Mr. Director's Reviews

Not Your Traditional Reporter

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
The Adventures of Tintin

2011 / 1 hr., 47 min. / PG

Director: Steven Spielberg

Until 2011, I had never heard of Tintin. Even now I know very little except that my son discovered some Tintin books at the library that summer, that he loves reading them, and that this literary find randomly coincided with the news that a film version was on its way. Naturally, a father-and-son outing to the cinema was in order.

Tintin is the creation of French author Herge from back in the 1940's. An intrepid reporter with a shock of red hair, Tintin never has an easy assignment; like the Hardy Boys or Hercule Poirot, Tintin manages to end up in life-threatening adventures just by existing, it seems. The episodic series of books, packed full of mystery and action, therefore lent themselves quite well to another of Steven Spielberg’s grand-scale tributes to the Saturday matinee serials of yesteryear, plainly titled The Adventures of Tintin.

My son informs me that this one is based entirely on the book The Secret of the Unicorn, in which Tintin’s innocent purchase of a miniature sailing ship lands him in the middle of dark and sinister intrigue. Dark and sinister people desperately want a piece of parchment tucked in the model’s tiny mast, and Tintin is naturally not content with letting them have the ship and parchment – He did, after all, pay an entire British pound for it, at the 1940's value. Instead, he pursues the dark and sinister forces, ending up on a steamer bound for some place in the Middle East I have never heard of and cannot now recall.

Along the way, Tintin meets and rescues Captain Haddock, a drunken sod who has a penchant for alliterative expletives like “Blue blistering barnacles!” Together they delve into the mystery of why anyone would care about a model sailing ship and a cryptic scribble on a piece of parchment. Delving, in this case, involves getting lost on the open seas in a rowboat, flying a sea plane into a violent thunderstorm, dying of thirst in the desert, attending an opera, and driving through Arabian city streets on a motorcycle-and-sidecar in pursuit of a bird of prey. In that order.

In directing The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg returns to a bygone era where kids could run down to the local theater every Saturday and watch their favorite heroes take off on daring new escapades for a quarter. Each film spun off of the one from the week before, creating an episodic series (hence “serials”) of tales. The hero engaged in chases, fights, and high-stakes adventure in pursuit of dark and sinister villains, many of which escaped to antagonize the hero again next week. Spielberg first tipped his hat to this “golly-gee whiz-bang” age with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the ensuing episodes of Indiana Jones’ adventures, and I can only imagine that he fondly remembers being one of those kids plunking down a quarter, because he pulls it off again here quite well. Tintin may or may not become as iconic to American audiences as Indiana Jones, but the homage to Saturday matinees is unmistakable.

Unfortunately for my personal taste, Spielberg chose to present the film as computer animation instead of live action. I suppose the argument could be made that animation is in keeping with the spirit of the books, since they are in graphic form, but my inclination is toward real people and sets, especially for fantasies and adventures. The film employs the motion-capture method of animating, in which real actors perform each shot of the movie wearing special suits that allow a computer to record their movements. From there, computer artists create the characters and locations. While it is probably cost-effective for an adventure like this, saving money on everything from costumes to pyrotechnics, it simply does not draw me in. It is too animated to be real – individual frames do look deceptively photographic, but to this day computer-generated living beings still do not move like flesh-and-blood people on physical sets – and too real to be enjoyed as an animated film. I spent the entire screening being aware of the film, and that is precisely what a film-maker should avoid. When technique distracts from the story, the film is less than perfect.

This is also true with the excessive camera movement. Spielberg is occasionally guilty of succumbing to the “Because We Can” syndrome – don’t get me started on one particularly egotistical shot in his War of the Worlds – and The Adventures of Tintin is no exception. The hypothetical camera feels constantly on the go, swooping in and around and over and through, simply because it can. Throw in some ineffectively simulated “hand-held” motion, and I’m just about ready to vocalize my discontent right there in the theater.

But within the bounds of Spielberg’s personal choice of storytelling medium, I would have to say it was a very enjoyable experience. Spielberg’s senses of wonder, awe, mystery, suspense, and adventure remain keen – and he even gets to throw in his trademark beams of light shining in dark, dusty rooms. On only a couple of occasions does he slip and allow truly cartoonish moments of silliness to interfere; but what can you expect when the hero’s sidekick is a dog with enough cognitive and communicative prowess to make Lassie green with envy?

Tintin is “played” by Jamie Bell (Nicholas Nickleby), assisted by Andy Serkis, renowned for his very physical performances for other motion-capture roles like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Daniel Craig of recent James Bond fame. It is hard to critique anyone’s acting in a film like this, since their performances undergo computer manipulation; but the voice talents are decidedly appropriate, at least.

I cannot speak for how well the screenplay conveys the spirit of Herge’s story, but writers Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish adhere closely enough that my son recognized which book he was seeing; and he sported a big grin on several occasions, particularly when Captain Haddock uttered another of his traditional epithets. He also instantly recognized the bumbling twin police detectives Thompson and Thomson, helpfully informing me of who they were. So as far as an adaptation goes, I guess they did a good job. As a script on its own terms, it is generally clever and consistent.

And I must comment with delight that John Williams is back. I haven’t heard anything truly interesting from him since his scoring for the Harry Potter series, and his recent work for Spielberg’s War Horse was pleasant but unmemorable. The rousing fun of Tintin’s quest allows Williams to rev up an energetic orchestra and really belt it out once again. There’s nothing specific to hum on your way out of the theater, like “The Raiders March”, but the music is in that same boisterous vein.

