friend and colleague that studios should make it part of Verbinski's contract to never exceed 100 minutes.
Still, while Rango offers too much of a good thing, it's the rare animated movie that takes advantage of the form's potential to appeal to grown-ups, and at considerable commercial risk too. I recall the movie getting a "C+" CinemaScore grade from audiences, which is pretty dire considering that any animated movie that holds kids' attention scores in the "A"-range. Who can blame parents for walking into a movie expecting a Disney-esque diversion and then being angry when they walk out of it having to explain to tykes what ol' Noah Cross was up to in Chinatown? Grade: B+
If you've seen and enjoyed the shrewd '90s hitman comedy Grosse Pointe Blank, then there's really no reason to bother with the countless lame rip-offs that followed in its wake. Wild Target (2010, Jonathan Lynn) is one of those disposable carbon copies of Grosse Pointe, arriving nearly 15 years after that John Cusack vehicle, and with all the freshness of a bowl of mothball soup.
Too bad, because a good movie could've been built around the central trio of actors here. Extraordinary, deadpan British character actor Bill Nighy (who voices Rattlesnake Jake in Rango!) is perfectly cast as Victor, a hitman lacking any kind of social life, and sharp, lovely Emily Blunt is just as well-suited to the role of Rose, a woman whose anger at being targeted by Victor overwhelms her gratefulness over his decision not to kill her. It's impressive that Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series) is able to score laughs while pitted against two veteran co-stars, but he is indeed quite funny playing Tony, a stoner who becomes Victor's protege through a series of events too labored to be worth getting into.
In smaller roles, Martin Freeman (from the original BBC The Office), as a cartoonishly dentured killer, and Eileen Atkins, as Victor's ruthless mother, also register strongly.
But no amount of good acting can save a movie that stands around wanting to be hip and irreverent without any idea of how to go about accomplishing that goal. A subplot in which Victor can't figure out if he's attracted to Rose or Tony because his monk-like existence has caused some sexual confusion is inorganically tacked on and timidly executed. I'd be more forgiving of a movie in which the protagonist casually hooked up with both Blunt and Grint; they're both lookers, if Grint less conventionally so. But I suppose certain prospective ticket buyers would be scared away by such a movie, and not alienating ticket buyers is one of this pointless film's few discernible reasons for existence. Grade: C
8/2 Viewing Journal (review of "Bellflower")
Nearly perfect debut films are so hard to come by that it's easy to embrace a first-time effort like Bellflower (2011, Evan Glodell), which treads upon some awfully problematic territory but is so viscerally effective as a wild, gratifyingly unpredictable cinematic ride that it's impossible not to applaud the size of writer-director-star Glodell's cojones.
At this point, I feel the need to emphasize that both the vehicular and testicular metaphors in the sentence above are entirely apropos considering the film under study. Glodell's character, Woodrow, happens to possess two admittedly sweet cars--one that boasts a built-in whiskey dispenser near the passenger seat, and another flame-spewing black beast, dubbed Medusa, that Woodrow and best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson), both Mad Max fanatics, fantasize will guide them through an inevitable-to-them apocalypse--which gearhead Glodell actually tooled and polished specifically for the film. Glodell's automotive fetish is not the most aggressively masculine element of Bellflower--far from it, actually--which is practically drenched in testosterone. The machismo is so overwhelming that viewers who don't support a conventional, exclusionary definition of manhood as being all about physical strength, action over thought, and culturally acceptable "dude" hobbies like pimping rides will likely have little interest in seeing the film more than once.
However, while the movie's brute-force assaultiveness may keep it from being rewatchable, that quality is also what makes it so bracing and audacious upon first viewing, especially for those entering the theatre with little foreknowledge of what they're in for. Glodell's mumblecore-by-way-of-Spike TV approach, which favors inarticulate, manly men, really shouldn't work, but his careful structuring of the near-Neanderthal-level dialogue, inventive visual design (the images look scuffed and super-saturated in a grindhouse-influenced style that really pops), and, most importantly, gift for shocking narrative curveballs turn what could've been just an empty cinematic grunt into a luridly involving work of art.
As an actor, Glodell is nothing special, but he does have a nice, low-key chemistry with Jessie Wiseman, who plays Milly, a blonde that Woodrow falls for after competing with her in a bar's cricket-eating contest (a fresh variation on the Meet Cute). It's spoiling little to say that Woodrow and Milly's romance isn't destined for a "happily ever after" conclusion, and once the relationship goes south, both Woodrow and the movie itself become crazily unhinged.
It wouldn't be fair to describe the movie's intentional plunge into derangement in any more detail than that, but it's worth noting that certain narrative directions it heads in have raised charges of misogyny from detractors. I can think of one grueling third-act scene in particular that finds Glodell perilously walking a tightrope above a pit of dehumanizing exploitation, but thankfully he doesn't falter. He's so clearly interested in exposing the hetero-male mind's reaction to a painful break-up that the film's rage-fueled excesses feel entirely justified.
And the movie's increasingly violent second half is so propulsive and compellingly nuts that it's difficult to call it unpleasant even when it risks being just that. Bellflower serves as a reminder that moviegoing is an inherently masochistic pastime. It's a film that slaps you around quite a bit and leaves you thankful for the rough sensation. Grade: B+
At this point, I feel the need to emphasize that both the vehicular and testicular metaphors in the sentence above are entirely apropos considering the film under study. Glodell's character, Woodrow, happens to possess two admittedly sweet cars--one that boasts a built-in whiskey dispenser near the passenger seat, and another flame-spewing black beast, dubbed Medusa, that Woodrow and best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson), both Mad Max fanatics, fantasize will guide them through an inevitable-to-them apocalypse--which gearhead Glodell actually tooled and polished specifically for the film. Glodell's automotive fetish is not the most aggressively masculine element of Bellflower--far from it, actually--which is practically drenched in testosterone. The machismo is so overwhelming that viewers who don't support a conventional, exclusionary definition of manhood as being all about physical strength, action over thought, and culturally acceptable "dude" hobbies like pimping rides will likely have little interest in seeing the film more than once.
However, while the movie's brute-force assaultiveness may keep it from being rewatchable, that quality is also what makes it so bracing and audacious upon first viewing, especially for those entering the theatre with little foreknowledge of what they're in for. Glodell's mumblecore-by-way-of-Spike TV approach, which favors inarticulate, manly men, really shouldn't work, but his careful structuring of the near-Neanderthal-level dialogue, inventive visual design (the images look scuffed and super-saturated in a grindhouse-influenced style that really pops), and, most importantly, gift for shocking narrative curveballs turn what could've been just an empty cinematic grunt into a luridly involving work of art.
