I can picture parts of a Slumdog Millionaire review, but not a beginning or an end. However, I made myself sit at the computer while doing laundry this afternoon, and somehow a review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button came to be.
I dragged my feet on seeing this and finally went more than a week after Oscar nominations were announced. I can't remember the last time I hadn't seen all the Best Picture nominees before the reveal of the final five - pathetic for me. I wish the wait had been worth it. I wish I liked Button as much as Sandra, my cousin Tom, and later my parents did. Nope.
I'll say this much: It's the better Brangelina film of 2008.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button represents a case of grand moviemaking gone curiously stillborn.
About an hour and a half into this Oscar-nominated epic, I wrote, “This is supposed to be a big, great, sweeping, magical film, and yet … this movie is inert.” That I could compose that coherent a sentence while watching this time-traveling drama proves how unengaged I felt. When Cate Blanchett and her Australian counterpart, Tilda Swinton, were on screen, I found Button involving (as long as Blanchett wasn’t slathered in makeup). Otherwise, David Fincher’s direction needed more vigor to keep boredom from pervading my thoughts.
That’s right. This is David Fincher, the same Fincher who made Fight Club and Zodiac. While those films mesmerize and energize, Button is, all too often, sluggish and remote. For every well-shot, suspenseful torpedo tugboat scene, we have dialogue overwhelmed by Alexandre Desplat’s score and Brad Pitt looking as if he’s auditioning for a remake of The Way We Were. We also have a movie where pancake and powder are the order of the day, characters in their own distracting way. “Pretty” usually wins out over “substance” in Button.
The screenwriter of Forrest Gump, Eric Roth, is adapting again, this time his own 1994 movie ... I mean, an F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man (Pitt) aging backward. (The adaptation is very, very loose.) A babe is born, looking eightysomething, in 1918 New Orleans and abandoned by his father on the steps of an old folks’ home run by a Gone with the Wind-esque mammy (Taraji P. Henson). As time advances, our boy, played by Pitt in various layers of makeup and computer manipulation, becomes physically younger, and he connects with one resident’s granddaughter (Blanchett; Elle Fanning as a child). At points, we break from the flashbacks for wheezy dying sequences in August 2005 in a Southern hospital.
In Gump, history pivoted around Tom Hanks’ character. In Button, the characters aren’t connected to the outside world, minus the badly shoehorned Hurricane Katrina framing. We didn’t need Benjamin to, say, overhear Truman planning the use of the atomic bomb, but Button uses history the way lazy filmmakers employ the Empire State Building as an establishing New York shot. It’s throwaway at best, Symbolism 101 at worst.
Surprisingly, the love story between Benjamin and Daisy captivated this grouchy cynic. “Sleep with me,” she moans when they’re finally in an age-appropriate relationship. “Absolutely,” he replies, eagerly. It’s the sexiest thing People’s two-time Sexiest Man Alive has ever said, and it catapults Button in a way none of the special effects do.
In a long black jersey dress and flowing red hair, ballet dancer Blanchett isn’t the siren one expects but instead a lovely evoker of wistful melancholy. Swinton plays an earlier Benjamin lover, an older, dissatisfied woman whose arc comes to a delightful, quirky conclusion. As for Pitt, it’s hard to say how what he’s doing for much of Button is acting. He’s mostly posing and reacting, often deficient in emotion. Brad, give your nomination to Leo.
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Best Film of 2008
Frost/Nixon and Milk are two of the best movies of 2008. Rarely do films live up to their hype or even your own hopes. That it happened for me twice on Christmas week indicates that yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
I saw Frost/Nixon on Broadway in August 2007, and I've been awaiting its screen adaptation pretty much ever since. I saw Doubt a week beforehand, though, and given how shaky a move that made to celluloid, I began to worry.
Thank goodness I didn't have to worry here. My fellow Frost/Nixon fan Patricia accompanied me. We loved it. I can't wait to see this again.
Like the recent Doubt, Frost/Nixon transitions from stage to screen. Unlike Doubt's John Patrick Shanley, Frost/Nixon director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan (who also wrote the play) allow their story - British talk-show host David Frost's somewhat fictionalized 1977 interviews with Richard Nixon - to breathe and even grow.
Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reprise their Broadway work as Frost and Nixon. Joining them onscreen: Kevin Bacon as Nixon loyalist Col. Jack Brennan, Matthew Macfayden as Frost producer John Birt, Oliver Platt as ABC journalist Bob Zelnick (looking nothing like his real-life counterpart) and Sam Rockwell as Nixon-hating professor James Reston.
It's easy to hate Nixon, yet the filmmakers and performers don't opt for this simplicity. Howard shoots the drama's opening moments, Nixon's resignation, from behind, giving the man respect and privacy; he echoes this with the film's last frame. Langella had Morgan include dialogue to illuminate Nixon's loneliness in office, and Howard features a scene of the consummate politician petting a dog - but in that uncomfortable, forced-jovial Nixon way.
When Anthony Hopkins played Nixon in Oliver Stone's 1995 biopic, it felt like a hammy imitation. Langella doesn't look like the 37th president - for one thing, he's several inches taller - but he captures the man's awkward essence. He's that socially backward soul who never learned how to make a joke, that brooder with a permanent chip on his shoulder. Morgan imagines a phone call where a drunken Nixon exposes his insecurities. It's the type of scene where an actor could chew scenery, but Langella plays it perfectly, giving us a portrait of alienation.
As Frost, Sheen shows he can play more than Tony Blair (The Deal and The Queen, other Morgan scripts), and he play this role well, too. Frost starts off a starry-eyed, "Insider"-like journalist, nowhere near as serious as he believes himself to be. Only when he's met someone more manipulative and savvy than himself in Nixon, outwardly his opposite, does the charmer slump and slouch. Like Nixon, Frost is desperate; unlike his adversary, Frost doesn't let desperation overwhelm him.
The newcomers to Frost/Nixon work wonders, too, notably Kevin Bacon, who personifies "steely gaze" and "stiff upper lip." When is this man ever going to receive recognition from the Academy?
Howard, Morgan and their cast have presented us with an engrossing cat-and-mouse game. Frost/Nixon makes for history at its most riveting.
I saw Frost/Nixon on Broadway in August 2007, and I've been awaiting its screen adaptation pretty much ever since. I saw Doubt a week beforehand, though, and given how shaky a move that made to celluloid, I began to worry.
Thank goodness I didn't have to worry here. My fellow Frost/Nixon fan Patricia accompanied me. We loved it. I can't wait to see this again.
Like the recent Doubt, Frost/Nixon transitions from stage to screen. Unlike Doubt's John Patrick Shanley, Frost/Nixon director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan (who also wrote the play) allow their story - British talk-show host David Frost's somewhat fictionalized 1977 interviews with Richard Nixon - to breathe and even grow.
Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reprise their Broadway work as Frost and Nixon. Joining them onscreen: Kevin Bacon as Nixon loyalist Col. Jack Brennan, Matthew Macfayden as Frost producer John Birt, Oliver Platt as ABC journalist Bob Zelnick (looking nothing like his real-life counterpart) and Sam Rockwell as Nixon-hating professor James Reston.
It's easy to hate Nixon, yet the filmmakers and performers don't opt for this simplicity. Howard shoots the drama's opening moments, Nixon's resignation, from behind, giving the man respect and privacy; he echoes this with the film's last frame. Langella had Morgan include dialogue to illuminate Nixon's loneliness in office, and Howard features a scene of the consummate politician petting a dog - but in that uncomfortable, forced-jovial Nixon way.
When Anthony Hopkins played Nixon in Oliver Stone's 1995 biopic, it felt like a hammy imitation. Langella doesn't look like the 37th president - for one thing, he's several inches taller - but he captures the man's awkward essence. He's that socially backward soul who never learned how to make a joke, that brooder with a permanent chip on his shoulder. Morgan imagines a phone call where a drunken Nixon exposes his insecurities. It's the type of scene where an actor could chew scenery, but Langella plays it perfectly, giving us a portrait of alienation.
As Frost, Sheen shows he can play more than Tony Blair (The Deal and The Queen, other Morgan scripts), and he play this role well, too. Frost starts off a starry-eyed, "Insider"-like journalist, nowhere near as serious as he believes himself to be. Only when he's met someone more manipulative and savvy than himself in Nixon, outwardly his opposite, does the charmer slump and slouch. Like Nixon, Frost is desperate; unlike his adversary, Frost doesn't let desperation overwhelm him.
The newcomers to Frost/Nixon work wonders, too, notably Kevin Bacon, who personifies "steely gaze" and "stiff upper lip." When is this man ever going to receive recognition from the Academy?
Howard, Morgan and their cast have presented us with an engrossing cat-and-mouse game. Frost/Nixon makes for history at its most riveting.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Milking Good Acting for All It's Worth
I meant to do a combo review, but time is getting away from me. Take what I have so far.
A pioneering homosexual district supervisor and a disgraced Republican president make an unlikely duo. This winter, you'll find these 1970s icons, Harvey Milk and Richard Nixon, in some of the same multiplexes in two absorbing, Oscar-nominated dramas with towering lead performances.
Sean Penn smiles! Sean Penn can be ebullient! Sean Penn's immense range includes "joy!" Milk, Gus van Sant's biopic of the rise and death of America's first openly gay politician, is a marvel in casting; just about every portrayer is a ringer for his or her real-life counterpart. Although Milk ends with death, this tale of 1970s San Francisco oozes life.
Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black do several things right. First, they present Harvey Milk not as a martyr (although they beat the death premonitions heavily) but as a funny, shrewd, distracted businessman, politician and lover.
"Politics is about theater. It isn't about winning; it's about making a statement," Harvey explains as he makes run after run before being elected supervisor of District 5. He's not a one-issue candidate: We see Harvey forging alliances with the unions over Coors and reaching out to the conservative Dan White (Josh Brolin). He's also caught up in his work, to the detriment of relationships with longtime lover Scott (James Franco) and unstable boyish Jack (Diego Luna, a love story not well-developed).
The filmmakers don't muffle Harvey's flamboyance. Three years after the chaste love scenes in Brokeback Mountain, Milk depicts Penn picking up Franco in a subway station and bringing him home the same night - within the first five minutes of the movie. Penn's speech pattern and body language are in your face, daring the Dan Whites of the audience to squirm. Yet Harvey is so charming and open it's easy to accept him.
Van Sant recreates the Castro of the 1970s and incorporates actual footage and newspaper articles of the era. Black engaged in meticulous research, speaking with 40 or so people from campaign manager Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill) to Milk protege and AIDS-quilt founder Cleve Jones (a stunning Emile Hirsch). This makes Milk feel more documentary than biography.