All told, I enjoyed my time with my son, and he enjoyed his time with Tintin. A few moments were spent cowering behind the row of seats in front of us – my son, not me – during some fairly intense chases and fights. But in general, for a harmless thrill ride through a good old mystery adventure, Tintin awaits you.

My Score: 8

Bringing Back Swashbuckling

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

2003 / 2 hrs., 23 min. / PG-13

Director: Gore Verbinski

I have been a life-long fan of the Disneyland attraction “Pirates of the Caribbean”. As a child, I rode through in general glee (and brief terror when the boat went down the hills). As an adult and film student, I ride through it as a study in amazing technological achievement and incredible production design. For a ride, it is very cinematic – as is much of Disneyland, setting it worlds apart from the ordinary amusement park. The single most vivid image in my mind is the skeleton lashed to the helm of a wrecked vessel, still seemingly piloting the craft as lightning crackles around him. And on a trivial note, the lighting scheme for the opening bayou section was declared by critics to be the most believable indoor sunset ever created.

In what has turned out to be an on-going marketing strategy, albeit with its ups and downs, the Disney empire has turned yet another of their park attractions into a film. Having casually charted the quality of entertainment over the past couple of decades, I was apprehensive of the potential childishness or sheer stupidity of such a plan. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw; but “pleasantly” is an understatement. For reasons I will present shortly, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl instantly earned a place on my Top Ten list of favorite films.

The film departs greatly from the ride, which is fine since the ride is basically a ten-minute tour through a town on the Spanish Main as pirates plunder, pillage, and burn it to the ground. But the two are not connected in name only: A handful of the ride’s key tableaux provide a springboard for the film, including prisoners trying to secure a key from a guard dog, a pirate ship attacking a fort at night, a pile of treasure with a dead captain on top, a bottle of wine pouring through a skeleton’s rib-cage, and on it goes. But I suppose I should talk about the film itself.

Laughably notorious Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) arrives in Port Royal, having lost command of his ship, the Black Pearl, and not doing any better in his leaky dinghy. Upon being spotted and captured, he is sentenced to be hanged the next morning and imprisoned.

During the night, the Black Pearl sails into the harbor and fires upon Port Royal. Throngs of pirates wade ashore and kidnap the governor’s daughter Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley), because she wears a gold medallion they have been seeking. Her friend Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) witnesses the kidnaping from a distance, and sets out to reclaim her.

He cannot do so, however, without the help of Jack, who knows where the ship is headed and why it is headed there. So Will turns pirate, and he and Jack head off after the Black Pearl, pursued by Port Royal’s military and Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport).

Now under the command of Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), the Black Pearl heads for the Isla de Muerta, where Barbossa and his pirates hope to lift the curse that plagues them by replacing the gold medallion in its Aztec coffer, and adding a few pints of Elizabeth’s blood for payment to the gods who cursed the gold ages ago. The curse itself is a beaut, lending the film some of its most memorable images.

From there, the plot thickens (downright congeals) with various twists and turns as Will rescues Elizabeth, Jack confronts Barbossa, Barbossa captures Will and discards Jack again, Norrington rescues Elizabeth, and so on. It sounds messy, but the execution of it is brilliant, energetic, and unadulterated fun.

Director Gore Verbinski (Mouse Hunt), working with a wonderful script by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, has crafted one of the most entertaining adventures I have seen in years. In the wrong hands this could have been a very cheesy, really dumb movie like the multitude of Disney films from the past two decades, including First Kid, Blank Check, and even the other “ride” movies, The Haunted Mansion and The Country Bears. The “family” films that might give the kids a laugh but which waste any intelligent person’s money.

This film does not stoop for a moment to anything less than superb. The production design is fantastic, costumes are wonderful, the orchestral score by Klaus Badelt is rousing, the special effects are awesome; camera angles, lighting – it is an all-around well-crafted film. Okay, the parrot reciting the ride’s key line (“Dead men tell no tales”) is chintzy, and I had hoped that somewhere (end credits?) they’d play the entire song of “A Pirate’s Life For Me,” but when those are the only things I can find to criticize, I think the movie did pretty well.

Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands) takes what would have been an ordinary role in someone else’s hands and turns Jack Sparrow into a sauntering, swaying, half mad, half drunk lunatic that you have to see to believe, and he does so with just the right level of intensity; not over-bearing, not too under-stated. If any others had tried to do it his way, they would have gone overboard and turned Sparrow into another stupid kids’ film clown. Bizarre as it seems at first glance, Depp’s performance is the perfect note for the film.

Depp also gets the best lines, including some delightfully witty ones that trample on every pirate cliche out there. We’ve all heard tales of ghoulish villains who never leave any survivors; when Jack hears such a tale, he retorts: “I wonder where the stories came from, then.” Why has no one thought of that before?

Geoffrey Rush (Shine) is wonderful as the villainous Barbossa, and he hams it up all over the place. His is the traditional leering, growling, gravel-voiced swashbuckler, turned up a few notches. He swaggers, glares, and otherwise chews the scenery to bits. Some critics have viewed this as a fault, but Rush does it in a way that fits into the aura of the whole production with comic delight.

Orlando Bloom (Wilde), Kiera Knightley (Bend It Like Beckham), Jack Davenport (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and Jonathan Pryce have roles that do not call for excessive creativity, but they fill their positions ably. Pryce (Brazil, Something Wicked This Way Comes) is one of my favorite character actors, and I would have enjoyed seeing him on screen more.