As an actor, Glodell is nothing special, but he does have a nice, low-key chemistry with Jessie Wiseman, who plays Milly, a blonde that Woodrow falls for after competing with her in a bar's cricket-eating contest (a fresh variation on the Meet Cute). It's spoiling little to say that Woodrow and Milly's romance isn't destined for a "happily ever after" conclusion, and once the relationship goes south, both Woodrow and the movie itself become crazily unhinged.
It wouldn't be fair to describe the movie's intentional plunge into derangement in any more detail than that, but it's worth noting that certain narrative directions it heads in have raised charges of misogyny from detractors. I can think of one grueling third-act scene in particular that finds Glodell perilously walking a tightrope above a pit of dehumanizing exploitation, but thankfully he doesn't falter. He's so clearly interested in exposing the hetero-male mind's reaction to a painful break-up that the film's rage-fueled excesses feel entirely justified.
And the movie's increasingly violent second half is so propulsive and compellingly nuts that it's difficult to call it unpleasant even when it risks being just that. Bellflower serves as a reminder that moviegoing is an inherently masochistic pastime. It's a film that slaps you around quite a bit and leaves you thankful for the rough sensation. Grade: B+
Thursday, August 11, 2011
8/1 Viewing Journal (review of "The Night of the Hunter")
A dark children's fairy tale as scary and evocative as anything the Brothers Grimm ever dreamed up, The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton) derives much of its sinister power from a truly unforgettable big-screen villain--Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell. A murderous ex-convict who hides his ugly nature behind a folksy smokescreen of Christian rhetoric, Mr. Powell insinuates himself with his former cellmate's newly widowed wife (Shelley Winters) in order to suss out the whereabouts of a stash of stolen money that the cellmate hid in an undisclosed location. Little does Mr. Powell know that the loot has been stuffed in a teddy bear the cellmate's two kids (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) tote around as if it was any old plaything.
Mitchum is utterly riveting in a showcase scene that has Mr. Powell regale susceptible new followers with a monologue explaining the religious meaning behind the "love" and "hate" tattoos that adorn his knuckles (as most film buffs know, Martin Scorsese would later pay homage to the tattoos in his remake of another Mitchum vehicle, Cape Fear), and he's downright vicious in moments that demand Mr. Powell remove his facade to show the child-stalking killer underneath.
However, director Laughton, an actor who famously never directed another film after this one, is just as integral in creating unease within the viewer. He and cinematographer Stanley Cortez create a shadowy atmosphere influenced by German Expressionist classics and visually audacious for a suggestive horror film of the '50s, or of any era, really. Certain images--a high-angle shot that looks down upon the two kids escaping downriver on a raft from the point-of-view of a spider nestling in his intricate web; Chapin's young character spotting Mr. Powell on horseback as a menacing silhouette against the morning's rising sun from his perch in a barn he and Bruce's character hide in--have a strange power, as if they're worming their way into your subconscious as soon as you glimpse them.
Though the character of Mr. Powell acts as a daring critique of religious hypocrisy, Laughton and writer James Agee are mature enough to realize that religious faith can be used to noble ends as well as devious ones. When the kids take shelter with a God-fearing old woman, Ms. Cooper (an iron-willed Lillian Gish), whose house is like a miniature orphanage, it's surprising how immediately Ms. Cooper registers as a force just as strong in her maternal protectiveness as Mr. Powell is in his bloodthirsty greed. The third-act stand-off between these two self-proclaimed servants of God cements The Night of the Hunter as a resonant, timeless fable of good vs. evil. Grade: A
Mitchum is utterly riveting in a showcase scene that has Mr. Powell regale susceptible new followers with a monologue explaining the religious meaning behind the "love" and "hate" tattoos that adorn his knuckles (as most film buffs know, Martin Scorsese would later pay homage to the tattoos in his remake of another Mitchum vehicle, Cape Fear), and he's downright vicious in moments that demand Mr. Powell remove his facade to show the child-stalking killer underneath.
However, director Laughton, an actor who famously never directed another film after this one, is just as integral in creating unease within the viewer. He and cinematographer Stanley Cortez create a shadowy atmosphere influenced by German Expressionist classics and visually audacious for a suggestive horror film of the '50s, or of any era, really. Certain images--a high-angle shot that looks down upon the two kids escaping downriver on a raft from the point-of-view of a spider nestling in his intricate web; Chapin's young character spotting Mr. Powell on horseback as a menacing silhouette against the morning's rising sun from his perch in a barn he and Bruce's character hide in--have a strange power, as if they're worming their way into your subconscious as soon as you glimpse them.
Though the character of Mr. Powell acts as a daring critique of religious hypocrisy, Laughton and writer James Agee are mature enough to realize that religious faith can be used to noble ends as well as devious ones. When the kids take shelter with a God-fearing old woman, Ms. Cooper (an iron-willed Lillian Gish), whose house is like a miniature orphanage, it's surprising how immediately Ms. Cooper registers as a force just as strong in her maternal protectiveness as Mr. Powell is in his bloodthirsty greed. The third-act stand-off between these two self-proclaimed servants of God cements The Night of the Hunter as a resonant, timeless fable of good vs. evil. Grade: A
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
7/31 Viewing Journal (review of "Cowboys & Aliens")
The key to what made Iron Man such a great summer-movie surprise a few years ago wasn't its effects-filled action set pieces, although director Jon Favreau handled those with aplomb, but how the character-driven scenes between the requisite explosions really breathed in a loose, witty way. Favreau allowed star and MVP Robert Downey Jr., along with a first-rate supporting cast, so much room to banter that the viewer could be forgiven for thinking at times that what was unfolding onscreen wasn't a superhero flick but a relaxed and exquisitely acted ensemble comedy.