In a stroke of good timing for distributor Focus Features, Milk parallels the Proposition 8 fight in California with the failure of Proposition 6, which would have mandated the firing of gay teachers. (Anita Bryant, who led the battle for Prop 6, is the one person Van Sant didn't cast: She appears only in television clips.) Milk also echoes the election of another minority hope-filled politician, the one occupying the White House. Harvey notes that hope can't be all one has, but "without hope, life's not worth living."
A pioneering homosexual district supervisor and a disgraced Republican president make an unlikely duo. This winter, you'll find these 1970s icons, Harvey Milk and Richard Nixon, in some of the same multiplexes in two absorbing, Oscar-nominated dramas with towering lead performances.
Sean Penn smiles! Sean Penn can be ebullient! Sean Penn's immense range includes "joy!" Milk, Gus van Sant's biopic of the rise and death of America's first openly gay politician, is a marvel in casting; just about every portrayer is a ringer for his or her real-life counterpart. Although Milk ends with death, this tale of 1970s San Francisco oozes life.
Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black do several things right. First, they present Harvey Milk not as a martyr (although they beat the death premonitions heavily) but as a funny, shrewd, distracted businessman, politician and lover.
"Politics is about theater. It isn't about winning; it's about making a statement," Harvey explains as he makes run after run before being elected supervisor of District 5. He's not a one-issue candidate: We see Harvey forging alliances with the unions over Coors and reaching out to the conservative Dan White (Josh Brolin). He's also caught up in his work, to the detriment of relationships with longtime lover Scott (James Franco) and unstable boyish Jack (Diego Luna, a love story not well-developed).
The filmmakers don't muffle Harvey's flamboyance. Three years after the chaste love scenes in Brokeback Mountain, Milk depicts Penn picking up Franco in a subway station and bringing him home the same night - within the first five minutes of the movie. Penn's speech pattern and body language are in your face, daring the Dan Whites of the audience to squirm. Yet Harvey is so charming and open it's easy to accept him.
Van Sant recreates the Castro of the 1970s and incorporates actual footage and newspaper articles of the era. Black engaged in meticulous research, speaking with 40 or so people from campaign manager Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill) to Milk protege and AIDS-quilt founder Cleve Jones (a stunning Emile Hirsch). This makes Milk feel more documentary than biography.
In a stroke of good timing for distributor Focus Features, Milk parallels the Proposition 8 fight in California with the failure of Proposition 6, which would have mandated the firing of gay teachers. (Anita Bryant, who led the battle for Prop 6, is the one person Van Sant didn't cast: She appears only in television clips.) Milk also echoes the election of another minority hope-filled politician, the one occupying the White House. Harvey notes that hope can't be all one has, but "without hope, life's not worth living."
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A Child and the Holocaust
I don't know what to say about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Some critics on Metacritic gave it 100; others, such as the New York Times, despised it. The film inspired such passionate reactions that I had to see what the fuss was about. I understand both reactions. More than once, I nearly walked out in disgust, but then I reminded myself that if I sat through Life Is Beautiful twice, I could handle this Holocaust/child take for 90 or so minutes. Right? Would I recommend it, though? I think I'm in the "no" group.
I'm still vacillating about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Based on a young-adult novel, Pajamas views the Holocaust through 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), son of a Nazi general (David Thewlis), who befriends a boy in a concentration camp. Vera Farmiga stands out as Bruno's mother, physically and mentally unraveling after discovering her husband's work. Director Mark Herman doesn't flinch at the horrifying end, though the impact would've been greater with silence rather than James Horner's intrusive score. But several points defy logic, from the British accents to the camp's lax security to the dropped angle of Bruno’s sister’s anti-Jewish rhetoric. Mostly, Pajamas wants one to accept a lot about innocence. Bruno is 8, not 4 - is he really supposed to be that naive?
I'm still vacillating about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Based on a young-adult novel, Pajamas views the Holocaust through 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), son of a Nazi general (David Thewlis), who befriends a boy in a concentration camp. Vera Farmiga stands out as Bruno's mother, physically and mentally unraveling after discovering her husband's work. Director Mark Herman doesn't flinch at the horrifying end, though the impact would've been greater with silence rather than James Horner's intrusive score. But several points defy logic, from the British accents to the camp's lax security to the dropped angle of Bruno’s sister’s anti-Jewish rhetoric. Mostly, Pajamas wants one to accept a lot about innocence. Bruno is 8, not 4 - is he really supposed to be that naive?
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Starting Off 2009 ...
with releases from 2008.
I'm a sucker for a good Brit flick and anything tinged with melancholy. I like Emma Thompson. This movie was going to be catnip for me. I knew it wasn't much, but for 10:30 a.m. on a U.K.-gray Friday, I thought it would be just right. And it was.
More deeply felt than one might expect, Last Chance Harvey pairs lonely souls Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in a slight yet tender romance. Harvey Shine (Hoffman) comes to London for his somewhat estranged daughter's wedding, only to be let go from his jingle-writing gig and shunted to the side at the nuptials. His return to New York thwarted, Harvey strikes up conversation with greeter Kate (Thompson) in an airport bar, and they progress - OK, he pushes, she relents - to a day of exploration and reconciliation. That's it, save a third-act contrivance that pads the 99-minute film.
Last Chance Harvey has the feel of an extended Love, Actually segment; several typical London sights recur in both movies. While his filming style isn't much, writer/director Joel Hopkins has given us two real grown-ups and two talented actors to play them.
Hoffman tones down recent mannered performances (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) to portray a man of desperation and yearning, sad about being an embarrassment to his family. Although Kate doesn't have the same arc, Thompson grasps her character's pain in one image: On an awkward blind date in a pub, she escapes to a bathroom stall to dab her eyes and choke back sobs. Her closest companion is her cellphone and the codependent mother (Eileen Atkins) attached to it.
On these cold, raw days, grab tea and a scone and take a chance on the sweet poignancy of Harvey.
I'm a sucker for a good Brit flick and anything tinged with melancholy. I like Emma Thompson. This movie was going to be catnip for me. I knew it wasn't much, but for 10:30 a.m. on a U.K.-gray Friday, I thought it would be just right. And it was.
More deeply felt than one might expect, Last Chance Harvey pairs lonely souls Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in a slight yet tender romance. Harvey Shine (Hoffman) comes to London for his somewhat estranged daughter's wedding, only to be let go from his jingle-writing gig and shunted to the side at the nuptials. His return to New York thwarted, Harvey strikes up conversation with greeter Kate (Thompson) in an airport bar, and they progress - OK, he pushes, she relents - to a day of exploration and reconciliation. That's it, save a third-act contrivance that pads the 99-minute film.
Last Chance Harvey has the feel of an extended Love, Actually segment; several typical London sights recur in both movies. While his filming style isn't much, writer/director Joel Hopkins has given us two real grown-ups and two talented actors to play them.
Hoffman tones down recent mannered performances (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) to portray a man of desperation and yearning, sad about being an embarrassment to his family. Although Kate doesn't have the same arc, Thompson grasps her character's pain in one image: On an awkward blind date in a pub, she escapes to a bathroom stall to dab her eyes and choke back sobs. Her closest companion is her cellphone and the codependent mother (Eileen Atkins) attached to it.
On these cold, raw days, grab tea and a scone and take a chance on the sweet poignancy of Harvey.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Runners World
By some evil twist of fate, Spirit of the Marathon showed up in the mailbox and Tribeca 2008 veteran Run for Your Life had a one-week engagement at the Village East the same time I was on crutches and had to give up running a half-marathon after screwing up my left calf muscle. Still, I watched both movies: I am your dedicated film critic, after all. I write my brief thoughts several weeks later, having returned to training too soon and straining my right calf muscle. The world is unfair sometimes.
In time for the fall racing season, two running-themed documentaries, Spirit of the Marathon and Run for Your Life, arrived on DVD. Both are likely to hold more interest for those who lace up their sneakers on a regular basis, although non-athletic New Yorkers also may enjoy the latter, a look at adopted son Fred Lebow.
As a newbie runner, I prefer Spirit of the Marathon, which tracks (no pun intended) six people preparing for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. Director Jon Dunham could’ve composed his film better: The focus is heavier on some non-famous faces (father and longtime runner Jerry, hard-luck Leah) than others (Jerry’s daughter, rookie Rona), and timelines don’t always compute. I also wish I learned more about the course beyond that it’s flat and fast, which any casual marathon follower knows, and additional background about training would help non-track stars. When Dunham shows the runners discussing diet, pace groups and mileage plans, though, my own (curtailed) training plans were awakened. And as cheesy as it may sound, it’s inspiring to see anyone complete 26.2 miles of running.
As a critic, I like Run for Your Life better because director Judd Ehrlich really captures his subject’s 1970s heyday with archival footage (short shorts!), disco-style fonts and funky music. Lebow was one of those colorful, only-in-New-York stories, a Romanian immigrant and garment worker who grew the city’s marathon from laps around Central Park in 1970 to today’s five-borough behemoth. Lebow was quite the showman, getting Playboy Bunnies to run the first women’s mini-marathon and creating races for every occasion. Ehrlich doesn’t incorporate the non-running parts of Lebow’s biography as smoothly as the marathon ones; the talking heads babble more than bring their man into focus. Fortunately, Run for Your Life rebounds in its final laps with Lebow’s own poignant race journey after his cancer diagnosis.
In time for the fall racing season, two running-themed documentaries, Spirit of the Marathon and Run for Your Life, arrived on DVD. Both are likely to hold more interest for those who lace up their sneakers on a regular basis, although non-athletic New Yorkers also may enjoy the latter, a look at adopted son Fred Lebow.
As a newbie runner, I prefer Spirit of the Marathon, which tracks (no pun intended) six people preparing for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. Director Jon Dunham could’ve composed his film better: The focus is heavier on some non-famous faces (father and longtime runner Jerry, hard-luck Leah) than others (Jerry’s daughter, rookie Rona), and timelines don’t always compute. I also wish I learned more about the course beyond that it’s flat and fast, which any casual marathon follower knows, and additional background about training would help non-track stars. When Dunham shows the runners discussing diet, pace groups and mileage plans, though, my own (curtailed) training plans were awakened. And as cheesy as it may sound, it’s inspiring to see anyone complete 26.2 miles of running.
As a critic, I like Run for Your Life better because director Judd Ehrlich really captures his subject’s 1970s heyday with archival footage (short shorts!), disco-style fonts and funky music. Lebow was one of those colorful, only-in-New-York stories, a Romanian immigrant and garment worker who grew the city’s marathon from laps around Central Park in 1970 to today’s five-borough behemoth. Lebow was quite the showman, getting Playboy Bunnies to run the first women’s mini-marathon and creating races for every occasion. Ehrlich doesn’t incorporate the non-running parts of Lebow’s biography as smoothly as the marathon ones; the talking heads babble more than bring their man into focus. Fortunately, Run for Your Life rebounds in its final laps with Lebow’s own poignant race journey after his cancer diagnosis.