What is beautiful about this film is how all of its excellent elements add up to just so much gosh-darn fun! We are not bogged down with political statements, excessive focus on the romance, weak scripting, or lagging pace – I heartily disagree with those who feel its running time is too long. The comedy is funny without being inane, the adventure is rousing without being tiring, even the sidekick roles are well balanced – unlike irritating sidekicks that dominate other productions until I’m ready to strangle them, like the parrot in Aladdin and the two demons in Hercules.

On the topic of fun, I’d like to highlight the sword fights. Hollywood has the general attitude that the mere presence of a fight, battle, or chase should somehow in itself be entertaining. And maybe there are enough muscle-headed viewers who thrive on the raw adrenaline of such scenes to prove Hollywood right. I am not one of them. I despise a movie that puts the plot on hold while characters run each other through or plow into every fruit cart in town. So I tip my hat to Verbinski & Crew for creating sword fights and ship battles that are engaging and clever.

The film falls short of a perfect ten for small issues. The town of Tortuga sports some rather busty women – which may fit the town’s atmosphere, but it is gratuitous in a film you know kids are going to want to see. And there is the questionable ethic of having us root for lawbreakers. An attempt is made to excuse Will’s behavior at the end, but it is fuzzy in its logic and I am not completely satisfied on that count.

I concur with Jon Hanneman, the friend who recommended I see it, when he said it was the most sheer fun he had at the movies in a long time. No cares, no worries, no depressingly burdened hobbits. Just good old-fashioned heros and villains swashbuckling their way across the Caribbean. The only thing missing is the hill at the end to bring you back to port.

My Score: 9

Practically Perfect

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Mary Poppins

1964 / 2 hrs., 20 min. / G

Director: Robert Stevenson

The “G” in the ratings system stands for “General Audiences,” as in a film that reaches the youngest children, the oldest adults, and everyone in between. Modern studios don’t seem to understand this – most of their “G” films really need a “K” for kids, since adults will typically find the product mind-numbing. Not so with Walt Disney. Mr. Disney was the Grand Master of true Family entertainment. He knew how to find and produce stories that truly reached all ages: Eye-catching visuals for the kids, humor and poignancy for the adults (something Pixar seems to have picked up on in the wake of the Disney corporation’s floundering after Walt’s death). While I enjoy practically every feature project created during Disney’s lifetime, I have found none that so exemplifies Family entertainment as Mary Poppins.

This is a film that everyone needs to see, first as a child, then as a teenager, then as a young adult, then as a parent – and as frequently as possible in between all of those stages – for it has something to offer at every stage of life, and its offerings get richer the older one gets. Of course, there is the likelihood that the modern cynical teenager will not have the patience for the film’s cutesy veneer, but it is his loss if he does not stick around and learn something about life.

George Banks (David Tomlinson) is aptly named, as he is a banker at a prestigious London bank in 1910. His wife (Glynis Johns) is a strange blend of Vigorous Suffragette and Submissive Housewife. His children, Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber), look up to him and want ever so much to love him – but George does not see it. Children are to be patted on the head and sent up to bed, educated by a nanny, and generally molded by their fathers and mothers into new fathers and mothers who will then do the same to the next generation. Such is the precision a British home requires.

When the previous nanny (Elsa Lanchester) quits in a huff, George advertises for a new one – but only after tearing up the advertisement his children wrote on their own. Children could not possibly know what is good for them. (Well, I agree on a limited basis, but not to the extreme George Banks believes.) In a fun interview scene, George meets the first and only applicant for the position of nanny, Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews).

The children quickly learn something is not quite ordinary about the new nanny. After all, she literally breezed in by coasting over London using an open umbrella as a sail. She does not deign to walk up the stairs to the nursery, but slides up the bannister instead. And not ten minutes into her new job, she is pulling impossibly large objects out of her carpet bag, cleaning up the nursery with a mere snap of her fingers, and talking to her reflection in the mirror. Yes, we’ve all done that, but who among us has a reflection that answers back with a mind of its own?

From there, Mary Poppins takes the children on an outing to the park, where they meet up with Bert (Dick Van Dyke), a jovial cockney bloke who employs himself with whatever comes to mind (including narrating the film at a few key moments). He is first seen as a one-man band, in the park he’s a chalk artist, and later he’s a chimney sweep. Together, the four of them enjoy an afternoon inside one of Bert’s chalk pictures, complete with animated singing animals.

But it is not my job to tell the whole story here. In short, the seemingly frothy and pointless adventures continue, quietly building to a purpose that leads to Jane’s and Michael’s running away from their father, whom they are sure is out to destroy them. “He’s bringing the army, the navy, and everything!” Michael claims.

And thus we come to the amazing beauty of the film. Yes, all of these adventures are fantastic tales for youngsters to watch. I laughed my pre-teen self silly at the sight of Jane and Michael magically cleaning the nursery, hopping into the chalk picture, and having a tea party on the ceiling with Uncle Albert (Ed Wynn). But it was not until my late teens, perhaps even early adulthood, when I realized what was really going on.

It happens in the scene where George decides to dismiss Mary Poppins. Lecturing her on the importance of raising the children with a certain mind set, Banks is prepared to let Poppins go because of her apparently frivolous methods. But before he knows what has happened, she has pegged his unloving short-sightedness dead on, and has done so in such a way that he has no clue his soul has just been laid bare.

From there, George’s world falls apart. His children inadvertently cause a run on the bank, bringing the terror of the bank’s executives down upon George. He is called to a late-night meeting where he will be sacked, and his walk to the bank in the middle of the night, through the empty London streets, is one of the most powerful moments of the film.