For the inviting first 30 minutes of Cowboys & Aliens (2011, Jon Favreau), Favreau seems to be taking a similar approach to this graphic-novel-inspired postmodern merging of the old-school oater with high-tech sci-fi. Like any classic Western, Cowboys & Aliens fills its cast with a couple of reliable above-the-title movie stars and an impressive roster of character actors enlisted to play assorted townsfolk. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford play, respectively, a mysterious badass with a piece of extraterrestrial hardware clamped around his wrist and a ruthless cattle baron who dominates the small town of Absolution, while the supporting cast populating Absolution includes Sam Rockwell as a meek saloon keeper, Adam Beach as a Native American working as the cattle baron's right-hand man, Keith Carradine as sherriff, Clancy Brown as a preacher, and Paul Dano (in the wormy James Spader Jr. mode we first got a glimpse of in There Will Be Blood) as the cattle baron's n'er-do-well alcoholic son. It's quite a line-up, and for a while, Favreau is content to let the actors ease into their archetypal characters and play around in what amounts to a lighthearted Old West romp. As in Iron Man, Favreau's strength is in getting out of the way of an accomplished cast and allowing room for unexpected humor to flourish (the juxtaposition of Craig's deadpan brutishness with Dano's trembly insecurity is the source of the best laughs). This strategy, along with handsome widescreen cinematography from d.p. Matthew Libatique, ensures that the first half-hour of Cowboys ambles along very pleasantly.
But then Favreau inexplicably changes his strategy a quarter of the way into the movie and decides to just get out of the way of a generic, horribly unimaginative screenplay credited to five (!) writers. Needless to say, this proves to be a considerably less rewarding creative approach (and I use the term "creative" loosely here). After aliens attack Absolution and kidnap a handful of its citizens, the rest of the town's denizens mount their horses and brave the rocky wilderness in order to find the aliens and rescue the captives. At the point when everyone leaves Absolution, I would strongly advise viewers to simply leave the theatre and mentally devise their own narrative course for the remaining 90 minutes. They would be nearly guaranteed to come up with more novel ideas than this film's army of screenwriters were able to, and as a bonus, they would have avoided an hour and a half of dull, aimless summer moviemaking by commitee.
The humor and liveliness really do seep out of the film once the actors get on horseback. The remainder of the movie joylessly rotates narratively unmotivated action scenes, grim chunks of exposition and backstory, and convenient yet insulting-to-the-audience narrative coincidences in an increasingly numbing cycle.
The action climax is at least somewhat noteworthy for providing plenty of cowboy-vs.-alien hand-to-hand brawling, which most recent alien-invasion movies, from Independence Day to War of the Worlds, have been either too timid or too high-minded to deliver. But that's about it for excitement. Even the aliens themselves disappoint with their derivative physical appearance. Why is that the creature designers behind this, Cloverfield, and Super 8 think that human-like leg and arm muscles make aliens fun and creepy to look at? I have no idea, but at least the tiresome second and third acts of Cowboys & Aliens can claim to be "muscular" in some superficial way. Grade: C
For the inviting first 30 minutes of Cowboys & Aliens (2011, Jon Favreau), Favreau seems to be taking a similar approach to this graphic-novel-inspired postmodern merging of the old-school oater with high-tech sci-fi. Like any classic Western, Cowboys & Aliens fills its cast with a couple of reliable above-the-title movie stars and an impressive roster of character actors enlisted to play assorted townsfolk. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford play, respectively, a mysterious badass with a piece of extraterrestrial hardware clamped around his wrist and a ruthless cattle baron who dominates the small town of Absolution, while the supporting cast populating Absolution includes Sam Rockwell as a meek saloon keeper, Adam Beach as a Native American working as the cattle baron's right-hand man, Keith Carradine as sherriff, Clancy Brown as a preacher, and Paul Dano (in the wormy James Spader Jr. mode we first got a glimpse of in There Will Be Blood) as the cattle baron's n'er-do-well alcoholic son. It's quite a line-up, and for a while, Favreau is content to let the actors ease into their archetypal characters and play around in what amounts to a lighthearted Old West romp. As in Iron Man, Favreau's strength is in getting out of the way of an accomplished cast and allowing room for unexpected humor to flourish (the juxtaposition of Craig's deadpan brutishness with Dano's trembly insecurity is the source of the best laughs). This strategy, along with handsome widescreen cinematography from d.p. Matthew Libatique, ensures that the first half-hour of Cowboys ambles along very pleasantly.
But then Favreau inexplicably changes his strategy a quarter of the way into the movie and decides to just get out of the way of a generic, horribly unimaginative screenplay credited to five (!) writers. Needless to say, this proves to be a considerably less rewarding creative approach (and I use the term "creative" loosely here). After aliens attack Absolution and kidnap a handful of its citizens, the rest of the town's denizens mount their horses and brave the rocky wilderness in order to find the aliens and rescue the captives. At the point when everyone leaves Absolution, I would strongly advise viewers to simply leave the theatre and mentally devise their own narrative course for the remaining 90 minutes. They would be nearly guaranteed to come up with more novel ideas than this film's army of screenwriters were able to, and as a bonus, they would have avoided an hour and a half of dull, aimless summer moviemaking by commitee.
The humor and liveliness really do seep out of the film once the actors get on horseback. The remainder of the movie joylessly rotates narratively unmotivated action scenes, grim chunks of exposition and backstory, and convenient yet insulting-to-the-audience narrative coincidences in an increasingly numbing cycle.
The action climax is at least somewhat noteworthy for providing plenty of cowboy-vs.-alien hand-to-hand brawling, which most recent alien-invasion movies, from Independence Day to War of the Worlds, have been either too timid or too high-minded to deliver. But that's about it for excitement. Even the aliens themselves disappoint with their derivative physical appearance. Why is that the creature designers behind this, Cloverfield, and Super 8 think that human-like leg and arm muscles make aliens fun and creepy to look at? I have no idea, but at least the tiresome second and third acts of Cowboys & Aliens can claim to be "muscular" in some superficial way. Grade: C
Sunday, August 7, 2011
7/30 Viewing Journal (review of "The Myth of the American Sleepover")
The multi-character ensemble structure and last-day-of-summer-for-a-group-of-high-schoolers set-up of writer-director David Robert Mitchell's riveting, remarkably assured feature debut The Myth of the American Sleepover (2011, David Robert Mitchell) may recall Richard Linklater's unforgettable Dazed and Confused, but Mitchell's stylistic approach doesn't really resemble the scruffy, Altman-esque satire clouded by bong smoke of Linklater's teen-movie touchstone. Instead, the potent blend of Mitchell's visually disciplined formalism and the subtle behavioral naturalism of his young cast make The Myth of the American Sleepover feel more akin to the gorgeous, emotionally sincere first two films of similarly tri-monikered writer-director David Gordon Green (George Washington and All the Real Girls) and to Peter Sollett's low-key charmer Raising Victor Vargas.