Second Chances
My friends Cori and Michelle are big fans of Kristin Scott Thomas, but I always found her icy and brittle. Tell No One began to change my mind - I had no idea she could be overtly sexy - and I've Loved You So Long made me appreciate her in a way I hadn't before. I'd really like to see her receive an Academy Award nomination for this performance. It's less likely, but I'd also like to see her co-star, Elsa Zylberstein, get a Supporting Actress nod.
I've Loved You So Long would make a worthy companion piece with Rachel Getting Married: difficult, well-acted stories of redemption featuring multiple fantastic female performances.
Instead of making a woman-in-prison drama, writer/director Philippe Claudel examines a return to life on the outside in I’ve Loved You So Long. With his debut feature, Claudel employs Kristin Scott Thomas’ misused reserve to stunning effect and introduces many Americans to a talented French actress, Elsa Zylberstein. Nothing happens easily in this French film; rather, Claudel and his actors subtly edge forward.
Scott Thomas turns prior criticisms of being distant and remote (see Random Hearts, The Horse Whisperer) to her benefit here. Juliette Fontaine is understandably reticent: She just got out of prison after 15 years for killing her 6-year-old son. Being blunt horrifies people; keeping quiet causes folks to think her aloof. A social worker pries, and well-meaning professor sister Lea (Zylberstein), who’s taken Juliette in, jabbers on. Why shouldn’t Juliette want to hang around the house in a drab overcoat, smoking?
Watch Scott Thomas as Juliette learns to feel. When Juliette first smiles it’s awkward, as if someone’s instructing her muscles to move. As Juliette becomes more comfortable with her nieces and potential suitor Michel (Laurent Grevil), her body relaxes; grinning becomes second nature. Throughout the movie, we wonder how Juliette could murder her child. The climactic explanation falls short, moving but too easy. Still, Scott Thomas is wrenching when Juliette explores long-buried anguish.
I’ve Loved You So Long isn’t just Juliette’s story. Lea first seems to reside in Paris Disneyland, trying to create the perfect family. Really, she’s that genuine and warm, yet slowly, her own layers reveal themselves. We sense her loss over missed connections when Juliette was jailed during Lea’s adolescence. We hear a quick but biting exchange about why Lea and husband Luc chose adoption. Lea’s angry breakdown while discussing Crime and Punishment with her students therefore carries added potency, thanks to the slowly building emotions we’ve seen from Zylberstein. It’s a cathartic moment.
Between I’ve Loved You So Long and the summer mystery Tell No One, Scott Thomas never has been more alive on screen. Funny it took performing in French to tap into previously unexplored depths of the British actress’ range.
I've Loved You So Long would make a worthy companion piece with Rachel Getting Married: difficult, well-acted stories of redemption featuring multiple fantastic female performances.
Instead of making a woman-in-prison drama, writer/director Philippe Claudel examines a return to life on the outside in I’ve Loved You So Long. With his debut feature, Claudel employs Kristin Scott Thomas’ misused reserve to stunning effect and introduces many Americans to a talented French actress, Elsa Zylberstein. Nothing happens easily in this French film; rather, Claudel and his actors subtly edge forward.
Scott Thomas turns prior criticisms of being distant and remote (see Random Hearts, The Horse Whisperer) to her benefit here. Juliette Fontaine is understandably reticent: She just got out of prison after 15 years for killing her 6-year-old son. Being blunt horrifies people; keeping quiet causes folks to think her aloof. A social worker pries, and well-meaning professor sister Lea (Zylberstein), who’s taken Juliette in, jabbers on. Why shouldn’t Juliette want to hang around the house in a drab overcoat, smoking?
Watch Scott Thomas as Juliette learns to feel. When Juliette first smiles it’s awkward, as if someone’s instructing her muscles to move. As Juliette becomes more comfortable with her nieces and potential suitor Michel (Laurent Grevil), her body relaxes; grinning becomes second nature. Throughout the movie, we wonder how Juliette could murder her child. The climactic explanation falls short, moving but too easy. Still, Scott Thomas is wrenching when Juliette explores long-buried anguish.
I’ve Loved You So Long isn’t just Juliette’s story. Lea first seems to reside in Paris Disneyland, trying to create the perfect family. Really, she’s that genuine and warm, yet slowly, her own layers reveal themselves. We sense her loss over missed connections when Juliette was jailed during Lea’s adolescence. We hear a quick but biting exchange about why Lea and husband Luc chose adoption. Lea’s angry breakdown while discussing Crime and Punishment with her students therefore carries added potency, thanks to the slowly building emotions we’ve seen from Zylberstein. It’s a cathartic moment.
Between I’ve Loved You So Long and the summer mystery Tell No One, Scott Thomas never has been more alive on screen. Funny it took performing in French to tap into previously unexplored depths of the British actress’ range.
Love Story
Where WALL-E has been out for six months and now appears on every other 10-best list, I couldn't write a traditional review of the film. I found that when I rewatched it two weeks ago, the same things jumped out at me as they did on the August viewing. At the very least, that made my thoughts a little easier to compile.
And yes, I teared up both times at the end.
The cutest couple of 2008 is … a robot duo.
Cinema love stories often begin with a “meet cute.” Lonely, binocular-eyed Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class meets his iPod-smooth love, Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, when she comes to an I Am Legend-like Earth with a directive to seek sustainable life. Our trash-compacting collector – he likes a ring box, tosses the jewelry – is the last thing standing, except a cockroach – and a single plant.
WALL-E, Pixar’s latest offering, has much to say: satire about consumer culture, environmental warning, Easter Egg hunt for film geeks. (Aliens’ Sigourney Weaver is the voice of a computer! It’s a 2001 parody!) After two viewings of this movie, what I remember most is the tenderness between WALL-E and EVE, whose vocal portrayers (Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight) convey so much mostly with chirps and blips.
Director Andrew Stanton uses Hello, Dolly – a worn-out VHS tape serves as WALL-E’s only human companion – to telegraph emotions, but the film reference I think of most is City Lights. WALL-E and EVE have a Chaplin-esque quality to their interactions and a physical connection as sweetly romantic as those found in great Jane Austen adaptations.
WALL-E becomes more ordinary once the action shifts to the spaceship Axiom and Stanton enforces parables about a machine-driven world making humans fat and lazy. Even there, th0ugh, we have moments of beauty: Movie magic occurs with WALL-E, EVE and a fire extinguisher, accented by Thomas Newman’s lovely score. Despite its second-half flaws, love conquers all in WALL-E.
And yes, I teared up both times at the end.
The cutest couple of 2008 is … a robot duo.
Cinema love stories often begin with a “meet cute.” Lonely, binocular-eyed Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class meets his iPod-smooth love, Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, when she comes to an I Am Legend-like Earth with a directive to seek sustainable life. Our trash-compacting collector – he likes a ring box, tosses the jewelry – is the last thing standing, except a cockroach – and a single plant.
WALL-E, Pixar’s latest offering, has much to say: satire about consumer culture, environmental warning, Easter Egg hunt for film geeks. (Aliens’ Sigourney Weaver is the voice of a computer! It’s a 2001 parody!) After two viewings of this movie, what I remember most is the tenderness between WALL-E and EVE, whose vocal portrayers (Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight) convey so much mostly with chirps and blips.
Director Andrew Stanton uses Hello, Dolly – a worn-out VHS tape serves as WALL-E’s only human companion – to telegraph emotions, but the film reference I think of most is City Lights. WALL-E and EVE have a Chaplin-esque quality to their interactions and a physical connection as sweetly romantic as those found in great Jane Austen adaptations.
WALL-E becomes more ordinary once the action shifts to the spaceship Axiom and Stanton enforces parables about a machine-driven world making humans fat and lazy. Even there, th0ugh, we have moments of beauty: Movie magic occurs with WALL-E, EVE and a fire extinguisher, accented by Thomas Newman’s lovely score. Despite its second-half flaws, love conquers all in WALL-E.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
A Guest Review Or Two
My friend Mark asked whether his analysis of the cult film The Room would make it to my blog. Well, Mark, not only will your review of that, but so will your comments on Wanted. :)
The Room was more than I had hoped for. I did develop a conspiracy theory about The Room before i saw it and the film confirmed my suspicions.
Tommy Wiseau is a naive fella with a decent heart, but some inner craziness. A woman used him for a long time and tried to dump him several times but he completely missed the cues, etc so she just cheated on him with his best friend... more than once. In his despair, Tommy worked tirelessly to secure funding to make a film to show the world what an evil whore she is.
And the movie was born.
Seriously, the movie confirmed all of this for me.
I saw a truly awful movie this weekend. Wanted with James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman (why, Morgan, why?). I did enjoy the action sequences (except for the ones where bullets went through brains). But the dialogue and plot were aimed towards losers who think they are God's gift to bad-asses. It was so bad that I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth to enjoy the visually stunning action sequences.
For additional information, the Entertainment Weekly article on the phenomenon that is The Room:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20246031,00.html
The Room was more than I had hoped for. I did develop a conspiracy theory about The Room before i saw it and the film confirmed my suspicions.
Tommy Wiseau is a naive fella with a decent heart, but some inner craziness. A woman used him for a long time and tried to dump him several times but he completely missed the cues, etc so she just cheated on him with his best friend... more than once. In his despair, Tommy worked tirelessly to secure funding to make a film to show the world what an evil whore she is.
And the movie was born.
Seriously, the movie confirmed all of this for me.
I saw a truly awful movie this weekend. Wanted with James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman (why, Morgan, why?). I did enjoy the action sequences (except for the ones where bullets went through brains). But the dialogue and plot were aimed towards losers who think they are God's gift to bad-asses. It was so bad that I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth to enjoy the visually stunning action sequences.
For additional information, the Entertainment Weekly article on the phenomenon that is The Room:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20246031,00.html
Monday, December 22, 2008
Why Did I Do This to Myself?
I don't like Baz Luhrmann. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is on my hypothetical list of the 10 worst movies ever. (Sorry, Sandra and Cori.) I didn't care for Moulin Rouge beyond the costumes and cinematography. Nicole Kidman hasn't impressed me in years. Epics aren't my thing.
And yet I said I wanted to see Australia. I wanted to see it on the big screen, figuring such grandeur needed largesse.
Shame on me.
Listen, dear readers: I shall tell you of a magical land called Oz.
No, not that Oz. I wish it were that Oz.