And then, he gets it. He finally gets it! In the midst of the chaos his life has become, the reality of what his life should have been all along strikes him. And isn’t that often the way? When we are rising to the top, our field of vision overlooks the objects of real beauty, joy, and love that surround us. It is not until we are toppled by one of life’s misfortunes that we take time to look around and see what is truly worthwhile to our existence.

But I should back up and do my duty as a reviewer. First, in dealing with the cast, Julie Andrews (The Sound of Music) plays Mary Poppins flawlessly. I mean that. I can’t find anything to quibble about. Apparently neither could the Motion Picture Academy, as Andrews was awarded Best Actress by her peers. Dick Van Dyke (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) appears to be having an unrestrained blast in his role as the everyman who guides the story along. Linguistic purists will cringe over his version of a cockney accent, but I don’t find it distracting. And watch for his other appearance as Mr. Dawes, Sr., the role he quite begged Disney to let him play.

David Tomlinson (The Love Bug) was Disney’s every-villain for a while, and while he’s not so much a “villain” here, he does a good job as the crusty father. Glynis Johns (While You Were Sleeping) is humorous as Mrs. Banks, one moment bravely asserting that women should get to vote, and the next repeating, “Yes, dear,” to her husband in meek acquiescence.

And then there are the two children, played by Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice (The Gnome-Mobile). They are self-proclaimed adorable children, and I agree. Matthew is quite funny as Michael, especially when he is hopelessly frustrated by his inability to snap his fingers. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, these two joined the long list of Child Stars Who Failed to Make the Transition to Adult Stars, because aside from one or two other Disney features, they are almost completely unheard of after this film.

The script by Bill Walsh and Don Da Gradi did not win P.L. Travers’ approval, but it is lively, joyous, and in the hands of director Robert Stevenson (Bedknobs and Broomsticks) is told with great enthusiasm, wit, and fun. It also approaches its point with wonderful subtlety. Although there is an episodic nature to the little outings the nanny takes the children on, all of these things slowly and quietly build to the main point without ever stating it.

The songs are some of the most memorable ever written for a film. “Spoonful of Sugar,” the award-nominated “Chim Chim Cheree,” and the immortal “Supercalifragilistic” are among the gems of the music track. Websites that specialize in movie trivia inform me that Disney’s favorite song for the rest of his life was “Feed the Birds,” which I will agree is tender and haunting at the same time. The Sherman Brothers were brilliant in numerous films, and their compositions shine here.

The Disney company has always been a major innovator in new effects, and they are used here extensively. This is not to say the effects are perfect – the wires used to fly Andrews onto the Banks front porch are quite visible – but the sheer joy the film exudes tends to blur over the occasional flaw. Watching Dick Van Dyke dance with four animated penguins is a high point.

This is one of a handful of films I could discuss all day, and I feel like this review only begins to explore its depths. But I won’t do that; I will let you explore it for yourself from here on out. It is a treasure, assembled with care into one of the most touching films I’ve ever seen, with a beautiful life-affirming message about the joys of children, fatherhood, and family. See it often. With the whole family. It’s rated “G,” after all.

My Score: 9

Irresistibly Austen

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Emma

1996 / 2 hrs., 1 min. / PG

Director: Douglas McGrath

The people of Jane Austen’s novels talk. And talk and talk. For the English ladies of that era, there was not much else to do. It was, by and large, a man’s society. But one can accomplish quite a lot by talking, especially if one says the right things. Austen’s world was one in which “Mr. Knightley” was proper, “Knightley” revealed unwholesome familiarity, “My Mr. Knightley” was reserved for the bride alone, and women who knew the difference held the power.

In Miss Austen’s tale of Emma, the author created a heroine who says much, and in doing so manages to wreak a polite havoc on her circle of friends and neighbors. Douglas McGrath’s film adaptation of the book does a wonderful job of taking all that talk and turning it into something comical, something sweet, and something very beautiful.

Emma Woodhouse (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a young lady who fancies herself to be rather perceptive in the area of match-making, and the film opens at a wedding she firmly believes herself to be the cause of, since she had the foresight to introduce the couple to each other. “What a triumph!” she declares to her father (Denys Hawthorne) and her friend Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam). And based on that triumph, she plans to do it again, this time by connecting her new friend Miss Harriet Smith (Toni Collette) to the local parson, Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming).

Unfortunately, Emma and Harriet are the only two who do not see the obvious: Mr. Elton and Miss Smith will never go together. Class differences, as well as Harriet’s lack of breeding, put them in two separate worlds, even if they do live in the same neighborhood. Although Harriet is temporarily crushed when Mr. Elton ends up proposing to someone else, she is willing to bounce back. And Emma is determined to try again.

One of the positive delights of the film is the number of cleverly written supporting roles, which is also one of the negative frustrations of trying to concisely summarize the plot. Let me quickly say, then, that the rest of the film involves such fun as the obnoxious Mrs. Elton (Juliet Stevenson) that the parson brings home after his sabbatical in Bath, the arrival of the extremely eligible Frank Churchill (Ewan McGregor) which prompts Emma’s brain to turn over every possible combination (“Harriet and Frank,” or “Frank and Emma,” or ... ), the dotty Miss Bates (Sophie Thompson) and her practically mute mother – there is a quiet hilarity to the oft-repeated phrase “Mother couldn’t stop talking about it” – and Mr. Martin (Edward Woodall), the simple farmer who is spurned by Harriet at Emma’s suggestion. By the end of the film, Emma has failed completely in the art of match-making, only to discover one who was patiently waiting to make his own love for her known.