Like those preceding films, Sleepover is genuinely interested in depicting teenagers who fumble through their thoughts, desires, and regrets with believable awkwardness. These young characters are never armed with sitcom-ready quips to tease their peers with, and they're all the more compelling for that. And even more than Green or Sollett, Mitchell roots his portrait of adolescent longing in a largely undefined time and place, the better to relate the film to anyone of any age's experiences growing up. There are brief glimpses of a Michigan license plate and of a SpongeBob Squarepants doll, but those are the only signifiers of setting and era in a film that really could be taking place in any middle-class American suburb.
Mitchell and editor Julio Perez IV deftly weave back and forth between several teen characters' narrative threads so that each acquires an equal amount of dramatic weight. There's adventurous Maggie (Claire Sloma), who flirts with an older boy at a lakeside shindig; freshman Rob (Marlon Morton), who's determined to track down a blonde beauty he earlier semi-stalked at a grocery store; Scott (Brett Jacobsen), a college student pondering dropping out of his studies to remain closer to the twins (Nikita and Jade Ramsey) he harbored a joint crush on in high school; and Claudia (Amanda Bauer), who shakes up the girls' sleepover party after discovering (via a friend's diary entry!) that her boyfriend cheated on her.
The movie is driven by the palpable hormonal buzz of teenage erotic longing, which Mitchell renders with near-tangible force (the sweaty summer climate similarly seems to emanate from the screen). At the same time, Mitchell never stoops to the prurient sensationalism typical of director Larry Clark's (Kids) work, even when Rob braves a trip to a make-out maze shrouded in eerie darkness. But the overpowering sense of romantic and sexual yearning, along with Mitchell's keenly etched characterizations and the creamy, otherworldly visual glow that Mitchell creates with the assistance of director of photography James Laxton, makes Sleepover a uniquely tense and enveloping cinematic experience in spite of its modesty.
Reviews have wisely singled out the spunky Sloma (who gets a beguiling mid-film dance number all to herself) as a cast standout, but she's hardly the only one. Bauer makes the most out of Claudia's increasingly inebriated outrage, and Morton brings a surprising intensity to Rob's romantic ardor; he's like Ralph Fiennes trapped in the body of Anton Yelchin.
It's unfortunate that The Myth of the American Sleepover has yet to find much of an audience. It's likely that the gradually seductive pacing may be too demanding for young audiences weaned on teen movies fueled by gross-out gags and trendy pop songs, and the movie's honest enough to arrive at small-scale revelations instead of the grand statements some teen-targeted Hollywood fare aspires to. However, one would hope anyone lucky enough to catch this film will walk out of the theatre saying, "I've been there." Grade: A-
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm friends with the aforementioned editor, Julio, and I've been fortunate enough to chat with writer-director Mitchell on a few non-professionally-related occasions. I remember when talking with Mitchell at Julio's Memorial Day party this year, I was impressed that what he had seen theatrically that holiday weekend was Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Hitchcock's Vertigo, the latter of which screened at repertory theatre the Egyptian. It speaks well of a young filmmaker that this was his cinematic diet on a weekend where everybody seemed to be in a mad rush to see fucking The Hangover Part II. Now that I've finally seen Sleepover, I can attest to Mitchell's cineaste taste, and his in-person down-to-earth sincerity, translating successfully to the finished film. As with my Where the Road Meets the Sun review, take this review with whatever amount of salt you see fit.]
Like those preceding films, Sleepover is genuinely interested in depicting teenagers who fumble through their thoughts, desires, and regrets with believable awkwardness. These young characters are never armed with sitcom-ready quips to tease their peers with, and they're all the more compelling for that. And even more than Green or Sollett, Mitchell roots his portrait of adolescent longing in a largely undefined time and place, the better to relate the film to anyone of any age's experiences growing up. There are brief glimpses of a Michigan license plate and of a SpongeBob Squarepants doll, but those are the only signifiers of setting and era in a film that really could be taking place in any middle-class American suburb.
Mitchell and editor Julio Perez IV deftly weave back and forth between several teen characters' narrative threads so that each acquires an equal amount of dramatic weight. There's adventurous Maggie (Claire Sloma), who flirts with an older boy at a lakeside shindig; freshman Rob (Marlon Morton), who's determined to track down a blonde beauty he earlier semi-stalked at a grocery store; Scott (Brett Jacobsen), a college student pondering dropping out of his studies to remain closer to the twins (Nikita and Jade Ramsey) he harbored a joint crush on in high school; and Claudia (Amanda Bauer), who shakes up the girls' sleepover party after discovering (via a friend's diary entry!) that her boyfriend cheated on her.
The movie is driven by the palpable hormonal buzz of teenage erotic longing, which Mitchell renders with near-tangible force (the sweaty summer climate similarly seems to emanate from the screen). At the same time, Mitchell never stoops to the prurient sensationalism typical of director Larry Clark's (Kids) work, even when Rob braves a trip to a make-out maze shrouded in eerie darkness. But the overpowering sense of romantic and sexual yearning, along with Mitchell's keenly etched characterizations and the creamy, otherworldly visual glow that Mitchell creates with the assistance of director of photography James Laxton, makes Sleepover a uniquely tense and enveloping cinematic experience in spite of its modesty.
Reviews have wisely singled out the spunky Sloma (who gets a beguiling mid-film dance number all to herself) as a cast standout, but she's hardly the only one. Bauer makes the most out of Claudia's increasingly inebriated outrage, and Morton brings a surprising intensity to Rob's romantic ardor; he's like Ralph Fiennes trapped in the body of Anton Yelchin.
It's unfortunate that The Myth of the American Sleepover has yet to find much of an audience. It's likely that the gradually seductive pacing may be too demanding for young audiences weaned on teen movies fueled by gross-out gags and trendy pop songs, and the movie's honest enough to arrive at small-scale revelations instead of the grand statements some teen-targeted Hollywood fare aspires to. However, one would hope anyone lucky enough to catch this film will walk out of the theatre saying, "I've been there." Grade: A-
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm friends with the aforementioned editor, Julio, and I've been fortunate enough to chat with writer-director Mitchell on a few non-professionally-related occasions. I remember when talking with Mitchell at Julio's Memorial Day party this year, I was impressed that what he had seen theatrically that holiday weekend was Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Hitchcock's Vertigo, the latter of which screened at repertory theatre the Egyptian. It speaks well of a young filmmaker that this was his cinematic diet on a weekend where everybody seemed to be in a mad rush to see fucking The Hangover Part II. Now that I've finally seen Sleepover, I can attest to Mitchell's cineaste taste, and his in-person down-to-earth sincerity, translating successfully to the finished film. As with my Where the Road Meets the Sun review, take this review with whatever amount of salt you see fit.]