In this Oz, we have a fish out of water, the plight of the Aboriginals, a cattle drive, rival ranchers, mismatched lovers, World War II and an oft-referenced Judy Garland ditty - all in two hours and 45 minutes. Sounds like a laundry list? Then welcome to Australia, an epic that endures for all the wrong reasons.
Baz Luhrmann seems to want to direct 1940s-style grandeur as if he made Australia in the 1940s. This means obvious soundstage sequences, bad CGI, awkward cutaways and a Nicole Kidman performance that wants to evoke Katharine Hepburn but plays as scattered or cold. Kidman can't register emotion on her face: Sad, concern and compassionate all read as "constipated," while her vocal mannerisms during the early Outback scenes make her sound hysterical. Luhrmann directed Kidman to an Oscar nomination in 2001's Moulin Rouge. What happened here?
The Sexiest Man Alive shows up in the Clark Gable/Rhett Butler role as the Drover. Even after Kidman's Lady Sarah Ashley gets together with our independent-minded cattle man, he's still "the Drover," "Mr. Drover" or just "Drover." Apparently, Australia's four screenwriters couldn't be bothered to provide a first name for Hugh Jackman's character. He's nice to look at, though, whether clean-shaven in a dinner jacket or rugged and unkempt.
Luhrmann tries to inject a history lesson/apology by weaving in the abysmal account of the Stolen Generations, where mixed-race Aboriginal children were removed forcibly from their families and integrated into white society. Meet Nullah (non-pro Brandon Walters), a young boy orphaned after his Aboriginal mother dies and his white father (Ashley rival Neil Fletcher, played by David Wenham) never acknowledges him. Nullah serves as narrator, parenting link to barren Lady Sarah and widowed Drover, cute child, etc. The Aboriginal past is a woeful subject worth learning, but one better covered in 2002's Rabbit-Proof Fence. Nullah's narration also eventually becomes precocious.
I haven't even touched on the Wizard of Oz/"Over the Rainbow" motif - sweet initially, beaten down by the fifth reference. Or the fact that Australia feels like at least two movies. It could have ended at an hour and 40 minutes in as an OK adventure saga. But no, we had to involve the war, separate our lovers after a quarrel and further illustrate the plight of the Aboriginals. (All right, that last part was compelling.) This section has the look and feel of a Pearl Harbor sequel, something no one was clamoring for.
Did I like anything? The orangey light at Faraway Downs was lovely, the cattle drive suspenseful and scary. (You'll worry about being trampled.) I could stare at Jackman for hours. None of this is enough to sustain two hours and 45 minutes.
What did I learn from Australia? Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are the only ones who should transport anyone to any Oz.
And yet I said I wanted to see Australia. I wanted to see it on the big screen, figuring such grandeur needed largesse.
Shame on me.
Listen, dear readers: I shall tell you of a magical land called Oz.
No, not that Oz. I wish it were that Oz.
In this Oz, we have a fish out of water, the plight of the Aboriginals, a cattle drive, rival ranchers, mismatched lovers, World War II and an oft-referenced Judy Garland ditty - all in two hours and 45 minutes. Sounds like a laundry list? Then welcome to Australia, an epic that endures for all the wrong reasons.
Baz Luhrmann seems to want to direct 1940s-style grandeur as if he made Australia in the 1940s. This means obvious soundstage sequences, bad CGI, awkward cutaways and a Nicole Kidman performance that wants to evoke Katharine Hepburn but plays as scattered or cold. Kidman can't register emotion on her face: Sad, concern and compassionate all read as "constipated," while her vocal mannerisms during the early Outback scenes make her sound hysterical. Luhrmann directed Kidman to an Oscar nomination in 2001's Moulin Rouge. What happened here?
The Sexiest Man Alive shows up in the Clark Gable/Rhett Butler role as the Drover. Even after Kidman's Lady Sarah Ashley gets together with our independent-minded cattle man, he's still "the Drover," "Mr. Drover" or just "Drover." Apparently, Australia's four screenwriters couldn't be bothered to provide a first name for Hugh Jackman's character. He's nice to look at, though, whether clean-shaven in a dinner jacket or rugged and unkempt.
Luhrmann tries to inject a history lesson/apology by weaving in the abysmal account of the Stolen Generations, where mixed-race Aboriginal children were removed forcibly from their families and integrated into white society. Meet Nullah (non-pro Brandon Walters), a young boy orphaned after his Aboriginal mother dies and his white father (Ashley rival Neil Fletcher, played by David Wenham) never acknowledges him. Nullah serves as narrator, parenting link to barren Lady Sarah and widowed Drover, cute child, etc. The Aboriginal past is a woeful subject worth learning, but one better covered in 2002's Rabbit-Proof Fence. Nullah's narration also eventually becomes precocious.
I haven't even touched on the Wizard of Oz/"Over the Rainbow" motif - sweet initially, beaten down by the fifth reference. Or the fact that Australia feels like at least two movies. It could have ended at an hour and 40 minutes in as an OK adventure saga. But no, we had to involve the war, separate our lovers after a quarrel and further illustrate the plight of the Aboriginals. (All right, that last part was compelling.) This section has the look and feel of a Pearl Harbor sequel, something no one was clamoring for.
Did I like anything? The orangey light at Faraway Downs was lovely, the cattle drive suspenseful and scary. (You'll worry about being trampled.) I could stare at Jackman for hours. None of this is enough to sustain two hours and 45 minutes.
What did I learn from Australia? Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are the only ones who should transport anyone to any Oz.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
My Hometown, My Profession
In a serendipitous turn of events, the last two movies I saw had personal meaning. I'll always seek out a Boston-set indie, and I'll usually watch flicks with editors (and, by extension, reporters). That I found two films in a 24-hour period that covered both topics - it was like a Christmas present from Hollywood.
Does the quality of a print affect your film experience? At What Doesn't Kill You, a thin, vertical yellow-green line split the screen in two for the final third of the film. The dialogue also came across as muffled, although I'm not sure whether that was the print, a sound-adjustment issue at the Village East, or a filmmaker flaw. They were a distraction when I was watching the movie.
My screening at Nothing but the Truth was uneventful, except that I really missed my friends Sandra (in Syracuse) and Cori (in Maryland) and wished I'd invited my friend Michelle (who lives here) along. I'm yearning for some good discussion and debate with my intelligent, journalist girlfriends.
By the way, I will not see a movie just because it's set in my hood. As much as I like Anne Hathaway, I really don't want to see Bride Wars. It looks AWFUL, and my friend who has a thing for her concurs. (Then again, I can't picture Kirk at a romantic comedy to begin with.)
The Yari Film Group recently released two Hollywood-pedigreed films with connections to my life: the Boston-based crime drama What Doesn’t Kill You and the journalism/motherhood polemic Nothing but the Truth. While the former rang more true, the latter grabbed me far more - proof of the value of a good yarn.
Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke join Matt, Ben, Casey and even Paul Newman in the triple deckers of cinema South Boston in What Doesn’t Kill You. Writer/director Brian Goodman bases the film on the years he (Ruffalo) and best friend Paulie (Hawke) did odd jobs for Irish mob bosses before striking out on their own, Brian battled drugs, and the two landed in prison. Goodman, a first-time director, produces some of his stars’ best work: wiry, shaved Hawke scaring and scheming; Ruffalo ravaged by addiction but yearning to regain his family’s respect; Amanda Peet, as Brian’s wife, tired and repeatedly disappointed. Much of What Doesn’t Kill You recalled home: the comment about yuppies converting Southie to condos, the winter palate of gray and sharp white. Still, the film feels “done,” coming soon after Gone Baby Gone. Do filmmakers think Boston is good only for booze-laden crime dramas or plastic rom-coms?
With stories of a female vice-presidential candidate (The Contender) and the first female president (Commander-in-Chief) on his resume, Rod Lurie demonstrates welcome appreciation for powerful women. His latest writing/directing effort, Nothing but the Truth, examines what journalist Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale) does to protect sources who outed CIA agent Erica van Doren (Vera Farmiga), even at the expense of her family and the threat of jail. The film uses Judith Miller and Valerie Plame as a jumping-off point; then Lurie enhances the conversation with discussions about sexism and women’s decisions in balancing job and motherhood. Truth could skew melodramatic; fortunately, Lurie, Beckinsale and Farmiga present Rachel and Erica as complex women rather than martyrs, people whose ambitions shape them as much as their parenting skills. The final twist provoked sputtering in my editor self, and the plot flourishes can be a bit much, yet overall, Truth’s intelligence grips and refreshes.
Does the quality of a print affect your film experience? At What Doesn't Kill You, a thin, vertical yellow-green line split the screen in two for the final third of the film. The dialogue also came across as muffled, although I'm not sure whether that was the print, a sound-adjustment issue at the Village East, or a filmmaker flaw. They were a distraction when I was watching the movie.
My screening at Nothing but the Truth was uneventful, except that I really missed my friends Sandra (in Syracuse) and Cori (in Maryland) and wished I'd invited my friend Michelle (who lives here) along. I'm yearning for some good discussion and debate with my intelligent, journalist girlfriends.
By the way, I will not see a movie just because it's set in my hood. As much as I like Anne Hathaway, I really don't want to see Bride Wars. It looks AWFUL, and my friend who has a thing for her concurs. (Then again, I can't picture Kirk at a romantic comedy to begin with.)
The Yari Film Group recently released two Hollywood-pedigreed films with connections to my life: the Boston-based crime drama What Doesn’t Kill You and the journalism/motherhood polemic Nothing but the Truth. While the former rang more true, the latter grabbed me far more - proof of the value of a good yarn.
Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke join Matt, Ben, Casey and even Paul Newman in the triple deckers of cinema South Boston in What Doesn’t Kill You. Writer/director Brian Goodman bases the film on the years he (Ruffalo) and best friend Paulie (Hawke) did odd jobs for Irish mob bosses before striking out on their own, Brian battled drugs, and the two landed in prison. Goodman, a first-time director, produces some of his stars’ best work: wiry, shaved Hawke scaring and scheming; Ruffalo ravaged by addiction but yearning to regain his family’s respect; Amanda Peet, as Brian’s wife, tired and repeatedly disappointed. Much of What Doesn’t Kill You recalled home: the comment about yuppies converting Southie to condos, the winter palate of gray and sharp white. Still, the film feels “done,” coming soon after Gone Baby Gone. Do filmmakers think Boston is good only for booze-laden crime dramas or plastic rom-coms?