This is Douglas McGrath’s first directorial effort, after writing “Saturday Night Live” material and a couple of forgettable screenplays. His script for Emma, together with his creativity in the director’s chair, results in a film that is sparkling in every way. Had I been assigned to write a screenplay for this novel, I would have been at a loss to find the comedy in it; I just can’t visualize personality types in Austen novels. McGrath has infused his characters with a wide but very human array of quirks that turn an ordinary story into a jewel.

Other film versions of Emma have us ready to spank a bratty child, but the portrayal by Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love) has us shaking our heads in bemused disbelief at her blindness; like a parent comforting a child, and while the child’s head is buried on our shoulder, we smile at the little life lesson the child just learned, perhaps even having to stifle a laugh. We watch, helpless but bemused, as Emma misinterprets every single affectionate cue from Mr. Elton as being for Harriet instead of someone else. But then we also cry along with Emma when she realizes the pain she has caused Miss Bates at the picnic. This Emma has a heart. I’m not sure which focus Miss Austen would have preferred, but I personally like Paltrow’s version better.

I could praise every performer in the film, for there is not a single actor out of place; but my favorite is Juliet Stevenson (Mona Lisa Smile). Her take on Mrs. Elton is so funny! Her facial expressions, her gutteral little laugh – and listen for that hideous sniffing while she talks with her mouth full. It is an expert presentation of an obnoxious elitist I would never want to be stuck at the dinner table with.

The script in itself is quite joyous. It’s a feel-good film without the usual smarminess that comes with that genre. The characters breeze through the day, doing whatever it was they did back then; no one ever seems to ever really work at anything, not even paperwork. They engage in lively conversations, lively parties, lively picnics – they were lively back then, in an untainted, innocent way. They engaged in true wit, not caustic sarcasm. In fact, it is Emma’s single instance of barbed humor that has everyone so shocked during the picnic on Box Hill. They were gentlemen and ladies in those days – I find that any film from this era has a certain appeal to me.

As with any adaptation, new scenes have been invented to bring out elements of the book that would otherwise be unfilmable. One particularly creative piece of symbolism has Emma and Mr. Knightley practicing their archery while they discuss Emma’s plans for Harriet. As Mr. Knightley presses harder and harder his criticism of her match-making skills, our female cupid’s arrows go further and further afield, until Knightley has to request, “Try not to kill my dogs.”

The costumes are both simple and beautiful, and the lighting often serves more purpose than just the illumination of the set. Watch Emma burn with jealousy as she passes through a single shaft of lamplight during Jane Fairfax’s (Polly Walker) piano recital.

Music by Rachel Portman (The Cider House Rules, Nicholas Nickleby) won an Academy Award for Best Comedy Score. It is a beautiful main theme, often accompanied with very simple harmony and instrumentation, but it is full of the same joy and life that the film is infused with. This was the first I had ever heard of Portman. I have since heard much more of her music, and I’m surprised she is not yet a bigger name in cinematic conversations.

A couple of the film’s elements draw my interest specifically as a student of film production. First, the editing department created some fun transitions between scenes. One technique I found clever, and thankfully not over-used, was the cutting of a scene right in the middle of sentences. It happens twice that I recall, both times serving to save a lot of dialogue elsewhere. Emma is speaking to her former governess (Greta Scacchi) about what she plans to say to Harriet: “I shall say to her, ‘Harriet ... ’” A sudden cut shows her seated opposite Harriet as she finishes with, “I have some news.” It’s simple and effective; editing students should take note of it.

The other element is something I consider a flaw, but analyzing it has been educational. Every film has a point of view, a perspective for the audience. We live out the story through the main character’s experience, for example; or perhaps we are given a more omnipresent view as we move back and forth between scenes of the hero and of the villain. In Emma, McGrath keeps the perspective on Emma the whole time – the camera is always with her; and if Emma doesn’t know something, we don’t know it either. With one exception.

At one point during a dance party, Emma and Mr. Knightley are outside talking together. The conversation ends, Emma steps away – and Knightley says one more thing. “Arrgh!” I wanted to cry. (I think I did, actually.) The line itself was not necessary for us to perceive what was going on; and in letting the audience hear something that Emma does not, for one brief moment McGrath’s unfailing perspective is diverted elsewhere. Some will argue that this does not spoil anything at all, and I guess it does not, really; but I was intrigued by a film that could maintain a solitary perspective for the course of the story, and was a little piqued that it could not hold on for a mere three seconds more.

Sweeping that complaint aside, I have nothing but positive admiration for Emma. It is well-written, beautifully cast, the production design is spectacular in its quiet way. It teaches about life without preaching, and what it teaches is wholesome and uplifting. With the exception of young ones who might be rather bored, or cynical teenagers who won’t find enough explosions, swearing, and sex to keep them interested, this is a film for the whole family that leaves us cheering on the happy couple at the final wedding, and cheering on life as the end credits roll.

And I plan to keep cheering on Mr. McGrath for as long as he chooses to take classical novels and turn them into films.

My Score: 10

From Trekkies With Love

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Galaxy Quest

PG / 1 hr., 42 min. / 1999

Director: Dean Parisot

The success of the Star Trek phenomenon is amazing. Flat acting, cheap special effects, and more than a handful of absurd plot lines should have relegated the original series to the scrap heap after only a few episodes, but it flourished, sprouting offshoots, fan clubs, and massive conventions decades after its inception. I confess to liking it a little myself, but I do not own plastic Vulcan ears or a toy phaser.