7/29 Viewing Journal (review of "Crazy, Stupid, Love")
Just a few minutes into the blissfully entertaining crowd-pleaser Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa), middle-aged suburbanite Cal (Steve Carell) is thrust into single life unprepared after his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore), who he's been with ever since high school, asks for a divorce. There's something inherently comical about the sight of Cal drinking by himself at a swank singles bar while clad in a baggy suit and worn sneakers, but, more importantly, Ficarra & Requa and Carell recognize the inescapable sadness of the situation. The directing team lingers in the pauses between Cal's broadly funny drunken outbursts for a couple beats more than conventionally minded filmmakers would, and Carell plays the loneliness behind the shitfaced bluster with real ache.
The understanding that frothy studio entertainment only really takes flight when executed with real (and ocassionally dark) human feeling has clearly united the directors and terrific ensemble cast of Crazy, Stupid, Love. The movie's script, by Disney veteran Dan Fogelman (Tangled), is rich in characterization and intricate in its farcical structure, but it's also flawed, a bit too eager-to-please, and filled with banter that's roughly 10% more witty than that found in the established-earlier-in-the-blog-as-50%-clever romantic comedy Friends With Benefits (better to be 10% below, say, The Philadelphia Story). So that makes this a case of a film's stars and makers taking a sturdy but overly familiar blueprint and crafting something improbably unique and fresh from it.
Fogelman does deserve credit for taking a more democratic approach to romcom formula that allows for a whole gaggle of characters, not just two destined-to-be-together lovebirds, to pursue romance. In addition to Cal and Emily, there's Jacob (Ryan Gosling), an impeccably sculpted and groomed player charitable enough to take Cal under his wing and teach the divorcee how to score with female clubgoers. For all of the notches on Jacob's bedpost, there is one cute redhead that "got away" and could see through Jacob's practiced moves--shrewd aspiring lawyer Hannah (Emma Stone), who is banking on a marriage proposal from her milquetoast boyfriend (an oddly cast but appropriately dorky Josh Groban).
As long as Crazy, Stupid, Love focuses on the quartet of Cal, Emily, Jacob, and Hannah, and their various romantic entanglements, it stands as a first-rate middlebrow comedy. Carell gives his most affecting and well-rounded big-screen performance since The 40-Year-Old Virgin, refusing to overplay either the humor or pathos of his character and effortlessly clicking with Gosling in a heaven-sent buddy-movie pairing. Gosling invests this rare comedic performance with the same depth and precision he brings to his stunning dramatic work. He has every gesture and strutting step of this confident shark down cold, and also makes Jacob's inevitable third-act transformation wholly believable. Stone bubbles over with energy and intelligence as Hannah, and is especially lovable in a scene where she finally succumbs to Jacob's charms and yet can't stop from drunkenly rambling when Jacob takes her to his pad. There remains no question Stone is a bona fide star. Moore gets a little less to work with than Carell, Gosling, and Stone, but still uses her acting powers to offer a window into the conflict inside of Emily's head. Moore makes the character a complicated woman trying to figure out the source of her unhappiness instead of someone to be judged for throwing Cal out on his ass. Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei (showing off her killer comic timing after excellent dramatic work in recent films like The Wrestler and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), and relative newcomer Liza Lapira (a tart-tongued wonder as Hannah's best friend) contribute fine support to the story threads dominated by the quartet of Carell, Gosling, Stone, and Moore.
But a subplot involving Cal and Emily's 13-year-old son Robbie's (Jonah Bobo) incurable infatuation with older babysitter Jessica (the endearingly gawky Analeigh Tipton) doesn't quite work, both because a) the conceit of a wise-in-the-ways-of-love kid has clearly been lifted from Love Actually in a shamefully derivative manner and b) said conceit has grown tired and irritating considering Love Actually came out a full eight years ago and this isn't the first movie in those eight years to steal the trope from Richard Curtis' irresistible British ensemble comedy.
The conception of Robbie is hardly the only overly recognizable element in Fogelman's screenplay. The writer aims for classic farce in the movie's elaborately orchestrated climax, wherein the movie's large cast of characters violently converge due to a series of misunderstandings and withheld secrets. I really admired Fogelman's construction of the set piece, and the timing with which the entire cast executes it, but it's proven to be way too old-school for some I've discussed the film with. As for a heartfelt public speech a central character makes in the film's concluding ten minutes, I'm gonna have to side with detractors who claim it's one of Fogelman's unsuccessful Hollywood-y touches. It's too calculated to be moving.
The reason why Fogelman's script is lucky to have been brought to the screen by Ficarra & Requa is that the directors' anti-Hollywood impulses provide necessary balance. The writing team's first directorial effort, the Jim Carrey-Ewan McGregor dark-romantic-comedy vehicle I Love You, Phillip Morris wasn't perfect but announced Ficarra & Requa as possessing a distinctive and refreshing comic sensibility that emphasizes off-kilter gags and the so-dark-it's-nearly-unfunny desperation of the characters. With Crazy, Stupid, Love, the directors' odd bits of visual humor (i.e. beginning a scene via a hilarious slo-mo push-in to Jacob standing and scarfing down a slice of Sbarro's pizza in the Century City mall; naturally, Gosling even looks cool eating a greasy slice of pizza) and collaboration with the cast to infuse the light proceedings with real emotional gravity (the sequence depicting Jacob and Hannah's first night together is a highlight--funny, touching, real, and edited with such grace as to be romantic summer-movie magic on par with Soderbergh, Clooney, and Lopez's "Gary and Celeste" set piece in Out of Sight) make the film a sweet, tasty romcom confection. I'm not in love with it, but I am in crazy, stupid like-a-lot with it. Grade: B+
The understanding that frothy studio entertainment only really takes flight when executed with real (and ocassionally dark) human feeling has clearly united the directors and terrific ensemble cast of Crazy, Stupid, Love. The movie's script, by Disney veteran Dan Fogelman (Tangled), is rich in characterization and intricate in its farcical structure, but it's also flawed, a bit too eager-to-please, and filled with banter that's roughly 10% more witty than that found in the established-earlier-in-the-blog-as-50%-clever romantic comedy Friends With Benefits (better to be 10% below, say, The Philadelphia Story). So that makes this a case of a film's stars and makers taking a sturdy but overly familiar blueprint and crafting something improbably unique and fresh from it.