With stories of a female vice-presidential candidate (The Contender) and the first female president (Commander-in-Chief) on his resume, Rod Lurie demonstrates welcome appreciation for powerful women. His latest writing/directing effort, Nothing but the Truth, examines what journalist Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale) does to protect sources who outed CIA agent Erica van Doren (Vera Farmiga), even at the expense of her family and the threat of jail. The film uses Judith Miller and Valerie Plame as a jumping-off point; then Lurie enhances the conversation with discussions about sexism and women’s decisions in balancing job and motherhood. Truth could skew melodramatic; fortunately, Lurie, Beckinsale and Farmiga present Rachel and Erica as complex women rather than martyrs, people whose ambitions shape them as much as their parenting skills. The final twist provoked sputtering in my editor self, and the plot flourishes can be a bit much, yet overall, Truth’s intelligence grips and refreshes.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Harvard Beats Itself Into My Good Graces - For Once
My dislike of Harvard is almost as old as my dislike of football. Why, then, would I see a documentary about a sport I don't care for where my least-favorite college besides Duke is depicted in a positive light? Answer: The Film Forum description and a Wall Street Journal column.
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is a hoot, just a lot of fun even for the documentary-averse. It's still playing in one podunk NYC theater, Cinema Village. Catch it there, or be sure to track down the DVD early next year.
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 tells a tale likely never seen on celluloid: the big, bad Crimson as underdog.
And it's a true story.
Director Kevin Rafferty's documentary appears simply made: 60-year-old men reminiscing around tables about a pigskin matchup 40 years ago, interlaced with grainy game footage and Don Gillis’ broadcast. Actually, it only looks simple - in fact, Harvard grad Rafferty builds suspense and humor into a movie whose outcome is known all along.
On Nov. 23, 1968, Harvard and hated rival Yale headed into the final game of the season, both undefeated for the first time since 1909.
The Bulldogs possessed glamour: higher ranking; quarterback who hadn't lost since junior high; running back who would land in the NFL Hall of Fame (Calvin Hill). We haven’t even touched on Garry Trudeau and Meryl Streep.
Meanwhile, Harvard had a 24-year-old Vietnam vet, an unsettled quarterback situation and a local paper that seemed shocked by victory. (Harvard also featured an offensive guard who went on to other fame: Tommy Lee Jones, very droll here.)
With 42 seconds left in the game, Yale was up 29-13. Then, somehow … (The film’s title comes from the Crimson headline.)
Harvard Beats Yale entertains as Yale students chant “You‘re Number Two!” and charms with player interviews, which feature anecdotes about the war, campus life and the game. Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren personifies Rafferty’s storyline building: First coming off as the ultimate privileged snob (“douchebag,” one theatergoer muttered), he proves to be more than a man who liked making cheap tackles.
Jones’ contribution? Let’s just say that after this movie, you'll never view a telephone keypad the same way again.
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is a hoot, just a lot of fun even for the documentary-averse. It's still playing in one podunk NYC theater, Cinema Village. Catch it there, or be sure to track down the DVD early next year.
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 tells a tale likely never seen on celluloid: the big, bad Crimson as underdog.
And it's a true story.
Director Kevin Rafferty's documentary appears simply made: 60-year-old men reminiscing around tables about a pigskin matchup 40 years ago, interlaced with grainy game footage and Don Gillis’ broadcast. Actually, it only looks simple - in fact, Harvard grad Rafferty builds suspense and humor into a movie whose outcome is known all along.
On Nov. 23, 1968, Harvard and hated rival Yale headed into the final game of the season, both undefeated for the first time since 1909.
The Bulldogs possessed glamour: higher ranking; quarterback who hadn't lost since junior high; running back who would land in the NFL Hall of Fame (Calvin Hill). We haven’t even touched on Garry Trudeau and Meryl Streep.
Meanwhile, Harvard had a 24-year-old Vietnam vet, an unsettled quarterback situation and a local paper that seemed shocked by victory. (Harvard also featured an offensive guard who went on to other fame: Tommy Lee Jones, very droll here.)
With 42 seconds left in the game, Yale was up 29-13. Then, somehow … (The film’s title comes from the Crimson headline.)
Harvard Beats Yale entertains as Yale students chant “You‘re Number Two!” and charms with player interviews, which feature anecdotes about the war, campus life and the game. Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren personifies Rafferty’s storyline building: First coming off as the ultimate privileged snob (“douchebag,” one theatergoer muttered), he proves to be more than a man who liked making cheap tackles.
Jones’ contribution? Let’s just say that after this movie, you'll never view a telephone keypad the same way again.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Sing It Out
I've done some research since I saw Cadillac Records two weeks ago, and I'm learning that it's taken some considerable liberties with the time and the story. If I were a blues aficionado, this probably would bother me more. Since I'm not, I'm sticking with my initial reaction to the film, which was ...
I really, really liked Cadillac Records; it was an unexpected, underrated treat. Josee suggested it at the last minute for my birthday celebration, and it was a far better (and shorter) fit than our initial plan to see Australia. Cadillac Records made me miss my father, too: We saw Ray together a few years ago on one of our father/daughter outings. He'd really like this, but he doesn't go to movies by himself. Come on, Dad - get Mom to take you then.
Like the most manic concert, Cadillac Records swoops and soars; hips will swivel during the tale of a Chicago blues label’s rise and fall. Although the film hits some bum notes in its storytelling and fidelity to history, it has a dynamism few flicks have matched this year.
First - the brilliance that is Jeffrey Wright. He played Colin Powell this fall, in W; his career includes turns as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Martin Luther King Jr., the villain in the Shaft remake and Felix in the last two Bond movies. Here, as Muddy Waters, Wright does some of the best work of his career. Where is his Oscar buzz?
It's not that Wright looks or sounds like the blues great, the first major discovery for Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody). Rather, it's how he embodies Waters as the man goes from sharecropper to success, pleased with the Cadillacs bestowed on him but wary about the missing profits. (Writer/director Darnell Martin glosses more than she should here.) He's a lousy husband to Geneva (Gabrielle Union), but a combustible pull links them. Even while wearing a do-rag best saved for a day at the beauty shop, Wright is the “cat men want to be and women want to be with.”
Joining Wright in the fierce and fiery department: surprisingly, Beyonce Knowles. Previously, in such work as Dreamgirls and The Fighting Temptations, the singer/actress just posed before the camera. As Etta James, Knowles doesn't just break free from her glass box - she incinerates her self-imposed prison. She's ballsy, she delivers searing interpretations of James' hits (feel the rage in “All I Could Do Was Cry”) - she's mad as hell and she's not going to take it anymore. Knowles especially conveys James' bitter heartbreak after a long-awaited meeting with her biological father goes awry. Knowles has adopted the persona "Sasha Fierce" in her day job; now we see its origins.
In fact, Cadillac Records contains an album's worth of acting hits: Columbus Short as troubled harmonica great Little Walter, Eamonn Walker as powerful blues man Howlin' Wolf, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, Cedric the Entertainer as Willie Dixon (who also “narrates,” in a way bordering on cutesy-folksy).
The problem with this abundance of riches is that Martin doesn't know how to harness everything, and she sacrifices story streamlining for simply more story. The entire Berry segment feels shoehorned, despite Def’s playful, Gumby-like antics. Walker mesmerizes - he has a smoldering, scary come-hither nod - but his screen time feels shortchanged, and we don’t really have a true sense of the relationship between Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Martin also ignores the role of Leonard Chess’ still-living brother in the creation of the record label. Perhaps his story wasn’t dramatic enough.
Music biopics are a genre cliché (Ray, Walk the Line, La Bamba ...), so films of this subject must find ways to distinguish themselves. Cadillac Records does so with its platinum lead actor, Wright, and its gold-standard ensemble. Flaws and all, this movie sings.
I really, really liked Cadillac Records; it was an unexpected, underrated treat. Josee suggested it at the last minute for my birthday celebration, and it was a far better (and shorter) fit than our initial plan to see Australia. Cadillac Records made me miss my father, too: We saw Ray together a few years ago on one of our father/daughter outings. He'd really like this, but he doesn't go to movies by himself. Come on, Dad - get Mom to take you then.
Like the most manic concert, Cadillac Records swoops and soars; hips will swivel during the tale of a Chicago blues label’s rise and fall. Although the film hits some bum notes in its storytelling and fidelity to history, it has a dynamism few flicks have matched this year.
First - the brilliance that is Jeffrey Wright. He played Colin Powell this fall, in W; his career includes turns as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Martin Luther King Jr., the villain in the Shaft remake and Felix in the last two Bond movies. Here, as Muddy Waters, Wright does some of the best work of his career. Where is his Oscar buzz?
It's not that Wright looks or sounds like the blues great, the first major discovery for Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody). Rather, it's how he embodies Waters as the man goes from sharecropper to success, pleased with the Cadillacs bestowed on him but wary about the missing profits. (Writer/director Darnell Martin glosses more than she should here.) He's a lousy husband to Geneva (Gabrielle Union), but a combustible pull links them. Even while wearing a do-rag best saved for a day at the beauty shop, Wright is the “cat men want to be and women want to be with.”
Joining Wright in the fierce and fiery department: surprisingly, Beyonce Knowles. Previously, in such work as Dreamgirls and The Fighting Temptations, the singer/actress just posed before the camera. As Etta James, Knowles doesn't just break free from her glass box - she incinerates her self-imposed prison. She's ballsy, she delivers searing interpretations of James' hits (feel the rage in “All I Could Do Was Cry”) - she's mad as hell and she's not going to take it anymore. Knowles especially conveys James' bitter heartbreak after a long-awaited meeting with her biological father goes awry. Knowles has adopted the persona "Sasha Fierce" in her day job; now we see its origins.
In fact, Cadillac Records contains an album's worth of acting hits: Columbus Short as troubled harmonica great Little Walter, Eamonn Walker as powerful blues man Howlin' Wolf, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, Cedric the Entertainer as Willie Dixon (who also “narrates,” in a way bordering on cutesy-folksy).
The problem with this abundance of riches is that Martin doesn't know how to harness everything, and she sacrifices story streamlining for simply more story. The entire Berry segment feels shoehorned, despite Def’s playful, Gumby-like antics. Walker mesmerizes - he has a smoldering, scary come-hither nod - but his screen time feels shortchanged, and we don’t really have a true sense of the relationship between Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Martin also ignores the role of Leonard Chess’ still-living brother in the creation of the record label. Perhaps his story wasn’t dramatic enough.
Music biopics are a genre cliché (Ray, Walk the Line, La Bamba ...), so films of this subject must find ways to distinguish themselves. Cadillac Records does so with its platinum lead actor, Wright, and its gold-standard ensemble. Flaws and all, this movie sings.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Nuns and Nazis
Confession Number Whatever: I think the hype surrounding Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet is a bit much. Sure, they're good actresses, but the be all and end all of film? No, I don't think so.