It doesn’t take long to see the parodical references to Star Trek being made in Galaxy Quest. According to the film, Galaxy Quest was a cheesy sci-fi TV show of the late 70's or early 80's, featuring a standard collection of characters designed to appease every gender, ethnicity, and age demographic available: A white, stalwart, risk-taking captain (Tim Allen), a buxom female officer (Sigourney Weaver) whose function was to intermediate between human crew members and the computer, an Asian technician (Tony Shalhoub), an alien science officer (Alan Rickman), and a black child pilot (first Corbin Bleu, then Daryl Mitchell) who cheerfully reports, “We made it, Captain,” in much the same way that a member of the peanut gallery would concur with Howdy Doody.

Now it is about two decades after the show went off the air. The cast is older, but not much wiser, as they spend their time making appearances at Galaxy Quest Conventions, where they sign autographs for obsessed fans who wear costumes, recite lines, and debate strategies used in the show. People who really need a life.

The ragged, self-absorbed, squabbling band of has-beens is approached by what appear to be more eccentric fans, who plead with them to come save the dying race of Thermians. It is not long before the cast realizes they are dealing with actual aliens who believe them to be the actual crew of an actual starship.

It turns out the Thermians have been monitoring Earth’s television broadcasts for years, and assume that everything we’ve beamed across (or off of) our planet is factual, historical, documentary archive footage. Taking their cues from the brave and fearless (and scripted) crew of Galaxy Quest, the Thermians have built a space station, starship, weaponry, uniforms, and even the mess hall’s menu, exactly to spec.

The skeptical cast soon find themselves beamed aboard the Thermian ship, where the Thermians eagerly await their brilliant maneuvers to conquer and destroy Thermia’s archnemesis, Sarris. But can a handful of B-list actors pull off such a victory? It’s a feel-good comedy, so what do you think?

This prosaic synopsis does not do justice to what is one of the most flawless and funny comedies I have seen in a long time. Writer David Howard (in what is apparently his debut screenplay) and director Dean Parisot (Home Fries) have crafted something that is simultaneously a satire and an homage to the Trek mystique, and have done so without missing a beat. The script is witty, fast-paced, and joyously abandoned to the marvel that is Star Trek.

Every quirk of Trek is brought into play, both in the Galaxy Quest shows, and now in the crew’s attempts to live up to their reputations. Like Captain Kirk, Nesmith’s “Peter Quincy Taggert” apparently had a narcissistic penchant for going shirtless on several occasions, and he does so again while wrestling with a large animate rock creature. Gwen DeMarco finds herself repeating the Thermian’s computer, exactly as she did on the TV show. Sam Rockwell (Matchstick Men) tags along as “Crewman #6,” and spends his time on the Thermian ship worried that he is going to bite the dust early on, the way “Crewman #6” did in the original episode. And on it goes.

The entire cast is well chosen, from the energetic and cocky Tim Allen (The Santa Clause) to the toffy-nosed Alan Rickman (Die Hard), whose character “was an actor once!” and laments the way his stint on Galaxy Quest ruined his Shakespearean career. Tony Shalhoub (Men in Black) has a role that strikes me as the funniest, but you have to look for it, because he plays it calm and subtle. For one thing, his character is Asian: Watch him do a little squinty-eye move as his sole means of switching from Italian actor to Oriental technician. And notice what his constant hobby is. I won’t spoil it by pointing it out, but it has become a game with my wife and me to find out how many times he engages in it during the film, even in the most desperate of situations.

The aliens, led by Enrico Colantoni (Stigmata), are also comical as they attempt to relate to earth-going humans. Their methods of speaking, walking, and constantly smiling are judiciously stilted, making it believable that they are normally squid-like creatures who have temporarily assumed another form that they are not used to.

The final group that contributes to the adventure is a collection of nerdy teenagers, led by Justin Long (Jeepers Creepers). We first meet them at the convention as they attempt to discuss a fine discrepancy in one of the “GQ” episodes, and later they help save the day with their excessive knowledge of the original show. There is the question of whether the current generation would really find such interest in a lousy older show, but Long and Company are convincing as sincere and intense followers. (And maybe today’s teens really are fascinated by the original Trek; I wouldn’t know, as I don’t go to the conventions.)

What makes this movie more than an inane comedy is the way the crew learns to relate to each other. It borders on sincerely touching, the way Nesmith comes to realize what a jerk he has been over the decades to the fine bunch of supporting actors who were his fellow performers on the show. And Alexander Dane’s humble acquiescence to the wishes of his biggest fan actually brings tears to my eyes. Here are comedians who are truly human. They are not playing anything for cheap yucks; they are playing the natural comedy of the given situation, and learning about life along the way.

Technical highlights include the alien race led by Sarris, which is very well crafted, and which should be, since they are supposed to be real, unlike the cheesy beings that Captain Kirk had to wrestle with. It may have been possible to pay a little more attention to Sarris’ mouthpiece, which doesn’t always look as if it is actually enunciating the vowels and consonants we hear, but it is still an excellent achievement.

And I would also like to compliment David Newman’s score which is rousing from the beginning, and should be ranked alongside Bruce Broughton’s work for Silverado, or James Horner’s The Rocketeer score. A strong trumpet motif gives us the spirit of boldness and adventure needed to watch this fearful crew timidly go where no man has gone before.

In deciding how to rate this film, I think I have to give it a perfect score. This will probably be an affront to cinephiles who have written multi-page lectures on the innovations of Citizen Kane and the genius of Ingmar Bergman films, but let me defend my decision.

Every film, from the most intense drama to the fluffiest comedy, participates to some degree in the Unity of Art, a concept that describes how all elements should contribute to the central theme. The more every facet of a film contributes to its unified whole, the stronger the film. And ideally, nothing is out of place for even a moment, from characters to storyline to concept designs to costumes to make-up to musical score. And though Galaxy Quest is of a slightly more trivial nature than grand masterpieces like The Godfather or Casablanca, it nevertheless achieves that Unity of Art as expertly as the best of them.