Fogelman does deserve credit for taking a more democratic approach to romcom formula that allows for a whole gaggle of characters, not just two destined-to-be-together lovebirds, to pursue romance. In addition to Cal and Emily, there's Jacob (Ryan Gosling), an impeccably sculpted and groomed player charitable enough to take Cal under his wing and teach the divorcee how to score with female clubgoers. For all of the notches on Jacob's bedpost, there is one cute redhead that "got away" and could see through Jacob's practiced moves--shrewd aspiring lawyer Hannah (Emma Stone), who is banking on a marriage proposal from her milquetoast boyfriend (an oddly cast but appropriately dorky Josh Groban).
As long as Crazy, Stupid, Love focuses on the quartet of Cal, Emily, Jacob, and Hannah, and their various romantic entanglements, it stands as a first-rate middlebrow comedy. Carell gives his most affecting and well-rounded big-screen performance since The 40-Year-Old Virgin, refusing to overplay either the humor or pathos of his character and effortlessly clicking with Gosling in a heaven-sent buddy-movie pairing. Gosling invests this rare comedic performance with the same depth and precision he brings to his stunning dramatic work. He has every gesture and strutting step of this confident shark down cold, and also makes Jacob's inevitable third-act transformation wholly believable. Stone bubbles over with energy and intelligence as Hannah, and is especially lovable in a scene where she finally succumbs to Jacob's charms and yet can't stop from drunkenly rambling when Jacob takes her to his pad. There remains no question Stone is a bona fide star. Moore gets a little less to work with than Carell, Gosling, and Stone, but still uses her acting powers to offer a window into the conflict inside of Emily's head. Moore makes the character a complicated woman trying to figure out the source of her unhappiness instead of someone to be judged for throwing Cal out on his ass. Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei (showing off her killer comic timing after excellent dramatic work in recent films like The Wrestler and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), and relative newcomer Liza Lapira (a tart-tongued wonder as Hannah's best friend) contribute fine support to the story threads dominated by the quartet of Carell, Gosling, Stone, and Moore.
But a subplot involving Cal and Emily's 13-year-old son Robbie's (Jonah Bobo) incurable infatuation with older babysitter Jessica (the endearingly gawky Analeigh Tipton) doesn't quite work, both because a) the conceit of a wise-in-the-ways-of-love kid has clearly been lifted from Love Actually in a shamefully derivative manner and b) said conceit has grown tired and irritating considering Love Actually came out a full eight years ago and this isn't the first movie in those eight years to steal the trope from Richard Curtis' irresistible British ensemble comedy.
The conception of Robbie is hardly the only overly recognizable element in Fogelman's screenplay. The writer aims for classic farce in the movie's elaborately orchestrated climax, wherein the movie's large cast of characters violently converge due to a series of misunderstandings and withheld secrets. I really admired Fogelman's construction of the set piece, and the timing with which the entire cast executes it, but it's proven to be way too old-school for some I've discussed the film with. As for a heartfelt public speech a central character makes in the film's concluding ten minutes, I'm gonna have to side with detractors who claim it's one of Fogelman's unsuccessful Hollywood-y touches. It's too calculated to be moving.
The reason why Fogelman's script is lucky to have been brought to the screen by Ficarra & Requa is that the directors' anti-Hollywood impulses provide necessary balance. The writing team's first directorial effort, the Jim Carrey-Ewan McGregor dark-romantic-comedy vehicle I Love You, Phillip Morris wasn't perfect but announced Ficarra & Requa as possessing a distinctive and refreshing comic sensibility that emphasizes off-kilter gags and the so-dark-it's-nearly-unfunny desperation of the characters. With Crazy, Stupid, Love, the directors' odd bits of visual humor (i.e. beginning a scene via a hilarious slo-mo push-in to Jacob standing and scarfing down a slice of Sbarro's pizza in the Century City mall; naturally, Gosling even looks cool eating a greasy slice of pizza) and collaboration with the cast to infuse the light proceedings with real emotional gravity (the sequence depicting Jacob and Hannah's first night together is a highlight--funny, touching, real, and edited with such grace as to be romantic summer-movie magic on par with Soderbergh, Clooney, and Lopez's "Gary and Celeste" set piece in Out of Sight) make the film a sweet, tasty romcom confection. I'm not in love with it, but I am in crazy, stupid like-a-lot with it. Grade: B+
Friday, August 5, 2011
7/28 Viewing Journal (EARLY REVIEW: "Melancholia")
Visionary Danish filmmaker and notorious provocateur Lars von Trier has done some impressive work in the past decade, including his great, lacerating allegory of American exclusion Dogville, and his only recent misfire is that 2004 film's dramatically unsatisfying sequel Manderlay, which still contains enough daring ideas to make it worthwhile viewing for von Trier completists. But his latest film, the intimate epic Melancholia (2011, Lars von Trier) (opening 11/11 in limited release and on Video On Demand), stands as his most stunning and full-bodied cinematic achievement since Breaking the Waves.
Von Trier has spent the 15 years since that emotionally devastating masterpiece trying to distance himself from its heart-on-the-sleeve romanticism, whether intentionally or not. Sure, Dancer in the Dark is moving enough to almost be an exception, but its academic interest in dissecting the American movie musical and its jarringly graphic execution climax seemed to signal the direction von Trier was heading in for the remainder of the 21st century's inaugural decade. Von Trier's output in this period contained enough refined artistry and probing depth to keep his "bad boy" edginess from growing stale or seeming immature, but he was so interested in pushing the envelope of good taste with these films as to make emotional engagement with them difficult verging on impossible.
While it's unlikely that the pure uplift of Breaking the Waves' final scene will ever factor into von Trier's work again, Melancholia boasts a palpable humanity and emotional texture that has been noticeably lacking in even the best of the director's post-Waves films. Nothing remotely gross or hard-to-take occurs in the film, and that freedom from shock tactics has loosened von Trier up to such a degree that, for the first time in a while, he's made a movie that works first and foremost as a wonderful character drama. The high style, elements of genre subversion, and deep well of subtext that we've come to expect from von Trier are really just icing on the cake here.
But oh my, what icing! Von Trier opens the film with an eight-minute-long coup de cinema likely to cause even the most jaded cinephile to go slack-jawed in wonderment. A series of precisely framed images play out in extreme slow-motion, depicting a planet destructively colliding with Earth and a handful of characters we haven't yet met reacting to the storm-like chaos of the collision in a variety of different ways.