In other words, when I saw their latest prestige projects on the same day, I had to do a joint review.
The calendar has turned to December, which means Oscar talk and chatter about two of today’s most lauded actresses, Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet. The 14- and five-time Academy-Award nominees make their seemingly annual cases for the gold statue: Meryl and her latest accent as a nun in Doubt, Kate as a woman in emotional hiding (but certainly not physical) in The Reader. The films, literary adaptations both, present troubling scenarios and to their credit don’t always provide solutions. They’re also flawed productions, with less-than-perfect work from their leading ladies.
(Yes, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood Foreign Press and Academy: Winslet’s role is a lead performance, not a supporting one. Let her compete against herself in Revolutionary Road and have voters decide where she’s better.)
With Streep and Doubt, the issue is overreaching and, subsequently, staginess. John Patrick Shanley brings his Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play to the screen, a gripping tale of possible pedophilia at a Bronx parish. It’s 1964, and the winds of change - oh, those winds - are rustling. Is the attention Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) shows the school’s first black student (Joseph Foster) compassionate [Donald has no friends but a keen interest in religion] or something more sinister [this is Flynn’s third parish in five years]? Did the young Sister James (Amy Adams, whose naivete borders on dense) misconstrue matters, or were her suspicions to Sister Aloysius (Streep) correct? “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and as sustaining as certainty” - but how certain are the thoughts motivating Sister Aloysius?
Shanley, who directs as well as writes, uses cinema’s more visual nature to play up Doubt’s metaphors. This becomes a liability. It’s not enough to hear Aloysius say, “It’s my job to outshine the fox in cleverness.” We have to see a cat going after a mouse and the leaves falling from the trees, and we have to hear the breezes over and over again, like a sound machine on the fritz. The text is strong enough on its own; Shanley should have trusted his words. He also doesn’t seem to realize actors don’t speak on film the way they do in a theater. The long-building confrontation between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn comes across more as a screaming fest, with Hoffman and especially Streep forgetting it’s about emotion, not projection.
Hoffman said in a Wall Street Journal interview that he had to decide about his character’s guilt or innocence before he began filming, although he hoped the audience couldn’t tell what his choice was. I certainly couldn’t; I changed my mind about Flynn’s motivations a half-dozen times. Excluding the Big Blowup, Hoffman acts with subtlety, unlike Ms. Meryl. She can’t help the existence of the pilgrim-like costume, but she also doesn’t help us see past it. The ruler, the broad inflection, the dour expression - it’s practically a parody of a nun. Viola Davis, in one 10-minute scene with Streep as Donald’s mother, modulates and conveys more feeling that her more-famous co-star.
As for Generation X’s kudos queen, Winslet strips down again, this time as a 30-something woman in 1958 having a fling with a boy she always calls “kid.” She discovers him sick in an alley, and she likes to be read to. The affair ends abruptly, and then it’s seven years later. The “kid,” Michael (David Kross), is 22, a law student and observing the trial of several female Nazi prison guards - one of whom happens to be Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), his summer lovin’.
At one point, The Reader might as well have been The Hours, Part 2: best-selling book (this one by Bernhard Schlink) adapted by David Hare for a film directed by Stephen Daldry starring Nicole Kidman. Substitute Winslet for Kidman, who dropped out due to pregnancy, but otherwise The Reader resembles of one of those cold, arty Kidman flicks such as Birth, Fur and, yes, The Hours. Even Winslet’s German-accented English sounds like Kidman’s speech. Winslet gets Hanna’s stern, disconnected nature right, yet when we’re supposed to connect to Hanna reading later, the actress appears to be smothered by her old-lady makeup.
Then again, the hardest part of The Reader is how distasteful so much of it is. The link between literature and lust could be luscious - if only the surrounding circumstances weren’t so lewd. Kross, the “kid” who plays Michael, displays maturity and none of the precocious fumbling seen in “I lost my virginity” stories. Still, he was 17 when filming began; Daldry had to shut down production until the actor was 18 to film the sex scenes. No matter how one looks at it, this is discomforting: If the gender roles were reversed, women’s groups would be protesting this a la Lolita. Where’s the outcry here? Furthermore, the music swells most romantically when Ralph Fiennes (the grown-up Michael) is reading novels into a tape recorder for a jailed, guilty Nazi prison guard. Hanna never expresses remorse for what she’s done - she even asks a judge whether she should have not taken a job at Siemens - yet we’re supposed to be captivated by the pull this love of a sort still has on Michael after all these years? I’d recommend a good therapist.
In other words, when I saw their latest prestige projects on the same day, I had to do a joint review.
The calendar has turned to December, which means Oscar talk and chatter about two of today’s most lauded actresses, Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet. The 14- and five-time Academy-Award nominees make their seemingly annual cases for the gold statue: Meryl and her latest accent as a nun in Doubt, Kate as a woman in emotional hiding (but certainly not physical) in The Reader. The films, literary adaptations both, present troubling scenarios and to their credit don’t always provide solutions. They’re also flawed productions, with less-than-perfect work from their leading ladies.
(Yes, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood Foreign Press and Academy: Winslet’s role is a lead performance, not a supporting one. Let her compete against herself in Revolutionary Road and have voters decide where she’s better.)
With Streep and Doubt, the issue is overreaching and, subsequently, staginess. John Patrick Shanley brings his Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play to the screen, a gripping tale of possible pedophilia at a Bronx parish. It’s 1964, and the winds of change - oh, those winds - are rustling. Is the attention Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) shows the school’s first black student (Joseph Foster) compassionate [Donald has no friends but a keen interest in religion] or something more sinister [this is Flynn’s third parish in five years]? Did the young Sister James (Amy Adams, whose naivete borders on dense) misconstrue matters, or were her suspicions to Sister Aloysius (Streep) correct? “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and as sustaining as certainty” - but how certain are the thoughts motivating Sister Aloysius?
Shanley, who directs as well as writes, uses cinema’s more visual nature to play up Doubt’s metaphors. This becomes a liability. It’s not enough to hear Aloysius say, “It’s my job to outshine the fox in cleverness.” We have to see a cat going after a mouse and the leaves falling from the trees, and we have to hear the breezes over and over again, like a sound machine on the fritz. The text is strong enough on its own; Shanley should have trusted his words. He also doesn’t seem to realize actors don’t speak on film the way they do in a theater. The long-building confrontation between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn comes across more as a screaming fest, with Hoffman and especially Streep forgetting it’s about emotion, not projection.
Hoffman said in a Wall Street Journal interview that he had to decide about his character’s guilt or innocence before he began filming, although he hoped the audience couldn’t tell what his choice was. I certainly couldn’t; I changed my mind about Flynn’s motivations a half-dozen times. Excluding the Big Blowup, Hoffman acts with subtlety, unlike Ms. Meryl. She can’t help the existence of the pilgrim-like costume, but she also doesn’t help us see past it. The ruler, the broad inflection, the dour expression - it’s practically a parody of a nun. Viola Davis, in one 10-minute scene with Streep as Donald’s mother, modulates and conveys more feeling that her more-famous co-star.
As for Generation X’s kudos queen, Winslet strips down again, this time as a 30-something woman in 1958 having a fling with a boy she always calls “kid.” She discovers him sick in an alley, and she likes to be read to. The affair ends abruptly, and then it’s seven years later. The “kid,” Michael (David Kross), is 22, a law student and observing the trial of several female Nazi prison guards - one of whom happens to be Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), his summer lovin’.
At one point, The Reader might as well have been The Hours, Part 2: best-selling book (this one by Bernhard Schlink) adapted by David Hare for a film directed by Stephen Daldry starring Nicole Kidman. Substitute Winslet for Kidman, who dropped out due to pregnancy, but otherwise The Reader resembles of one of those cold, arty Kidman flicks such as Birth, Fur and, yes, The Hours. Even Winslet’s German-accented English sounds like Kidman’s speech. Winslet gets Hanna’s stern, disconnected nature right, yet when we’re supposed to connect to Hanna reading later, the actress appears to be smothered by her old-lady makeup.
Then again, the hardest part of The Reader is how distasteful so much of it is. The link between literature and lust could be luscious - if only the surrounding circumstances weren’t so lewd. Kross, the “kid” who plays Michael, displays maturity and none of the precocious fumbling seen in “I lost my virginity” stories. Still, he was 17 when filming began; Daldry had to shut down production until the actor was 18 to film the sex scenes. No matter how one looks at it, this is discomforting: If the gender roles were reversed, women’s groups would be protesting this a la Lolita. Where’s the outcry here? Furthermore, the music swells most romantically when Ralph Fiennes (the grown-up Michael) is reading novels into a tape recorder for a jailed, guilty Nazi prison guard. Hanna never expresses remorse for what she’s done - she even asks a judge whether she should have not taken a job at Siemens - yet we’re supposed to be captivated by the pull this love of a sort still has on Michael after all these years? I’d recommend a good therapist.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
One Year and One Day Ago ...
I started this blog.
The Secret Life of Bees, which I saw just before Thanksgiving, was the quintessential Sunday-morning matinee experience: decent, entertaining, a solid B. I liked it.
“I killed my mother when I was 4 years old. She was all I ever wanted, and I took her away.” Those damning words, which open The Secret Life of Bees, come from 14-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) and hold juicy, mysterious promise. Alas, Bees morphs into a better-than-average Lifetime movie, although its exemplary cast disguises the script’s soft center well.
In 1964 Georgia, Lily lives with her abusive father (Paul Bettany) and black nanny (Jennifer Hudson). Lily’s trip to help Rosaleen register to vote turns violent, so they disappear to Tiburon, South Carolina, guided only by a black Mary picture. That leads them to the Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okonedo); lessons of love and racial awareness commence.
When writer/director Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love and Basketball) sticks to the framework of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, Bees flowers, despite Kidd’s sometimes-florid prose. (Prince-Blythewood can’t fix the underdeveloped Rosaleen arc, though.) The more she deviates - Lily wouldn’t have been able to sit in a “colored” section at the movies - the more the film loses its sting. And musical montages should banned unless your aim is to reside in the chick-flick ghetto.
The performances, especially from Fanning and Latifah, make it easier to overlook Bees’ flaws. Fanning, whose early work bordered on preternaturally adult, has matured into her talent. At one point, Lily has no dialogue for almost 10 minutes as she watches the drama around her. Fanning grabs us just by observing and absorbing. As she often does, Latifah provides a steady hand, this time as beekeeper/head of household August. While she’s played variations of Mother Hen in everything from Chicago to Beauty Shop, Latifah’s presence always welcomes and reassures.
Bees isn’t quite as sweet as honey, but the strength of its women make for a pleasant cinematic experience.