The script, the look of the film, the wry tone, the sets, the music – it all fits exactly as it should. There was never a moment where I felt something was out of place or incongruent, or even delivered with less energy or flair than the other elements. The creators of this film deserve the perfect grade that I am giving them.

By Grapthar’s hammer, what a movie!

My Score: 10

My Favorite Movie

2012-01-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

1988 / 2 hrs., 6 min. / PG

Director: Terry Gilliam

“This is precisely the sort of thing no one ever believes,” says Baron Munchausen while climbing up a crescent moon in a galaxy filled with living constellations. That line encapsulates the entire two hours of one of the most imaginative fantasy adventures I have ever seen.

For The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the third film in his “Trilogy of Imagination,” director Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, Brazil) adapted the tall tales of Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Baron von Munchausen, a real German cavalry officer around whom a series of absurd fictional adventures centered. I have heard two reports, one which states that a friend wrote the tales to the Baron’s chagrin, and the other which claims that the Baron himself was a grandiose liar in real life. Regardless, the tales became part of German folk literature, and have been made into films twice previously.

Gilliam’s adaptation opens with “The Town” under attack by “The Sultan” – a humorous vagueness that runs throughout the film. The town administrator (Jonathan Pryce) is a legalistic paperwork fiend who thinks everything, even the Sultan’s war, can be solved by science, reason, and signing the right parchment, a theme continued over from Brazil. And the chief civilian divertissement is the local theater, where Henry Salt (Bill Paterson) and Company are performing The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

At one evening’s performance, the real Baron Munchausen (John Neville) shows up. Incensed at the license the young whipper-snappers are taking at the expense of his good name, the aging soldier interrupts the show, hijacking the stage to correct the injustice.

The Baron claims that he personally is the cause of the Sultan’s war. In a flashback with a beautiful transition shot, the Baron relates how he managed to win the Sultan’s entire fortune of gold and jewelry in a bet. Quite unhappy at losing that wager, the Sultan (Peter Jeffrey) pursued the Baron. Now, decades after the original affront, the Sultan has him trapped in the Town and persists in wasting cannon shot in the hopes of flushing him out. But exploding theater walls and flaming sets do little to dissuade the Baron from his determination to regroup his cadre of servants so that they can defeat the Sultan once and for all.

The Baron’s personal attendants in younger days were Berthold (Eric Idle), who could run thousands of miles per hour; Adolphus (Charles McKeown), who could see well enough to shoot an apple off a tree halfway around the world, and had the gun to do it; Gustavus (Jack Purvis), who could hear a man snoring from miles away; and Albrecht (Winston Dennis), who was strong enough to lift entire sailing vessels and sling them around by their anchors. This collection of fantastic misfits helped the Baron win the original bet, and now they are needed to save the Baron’s head from becoming part of the Sultan’s collection.

The Baron takes off to find his compatriots accompanied by Sally Salt (Sarah Polley), who has just enough childhood innocence and naivete to believe the Baron when he says he is the Town’s only hope. The adventures that ensue are a tremendous joy to watch, and I will not lessen their impact by analyzing them here, except to say that if seeing a man fly to the moon in a hot air balloon bothers you because you can’t help thinking about the impossibility of space travel without oxygen, this movie is not for you.

This film reminds me of such children’s books as The Five Chinese Brothers and The King With Six Friends, in which a bizarre collection of talented individuals pool their abilities to attain a happy ending. Gilliam’s creativity in bringing this particular story to the screen is as thrilling as those books were to me as a young boy. I love watching Berthold chasing a bullet, or Gustavus standing in Turkey gaging the wind speed in Italy just by listening, or the Baron blasting his way out of a whale using a pinch of snuff. And I often tried, as a boy, to lift myself off the ground by pulling up on my hair – the Baron actually succeeds. This wild story is told with energy and flair, and never fails to provide new and interesting wonders for us to behold. Watching the King of the Moon (Robin Williams) literally lose his head as it wrenches itself from his body is both comical and, if you have retained any youthful capacity to dream, amazing.

The theme here is one that Gilliam has presented before: Enjoy Your Imagination. We live in a world that has little patience for people who refuse to keep their feet on the ground, a world that would label someone like the Baron as insane. In one of the Baron’s many death scenes, he grouses to little Sally: “It’s all logic and reason now! No place for three-legged Cyclops in the South Seas, no place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine! No place for me!”

But Gilliam is not telling us to simply abandon rational behavior in favor of our wildest dreams. There is a time and place for responsibility, a fact which Sally must repeatedly remind the Baron of before his imagination distracts him to the point of rendering him completely useless in life.

John Neville (The Fifth Element, Little Women) portrays the Baron with uncompromised zeal, charging into each new adventure with anything ranging from casual aplomb to vigorous enthusiasm. Although the film flopped miserably thanks to some shenanigans in the Columbia corporate offices, it did launch Neville’s North American film career, and his performance makes it easy to see why.

Sarah Polley is an excellent choice as Sally Salt. She is precocious, and has just the nagging tone of voice she needs to break the Baron out of his reveries and get on with saving the Town. Polley has since gone on to appear in films such as Go and the remake of Dawn of the Dead, but I will always remember her as the girl who wanted to hear the end of the Baron’s story.