Von Trier then shifts gears from the effects-driven, classical-music-scored surrealism of this positively orgasmic prologue to a gracefully handheld, character-centered approach as the story proper begins. At this point, the planet that we know from the prologue will eventually cause the end of life on Earth as we know it is dismissed as just a star, certainly nothing to disrupt the wedding of Justine (Kirsten Dunst), an ad copywriter with a history of severe depression, to her well-intentioned beau, Michael (a charming Alexander Skarsgard).
The greatest threat to the nuptials is Justine's mercurial emotional state. She is sincere in her assertion to Michael that she will try to stay happy at the wedding reception. But that's a tall order considering the reception's guest list: Justine's former boss, Jack (Stellan Skarsgard), who is uninterested in disguising his zeal to win his star employee back; her long-divorced, frequently bickering parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling); and her understanding-to-a-point, long-suffering sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), accompanied by temperamental husband John (Kiefer Sutherland).
The bustling, ensemble-powered humanity and dark comedy derived from social awkwardness that defines this reception set piece, which takes up a little over half of the movie, is reminiscent of Robert Altman's A Wedding, fellow Dane Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration, and Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. It's a testament to von Trier's gifts that he's able to guide the onscreen festivities with as sure a hand as those other estimable directors.
Then, he shifts gears yet again, demonstrating that he's more than able to retain his ability to surprise even while restraining his impulse to shock. The movie jumps forward in time to show that forbidding planet, now called Melancholia, moving ever closer to Earth, as Justine and Claire each deal with the inevitability of death in their own different ways. This part of the film is an art-house riff on the sci-fi genre in much the same way that von Trier's last film, Antichrist, acted as an art-house take on the horror genre (the voluptuous prologue, crayon-scrawled title/director card, and presence of Gainsbourg also offer intriguing overlaps with Antichrist, although those scarred for life by that film's graphic sexual violence can be assured that this is a far more restrained film).
The sum total of what von Trier has pulled off with his audacious stylistic and narrative shifts is artistically breathtaking, and open to discussion as to the underlying meaning(s). Since von Trier has openly discussed the mighty battle with crippling depression that led him to create Antichrist, it's easy to see the character of Justine in Melancholia as a symbolic stand-in for the director. But then, is he using Justine to metaphorically compare Melancholia's fatal trajectory with a promising young talent's loss to an overpowering inner darkness (this and The Tree of Life, the two best films I've seen this year so far, both juxtapose the cosmic and the human in thematically fertile ways), or is the character a sly justification of pessimism as an entirely logical viewpoint? (On yet another level, the movie seems to allegorically address the climate-change debate, pointedly casting Sutherland--hero Jack Bauer from right-wing small-screen favorite 24--as a conservative naysayer.)
Still, as rewarding as it is to read into Melancholia, the film succeeds most as an intimate, finely detailed character study. Von Trier has been accused of misogyny in the past (which I think is overly reductive, though it's not like I'm unable to see where those charges are coming from), but his connection to Dunst's Justine is strong and empathic. Dunst responds with a performance of keen emotional intuition, the best of her career to date. Every minute flicker of feeling that passes over Dunst's face is easily discernible to the viewer; we eventually can tell the difference between Justine's real smiles and those she merely puts on in a game effort to fit in. Another major achievement of von Trier and Dunst's collaboration is how disturbingly accurate they are in capturing real, exhausting depression.
As the family member best equipped to deal with Justine when she hits an emotional nadir, Gainsbourg is remarkably subtle and complex in suggesting Claire's occasional difficulty in summoning the appropriate compassion to help keep Justine from sinking into the abyss. She obviously wouldn't be the first actress to come to mind as a physically credible sister to Dunst (if von Trier had nabbed his first choice for the Justine role, Penelope Cruz, the sibling casting would've raised even more eyebrows), but she and Dunst forge such a believable and unique emotional bond onscreen as to render such concerns needlessly superficial. In a just world, both would be major contenders in this year's Best Actress Oscar race (Dunst has already garnered the Best Actress award from the Cannes Film Festival, though this film isn't typical Oscar fare, to put it mildly).
The two leads also benefit from the back-up provided by a sterling supporting cast. Hurt and Rampling are as formidable as ever; a scene in which their characters verbally assault each other at the wedding reception could legitimately be shown in acting classes. And the elder Skarsgard is in prime creep mode; he gets a sublime throwaway bit where his character angrily tosses his plate of food against the side of a catering truck only to deny his hissyfit the moment he realizes he was caught in the act. Sutherland is the only one here who doesn't quite fit in, but von Trier is wise enough to use his weirdly overamped intensity to comedic effect.
With one of von Trier's best ensembles and an eloquently articulated sense of end-times despair, Melancholia would be ideally primed to win over those who've been staying away from the director's recent work...were it not for von Trier's jackass decision to play the "bad boy" at the film's Cannes press conference, jokingly admitting that he feels a kinship with Adolf Hitler and making other cracks that someone unfamiliar with his interview schtick might interpret as anti-Semitic. Of course, those used to his routine know that he was being knowing and insincere--an imp with a questionable sense of humor and zero sense of public decorum. I agree with another of the film's big fans (I do forget which critic at the moment) that after making a film as relatively restrained and uncomfortably personal as Melancholia, von Trier most likely felt a psychological need to create division among the cinephile ranks once again. It surely can't feel safe for someone of his unusual mindset to bare his soul in a film that's entirely free of the transgressive jolts that he has come to use as a kind of stylistic defense mechanism. But I'm sure as hell glad he did. Melancholia's doom may be more crushing than the tears-inspiring catharsis of Breaking the Waves, but both offer the rare spectacle of a master filmmaker in full command of his formal and narrative powers. Grade: A
Von Trier has spent the 15 years since that emotionally devastating masterpiece trying to distance himself from its heart-on-the-sleeve romanticism, whether intentionally or not. Sure, Dancer in the Dark is moving enough to almost be an exception, but its academic interest in dissecting the American movie musical and its jarringly graphic execution climax seemed to signal the direction von Trier was heading in for the remainder of the 21st century's inaugural decade. Von Trier's output in this period contained enough refined artistry and probing depth to keep his "bad boy" edginess from growing stale or seeming immature, but he was so interested in pushing the envelope of good taste with these films as to make emotional engagement with them difficult verging on impossible.