The Secret Life of Bees, which I saw just before Thanksgiving, was the quintessential Sunday-morning matinee experience: decent, entertaining, a solid B. I liked it.
“I killed my mother when I was 4 years old. She was all I ever wanted, and I took her away.” Those damning words, which open The Secret Life of Bees, come from 14-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) and hold juicy, mysterious promise. Alas, Bees morphs into a better-than-average Lifetime movie, although its exemplary cast disguises the script’s soft center well.
In 1964 Georgia, Lily lives with her abusive father (Paul Bettany) and black nanny (Jennifer Hudson). Lily’s trip to help Rosaleen register to vote turns violent, so they disappear to Tiburon, South Carolina, guided only by a black Mary picture. That leads them to the Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okonedo); lessons of love and racial awareness commence.
When writer/director Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love and Basketball) sticks to the framework of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, Bees flowers, despite Kidd’s sometimes-florid prose. (Prince-Blythewood can’t fix the underdeveloped Rosaleen arc, though.) The more she deviates - Lily wouldn’t have been able to sit in a “colored” section at the movies - the more the film loses its sting. And musical montages should banned unless your aim is to reside in the chick-flick ghetto.
The performances, especially from Fanning and Latifah, make it easier to overlook Bees’ flaws. Fanning, whose early work bordered on preternaturally adult, has matured into her talent. At one point, Lily has no dialogue for almost 10 minutes as she watches the drama around her. Fanning grabs us just by observing and absorbing. As she often does, Latifah provides a steady hand, this time as beekeeper/head of household August. While she’s played variations of Mother Hen in everything from Chicago to Beauty Shop, Latifah’s presence always welcomes and reassures.
Bees isn’t quite as sweet as honey, but the strength of its women make for a pleasant cinematic experience.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Two More from Tribeca
Actually, I saw these in August, days apart. Yes, I still have August reviews to write. Boy A is on DVD now; In Search of a Midnight Kiss doesn't have a date, but it is in the Netflix system. That was at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Oh, I have two movies left from August I'll review one of these days. (Maybe by the end of the year?) I also have another Tribeca movie, Run for Your Life, but I plan to incorporate that with a look at another running documentary I saw recently.
1) Boy A (seen Aug. 13, fifth movie seen in August)
Recalling James Bulger, the British toddler murdered by two 10-year-olds in 1993, the fictional drama Boy A raises questions about forgiveness. After several years in prison for a similar crime, Jack (Andrew Garfield) - known in the tabloids as “Boy A” - has been released into a world he doesn’t know, given an identity, job and social worker (Peter Mullan). Director John Crowley, working from Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation, carefully parcels out the specifics of the transgression as we see Jack make his way in society, find a girlfriend (Katie Lyons) but still struggle with his past. Alternately horrifying and heartbreaking, Boy A features of a portrait of vulnerability in Garfield, whose omnipresent hoodie says so much. Not an easy film, but certainly a thought-provoking one.
2) In Search of a Midnight Kiss (seen Aug. 15, sixth movie seen in August)
The latest branch from the Manhattan tree, In Search of a Midnight Kiss wants to be this decade’s Before Sunrise, but the characters aren’t as captivating. It’s the morning of New Year’s Eve in black-and-white Los Angeles, and failed writer Wilson (Scoot McNairy) places an ad on Craigslist, seeking a date for the big night. Along comes Vivian (a Joey Lauren Adams-like Sara Simmonds), one of those sarcastic, neurotic women often found in indie date movies. Writer/director Alex Holdridge takes us, and his sometimes obnoxious, something funny characters, on a talky night before introducing a jolting secret the next morning. Of course, I liked Before Sunset better than its predecessor, so perhaps Wilson and Vivian will be more appealing in 10 years.
Oh, I have two movies left from August I'll review one of these days. (Maybe by the end of the year?) I also have another Tribeca movie, Run for Your Life, but I plan to incorporate that with a look at another running documentary I saw recently.
1) Boy A (seen Aug. 13, fifth movie seen in August)
Recalling James Bulger, the British toddler murdered by two 10-year-olds in 1993, the fictional drama Boy A raises questions about forgiveness. After several years in prison for a similar crime, Jack (Andrew Garfield) - known in the tabloids as “Boy A” - has been released into a world he doesn’t know, given an identity, job and social worker (Peter Mullan). Director John Crowley, working from Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation, carefully parcels out the specifics of the transgression as we see Jack make his way in society, find a girlfriend (Katie Lyons) but still struggle with his past. Alternately horrifying and heartbreaking, Boy A features of a portrait of vulnerability in Garfield, whose omnipresent hoodie says so much. Not an easy film, but certainly a thought-provoking one.
2) In Search of a Midnight Kiss (seen Aug. 15, sixth movie seen in August)
The latest branch from the Manhattan tree, In Search of a Midnight Kiss wants to be this decade’s Before Sunrise, but the characters aren’t as captivating. It’s the morning of New Year’s Eve in black-and-white Los Angeles, and failed writer Wilson (Scoot McNairy) places an ad on Craigslist, seeking a date for the big night. Along comes Vivian (a Joey Lauren Adams-like Sara Simmonds), one of those sarcastic, neurotic women often found in indie date movies. Writer/director Alex Holdridge takes us, and his sometimes obnoxious, something funny characters, on a talky night before introducing a jolting secret the next morning. Of course, I liked Before Sunset better than its predecessor, so perhaps Wilson and Vivian will be more appealing in 10 years.
Tribeca Trio
Each year at the end of the Tribeca Film Festival, I go through the movie guide again, this time to mark down buzzed-about titles or flicks to seek out if they ever get a release. Fortunately, a half-dozen or so made it to theaters in the past year, even if just for a week. With a 125-word and/or five-sentence limit, I've taken to writing blurb-like reviews.
P.S. Thanks to my Tribeca supervisor Kelly for the second recommendation.
Before the Rains: Before the Rains is an average addition to the Merchant-Ivory canon, boosted by Nandita Das’ performance as lovestruck housekeeper Sajani. As Sajani asks her master and married lover, plantation-owning spice baron Moores (Linus Roache), if he loves her, Das’ body quivers, her eyes a mix of panic and fury. Before the Rains lacks passion when the actress is offscreen, and director Santosh Sivan’s lush cinematography cannot compensate for his deliberate pace. The script, based on a sequence in a 2001 Israeli film, contains a meaty, albeit predictable, tale of adultery, 1930s British/Indian culture clashes, the danger of loaded pistols and issues of loyalty for Moores’ manservant, T.K. (Rahul Bose). In the end, Before the Rains merely echoes another, better Merchant-Ivory production, A Passage to India. (seen on DVD on Nov. 22)
Let the Right One In: The winner for Best Feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, Sweden’s Let the Right One In is an original surprise: a touching story about acceptance and vampires with two 12-year-old leads. (Well, she's "more or less" 12.) Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a social outcast, an awkward target of bullies; Eli (Lena Leandersson) is also a loner, a wide-eyed waif - who happens to be a vampire. Director Tomas Alfredson gives Let the Right One In moody atmosphere, with swirling snowflakes and a lot of darkness that makes shots of red even more vivid, and elicits natural performances from his child actors. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, this isn’t a movie for children because of the graphic blood, but it’s a sweet fable adults can enjoy. (seen on Nov. 21 at the Angelika with vampire lover Brooklyn Jen)
War Child: War Child shares a framework with fellow Tribeca documentary Kassim the Dream - former child soldier, now a success abroad, returns home - only its charismatic center is hip-hop artist Emmanuel Jal. Forced to fight in Sudan’s civil war in the late 1980s, Emmanuel was rescued by a young British woman and taken to Kenya, where he thrived. Director C. Karim Chrobog artfully intersperses talking heads, dynamic concerts, images of genocide, footage of a young Emmanuel in a refugee camp, and Emmanuel today. Chrobog shows Emmanuel’s first trip home in 18 years in a straightforward fashion, marred only by a rush of outside voices at the end. Emmanel himself, his words and his music, make War Child a deserving Audience Award winner at Tribeca. (seen on Nov. 19 at the Village East Cinemas, with Ben in mind)
P.S. Thanks to my Tribeca supervisor Kelly for the second recommendation.
Before the Rains: Before the Rains is an average addition to the Merchant-Ivory canon, boosted by Nandita Das’ performance as lovestruck housekeeper Sajani. As Sajani asks her master and married lover, plantation-owning spice baron Moores (Linus Roache), if he loves her, Das’ body quivers, her eyes a mix of panic and fury. Before the Rains lacks passion when the actress is offscreen, and director Santosh Sivan’s lush cinematography cannot compensate for his deliberate pace. The script, based on a sequence in a 2001 Israeli film, contains a meaty, albeit predictable, tale of adultery, 1930s British/Indian culture clashes, the danger of loaded pistols and issues of loyalty for Moores’ manservant, T.K. (Rahul Bose). In the end, Before the Rains merely echoes another, better Merchant-Ivory production, A Passage to India. (seen on DVD on Nov. 22)
Let the Right One In: The winner for Best Feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, Sweden’s Let the Right One In is an original surprise: a touching story about acceptance and vampires with two 12-year-old leads. (Well, she's "more or less" 12.) Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a social outcast, an awkward target of bullies; Eli (Lena Leandersson) is also a loner, a wide-eyed waif - who happens to be a vampire. Director Tomas Alfredson gives Let the Right One In moody atmosphere, with swirling snowflakes and a lot of darkness that makes shots of red even more vivid, and elicits natural performances from his child actors. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, this isn’t a movie for children because of the graphic blood, but it’s a sweet fable adults can enjoy. (seen on Nov. 21 at the Angelika with vampire lover Brooklyn Jen)
War Child: War Child shares a framework with fellow Tribeca documentary Kassim the Dream - former child soldier, now a success abroad, returns home - only its charismatic center is hip-hop artist Emmanuel Jal. Forced to fight in Sudan’s civil war in the late 1980s, Emmanuel was rescued by a young British woman and taken to Kenya, where he thrived. Director C. Karim Chrobog artfully intersperses talking heads, dynamic concerts, images of genocide, footage of a young Emmanuel in a refugee camp, and Emmanuel today. Chrobog shows Emmanuel’s first trip home in 18 years in a straightforward fashion, marred only by a rush of outside voices at the end. Emmanel himself, his words and his music, make War Child a deserving Audience Award winner at Tribeca. (seen on Nov. 19 at the Village East Cinemas, with Ben in mind)
Disappointment, Part 3
My 100th post of the year!
My mother really liked Changeling. I really did not. (For the record, my father fell closer to my camp.) I so wanted to like it: Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby are two of the best movies I've seen this decade, and I've said more than once that Angelina Jolie was robbed of an Oscar nomination for A Mighty Heart. The storyline grabbed me, the trailers excited me. And yet ... Changeling was the biggest disappointment I've had at the cinema this year.
“Manipulative Oscar bait.”
Those were my first words after seeing Changeling, the kidnapping-turned-psych-ward-turned-serial-killer mystery starring Angelina Jolie in Mother Martyr mode. Changeling has the elements to succeed: director Clint Eastwood on a roll since 2003’s Mystic River, a compelling true story, Jolie coming from a triumphant turn in A Mighty Heart. Perhaps burdened by the weight of expectation, Changeling doesn’t connect.
(“Changeling” means “a child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another.”)
In 1928 Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) comes home from work one day to discover her young son, Walter, missing. She badgers the police, who basically ignore her until they find her boy several months later - only Christine says it’s not him. The LAPD, fed up with her building accusations, throws her in a psychiatric ward; fortunately, Christine has an ally in radio preacher Brigeleb (John Malkovich, who sounds creepy but is really a good guy). Meanwhile, chilling activities are taking place at a ranch north of town.
Jolie has many scenarios to play and emotions to telegraph, yet she operates in only two modes: hysterical and beatific. She wails and screams “I want my son back” more than a dozen times, often in front of the “new” Walter, which seems cruel. Part of this problem lies with screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski’s repetitive dialogue, but Jolie should’ve varied her line deliveries more. Compare this with her performance in A Mighty Heart, where she found shading and nuance in Mariane Pearl, or with the work of Changeling co-star Amy Ryan in a small but effective role as Christine’s fellow patient.
With Changeling, Eastwood tries to make a Chinatown or an L.A. Confidential for our times. Where the cops were conflicted in L.A. Confidential, here they’re bad-boy caricatures personified by Jeffrey Donovan’s ever-present sneer. Eastwood signals “period” more with his star’s dolled-up face and fashionably cute hat than with the neat archival footage of L.A. streets and scenes of the roller-skating telephone girls. Eastwood, who also scored the film, uses the same three or four mournful piano notes to personify Christine, a very soap-opera move.
About an hour into Changeling, we stop watching the Angelina Jolie Show in favor of another storyline, that of a rancher (a leering Jason Butler Harner) luring young boys to his home and doing awful things. That reveal, more than any Christine moment, rivets one’s attention, thanks to Michael Kelly as the cop who stumbles upon the horror and Eddie Alderson as the teenager who opens the curtains to that vileness. Straczynski and Eastwood spend the second half of
Changeling bringing these tales together, with mixed success. The film goes on about 20 minutes too long, with ending after tacked-on ending.
Changeling declares itself “a true story,” not just “based on a true story;” despite Straczynski’s research and legal vetting, so much of the movie just rings hollow. It’s as if all the principals forgot a crucial part of moviemaking: subtlety.
My mother really liked Changeling. I really did not. (For the record, my father fell closer to my camp.) I so wanted to like it: Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby are two of the best movies I've seen this decade, and I've said more than once that Angelina Jolie was robbed of an Oscar nomination for A Mighty Heart. The storyline grabbed me, the trailers excited me. And yet ... Changeling was the biggest disappointment I've had at the cinema this year.
“Manipulative Oscar bait.”
Those were my first words after seeing Changeling, the kidnapping-turned-psych-ward-turned-serial-killer mystery starring Angelina Jolie in Mother Martyr mode. Changeling has the elements to succeed: director Clint Eastwood on a roll since 2003’s Mystic River, a compelling true story, Jolie coming from a triumphant turn in A Mighty Heart. Perhaps burdened by the weight of expectation, Changeling doesn’t connect.
(“Changeling” means “a child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another.”)
In 1928 Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) comes home from work one day to discover her young son, Walter, missing. She badgers the police, who basically ignore her until they find her boy several months later - only Christine says it’s not him. The LAPD, fed up with her building accusations, throws her in a psychiatric ward; fortunately, Christine has an ally in radio preacher Brigeleb (John Malkovich, who sounds creepy but is really a good guy). Meanwhile, chilling activities are taking place at a ranch north of town.
Jolie has many scenarios to play and emotions to telegraph, yet she operates in only two modes: hysterical and beatific. She wails and screams “I want my son back” more than a dozen times, often in front of the “new” Walter, which seems cruel. Part of this problem lies with screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski’s repetitive dialogue, but Jolie should’ve varied her line deliveries more. Compare this with her performance in A Mighty Heart, where she found shading and nuance in Mariane Pearl, or with the work of Changeling co-star Amy Ryan in a small but effective role as Christine’s fellow patient.
With Changeling, Eastwood tries to make a Chinatown or an L.A. Confidential for our times. Where the cops were conflicted in L.A. Confidential, here they’re bad-boy caricatures personified by Jeffrey Donovan’s ever-present sneer. Eastwood signals “period” more with his star’s dolled-up face and fashionably cute hat than with the neat archival footage of L.A. streets and scenes of the roller-skating telephone girls. Eastwood, who also scored the film, uses the same three or four mournful piano notes to personify Christine, a very soap-opera move.
About an hour into Changeling, we stop watching the Angelina Jolie Show in favor of another storyline, that of a rancher (a leering Jason Butler Harner) luring young boys to his home and doing awful things. That reveal, more than any Christine moment, rivets one’s attention, thanks to Michael Kelly as the cop who stumbles upon the horror and Eddie Alderson as the teenager who opens the curtains to that vileness. Straczynski and Eastwood spend the second half of
Changeling bringing these tales together, with mixed success. The film goes on about 20 minutes too long, with ending after tacked-on ending.
Changeling declares itself “a true story,” not just “based on a true story;” despite Straczynski’s research and legal vetting, so much of the movie just rings hollow. It’s as if all the principals forgot a crucial part of moviemaking: subtlety.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Disappointment, Part 2
How did I know all was not right with the world at my screening of Zach and Miri Make a Porno? I did not find one line worth writing down in my notebook.
I think most of my friends and family would say my love of Dogma and Chasing Amy remains a mystery to them, even though I posted a 1,000-word opus about the former in April. Maybe it's a Jersey thing (the only one I seem to have adopted), maybe it's the fact almost every guy I've liked and/or dated has been obsessed with Kevin Smith, but I am a Smith cultist. When the reviews for Zach and Miri said Smith was moving into Judd Apatow territory, I cringed but plunked down $8 anyway.
I miss the filth. I think it's time to watch Chasing Amy again.
Kevin Smith has left New Jersey! Unfortunately, that move, to Pittsburgh, produces in an uneasy marriage of f-bombs and generic rom-com in his latest writing/directing effort, Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks play Zack (a schlub) and Miri (naturally, a hottie), broke best friends who make a skin flick for rent money and of course fall in love. Banks charms in her meatiest part to date, a dazzling smile delivering filth as easily as a Smith veteran; Rogen mostly revisits his Knocked Up role. The greatest guffaws come courtesy of Craig Robinson, Zach’s coffee-shop co-worker and “producer” - his awe during “casting” is one of the film’s few downright hysterical moments.
At his best (Chasing Amy, Dogma), Smith delivers a message even at his characters’ mouthiest. Here, as he tries to balance smut and heart, Smith creates an audition tape for the next Kate Hudson flick.
I think most of my friends and family would say my love of Dogma and Chasing Amy remains a mystery to them, even though I posted a 1,000-word opus about the former in April. Maybe it's a Jersey thing (the only one I seem to have adopted), maybe it's the fact almost every guy I've liked and/or dated has been obsessed with Kevin Smith, but I am a Smith cultist. When the reviews for Zach and Miri said Smith was moving into Judd Apatow territory, I cringed but plunked down $8 anyway.
I miss the filth. I think it's time to watch Chasing Amy again.
Kevin Smith has left New Jersey! Unfortunately, that move, to Pittsburgh, produces in an uneasy marriage of f-bombs and generic rom-com in his latest writing/directing effort, Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks play Zack (a schlub) and Miri (naturally, a hottie), broke best friends who make a skin flick for rent money and of course fall in love. Banks charms in her meatiest part to date, a dazzling smile delivering filth as easily as a Smith veteran; Rogen mostly revisits his Knocked Up role. The greatest guffaws come courtesy of Craig Robinson, Zach’s coffee-shop co-worker and “producer” - his awe during “casting” is one of the film’s few downright hysterical moments.
At his best (Chasing Amy, Dogma), Smith delivers a message even at his characters’ mouthiest. Here, as he tries to balance smut and heart, Smith creates an audition tape for the next Kate Hudson flick.
Disappointment, Part 1
I saw three movies in the past seven days and came away frustrated from all of them. Therefore, the next set of reviews, over the next few days, will focus on that trio: Changeling, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Death Defying Acts. This critique is about the last one.
I couldn't understand how a movie starring A-lister and Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta Jones, well-liked Aussie star Guy Pearce and rising newcomer Saoirse Ronan could receive no publicity and slip in and out of a New York City theater in just one week this summer. The plot sounded really interesting, and The Illusionist and The Prestige two years earlier indicated a market exists for magician films.
It took me two days to get through a 1-hour-and-40-minute movie. That should tell me something.
Death Defying Acts fails to cast a spell, despite its acclaimed pedigree and intriguing setup. In 1926, Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) offers $10,000 to anyone who can channel his mother’s last words. Enter (fictional) Scottish con woman Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta Jones), who claims psychic powers, and her ragamuffin daughter (Saoirse Ronan). Director Gillian Armstrong unsuccessfully balances mystery and romance and hampers herself with a dull pace. Woeful miscasting of the leads - she’s too glam, he’s inappropriately Noo Yawk brash - only magnifies the movie’s flaws and makes one yearn for a more enchanting magic film, 2006’s The Illusionist.
I couldn't understand how a movie starring A-lister and Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta Jones, well-liked Aussie star Guy Pearce and rising newcomer Saoirse Ronan could receive no publicity and slip in and out of a New York City theater in just one week this summer. The plot sounded really interesting, and The Illusionist and The Prestige two years earlier indicated a market exists for magician films.
It took me two days to get through a 1-hour-and-40-minute movie. That should tell me something.
Death Defying Acts fails to cast a spell, despite its acclaimed pedigree and intriguing setup. In 1926, Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) offers $10,000 to anyone who can channel his mother’s last words. Enter (fictional) Scottish con woman Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta Jones), who claims psychic powers, and her ragamuffin daughter (Saoirse Ronan). Director Gillian Armstrong unsuccessfully balances mystery and romance and hampers herself with a dull pace. Woeful miscasting of the leads - she’s too glam, he’s inappropriately Noo Yawk brash - only magnifies the movie’s flaws and makes one yearn for a more enchanting magic film, 2006’s The Illusionist.
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