While it's unlikely that the pure uplift of Breaking the Waves' final scene will ever factor into von Trier's work again, Melancholia boasts a palpable humanity and emotional texture that has been noticeably lacking in even the best of the director's post-Waves films. Nothing remotely gross or hard-to-take occurs in the film, and that freedom from shock tactics has loosened von Trier up to such a degree that, for the first time in a while, he's made a movie that works first and foremost as a wonderful character drama. The high style, elements of genre subversion, and deep well of subtext that we've come to expect from von Trier are really just icing on the cake here.
But oh my, what icing! Von Trier opens the film with an eight-minute-long coup de cinema likely to cause even the most jaded cinephile to go slack-jawed in wonderment. A series of precisely framed images play out in extreme slow-motion, depicting a planet destructively colliding with Earth and a handful of characters we haven't yet met reacting to the storm-like chaos of the collision in a variety of different ways.
Von Trier then shifts gears from the effects-driven, classical-music-scored surrealism of this positively orgasmic prologue to a gracefully handheld, character-centered approach as the story proper begins. At this point, the planet that we know from the prologue will eventually cause the end of life on Earth as we know it is dismissed as just a star, certainly nothing to disrupt the wedding of Justine (Kirsten Dunst), an ad copywriter with a history of severe depression, to her well-intentioned beau, Michael (a charming Alexander Skarsgard).
The greatest threat to the nuptials is Justine's mercurial emotional state. She is sincere in her assertion to Michael that she will try to stay happy at the wedding reception. But that's a tall order considering the reception's guest list: Justine's former boss, Jack (Stellan Skarsgard), who is uninterested in disguising his zeal to win his star employee back; her long-divorced, frequently bickering parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling); and her understanding-to-a-point, long-suffering sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), accompanied by temperamental husband John (Kiefer Sutherland).
The bustling, ensemble-powered humanity and dark comedy derived from social awkwardness that defines this reception set piece, which takes up a little over half of the movie, is reminiscent of Robert Altman's A Wedding, fellow Dane Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration, and Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. It's a testament to von Trier's gifts that he's able to guide the onscreen festivities with as sure a hand as those other estimable directors.
Then, he shifts gears yet again, demonstrating that he's more than able to retain his ability to surprise even while restraining his impulse to shock. The movie jumps forward in time to show that forbidding planet, now called Melancholia, moving ever closer to Earth, as Justine and Claire each deal with the inevitability of death in their own different ways. This part of the film is an art-house riff on the sci-fi genre in much the same way that von Trier's last film, Antichrist, acted as an art-house take on the horror genre (the voluptuous prologue, crayon-scrawled title/director card, and presence of Gainsbourg also offer intriguing overlaps with Antichrist, although those scarred for life by that film's graphic sexual violence can be assured that this is a far more restrained film).
The sum total of what von Trier has pulled off with his audacious stylistic and narrative shifts is artistically breathtaking, and open to discussion as to the underlying meaning(s). Since von Trier has openly discussed the mighty battle with crippling depression that led him to create Antichrist, it's easy to see the character of Justine in Melancholia as a symbolic stand-in for the director. But then, is he using Justine to metaphorically compare Melancholia's fatal trajectory with a promising young talent's loss to an overpowering inner darkness (this and The Tree of Life, the two best films I've seen this year so far, both juxtapose the cosmic and the human in thematically fertile ways), or is the character a sly justification of pessimism as an entirely logical viewpoint? (On yet another level, the movie seems to allegorically address the climate-change debate, pointedly casting Sutherland--hero Jack Bauer from right-wing small-screen favorite 24--as a conservative naysayer.)
Still, as rewarding as it is to read into Melancholia, the film succeeds most as an intimate, finely detailed character study. Von Trier has been accused of misogyny in the past (which I think is overly reductive, though it's not like I'm unable to see where those charges are coming from), but his connection to Dunst's Justine is strong and empathic. Dunst responds with a performance of keen emotional intuition, the best of her career to date. Every minute flicker of feeling that passes over Dunst's face is easily discernible to the viewer; we eventually can tell the difference between Justine's real smiles and those she merely puts on in a game effort to fit in. Another major achievement of von Trier and Dunst's collaboration is how disturbingly accurate they are in capturing real, exhausting depression.
As the family member best equipped to deal with Justine when she hits an emotional nadir, Gainsbourg is remarkably subtle and complex in suggesting Claire's occasional difficulty in summoning the appropriate compassion to help keep Justine from sinking into the abyss. She obviously wouldn't be the first actress to come to mind as a physically credible sister to Dunst (if von Trier had nabbed his first choice for the Justine role, Penelope Cruz, the sibling casting would've raised even more eyebrows), but she and Dunst forge such a believable and unique emotional bond onscreen as to render such concerns needlessly superficial. In a just world, both would be major contenders in this year's Best Actress Oscar race (Dunst has already garnered the Best Actress award from the Cannes Film Festival, though this film isn't typical Oscar fare, to put it mildly).
The two leads also benefit from the back-up provided by a sterling supporting cast. Hurt and Rampling are as formidable as ever; a scene in which their characters verbally assault each other at the wedding reception could legitimately be shown in acting classes. And the elder Skarsgard is in prime creep mode; he gets a sublime throwaway bit where his character angrily tosses his plate of food against the side of a catering truck only to deny his hissyfit the moment he realizes he was caught in the act. Sutherland is the only one here who doesn't quite fit in, but von Trier is wise enough to use his weirdly overamped intensity to comedic effect.
With one of von Trier's best ensembles and an eloquently articulated sense of end-times despair, Melancholia would be ideally primed to win over those who've been staying away from the director's recent work...were it not for von Trier's jackass decision to play the "bad boy" at the film's Cannes press conference, jokingly admitting that he feels a kinship with Adolf Hitler and making other cracks that someone unfamiliar with his interview schtick might interpret as anti-Semitic. Of course, those used to his routine know that he was being knowing and insincere--an imp with a questionable sense of humor and zero sense of public decorum. I agree with another of the film's big fans (I do forget which critic at the moment) that after making a film as relatively restrained and uncomfortably personal as Melancholia, von Trier most likely felt a psychological need to create division among the cinephile ranks once again. It surely can't feel safe for someone of his unusual mindset to bare his soul in a film that's entirely free of the transgressive jolts that he has come to use as a kind of stylistic defense mechanism. But I'm sure as hell glad he did. Melancholia's doom may be more crushing than the tears-inspiring catharsis of Breaking the Waves, but both offer the rare spectacle of a master filmmaker in full command of his formal and narrative powers. Grade: A
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