A handful of character actors fill out the rest of the cast, the most notable of which is Eric Idle (Nuns on the Run, Monty Python and the Holy Grail), who is always likable and has great fun as Berthold. Jack Purvis (Brazil) appears in one of his last film roles, the rock star Sting drops in for about thirty seconds as a wounded soldier, and Winston Dennis finally gets some dialogue after being mute for both Time Bandits and Brazil.

These fine performers work well with a script by Gilliam and Charles McKeown that is generally clever and exciting. Though the story is somewhat episodic in its leaps from one destination to another, thus preventing any real subtext or character arcs, the script doesn’t seem to care; it is too busy having fun.

The film is a very lavish production which looks like it spared no expense. As much as I want to be a film director, I am intimidated by the thought of such huge sets, such broad sweeping beaches filled with soldiers and armaments – all of which was real since CGI crowds were not a possibility at the time. Vulcan’s ornate ballroom is a masterpiece, the belly of the whale is awesome, and the surface of the moon is where the art directors obviously relaxed and got delightfully silly. There are imperfections, to be sure – the scale models and some flying wires are easily detected – but the look is still fantastic.

All this technical artistry was recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Art Direction, Costumes, Make-Up, and Special Effects. (It lost, respectively, to Batman, Henry V, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Abyss. I was ticked.) And yet, I was surprised to learn, the film has earned a place in cinematic history for being the textbook example of what Hollywood calls a fiasco. I don’t have room here, and apparently there is a whole book on the subject if you’re curious.

Having acknowledged its imperfections – and I’ll mention that, due to the Baron’s philandering and an artistic nude scene, it would be more appropriately rated PG-13 – I will say that this is without a doubt my favorite film. The Baron is a vigorous, enthusiastic figure whose laugh alone is enough to urge us to get on our horses, whip out our swords, and charge headlong into life’s challenges. The creativity of the storyline and the many fantastic whims that decorate the film never lose their savor with me, even after the gazillionth viewing. From the opening fanfare (by the late Michael Kamen – one of the most thrilling bars of music I have ever heard) to the triumphant ride into the sunset, my day is always brighter after watching the Baron’s exploits.

Floating heads, a two-dimensional city, a waltz with Venus, a three-headed mechanical bird, a tea party with the god of war, a card game with Death – these are things no one ever believes. But every now and then, just for a moment or two, maybe we should stop and imagine.

My Score: 8

The American Masterpiece

2012-01-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Citizen Kane

1941 / 1 hr., 59 min. / Unrated [PG]

Director: Orson Welles

It has survived over seven decades of competition to remain the touchstone of American cinema, perhaps even world cinema. It holds first place on the American Film Institute’s One Hundred Greatest Films of all time. It has generated multiple books about its creation, distribution, and the resulting furor. It is dissected annually by Roger Ebert at film festivals. It is a staple of college film courses. One wonders if there is any reason to add yet another review to the pile of literature surrounding Citizen Kane.

I’ve decided to engage in this potential futility as a feeble attempt to counter the growing sentiment that Citizen Kane is uninteresting. While I am tempted to blame this on the younger generation, I am also reminded that the last person to call the film “boring” in my hearing was a forty-something math teacher. So many years have elapsed since the film’s creation, and we have been so barraged with an escalating glut of movies in recent years, that laudatory remarks for the film are increasingly relegated to film critics, film students, and industry insiders. The rest see merely a tired old monochromatic drama and find themselves stifling yawns.

I was once part of the crowd that considered Citizen Kane a dull experience. I made the mistake of viewing the film for the first time when I was barely twelve or thirteen, renting it simply because I was aware that every budding film maker was supposed to admire it. And I was bored. I couldn’t understand half of what I had just seen, nor any of what made the film great.

Then I saw it again in my early 20's, not just more informed about film production, but also more mature in my outlook on life. And suddenly the film was irresistibly gripping, in both its cinematic technique and its philosophical import. If your first impression of Citizen Kane was lackluster, or if you have yet to bother watching it, please read on for just a small dose of what makes this movie a fascinating study.

Following the classic format of world literature’s greatest tragedies, Citizen Kane explores how a character’s flaws lead him ever deeper into an inescapable despair. The flaw in this case is complete selfishness, catalyzed by a loveless childhood. And the character being explored is Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles).

The film opens with Kane alone in a dimly lit bedroom within an expansive estate. He lies in bed, clutching a snow globe. He utters one word: “Rosebud”. And then he dies.

Why a man who rose to tremendous heights of fame and fortune in his life would die so alone, with such an enigmatic final word, is the subject of a newspaper’s investigation. Reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) interviews several people who were central to Kane’s life in the hopes of discovering who or what “Rosebud” was, and as each person responds to the reporter’s questions, we flash back to the relevant moments in Kane’s life.

Kane’s history begins with his childhood at his parents’ boarding home in Colorado. The conversation is somewhat elusive, but from what I can gather, Kane stands to inherit a sizable fortune from some stocks that his mother received as payment from a boarder. In an effort to keep the boy’s legacy out of the hands of her husband, Mrs. Kane (Agnes Moorehead) signs her son over to the care of Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), a banker. In effect, Kane is adopted by a corporation.

Kane spends his years as a minor in Thatcher’s care. Lacking parental guidance and nurture, he is a wild and prodigal youth. With his physical growth unaccompanied by a corresponding emotional maturation, Kane becomes merely an adult version of his intemperate adolescence. He freely squanders his inheritance on whatever comes to mind, such as the purchase of a newspaper, which he commandeers to print whatever he desires – including stories that may or may not be entirely true.

In line with his impetuous personality, Kane marries twice, first to Emily (Ruth Warrick), a woman who would have made a wonderful wife and mother if Kane had taken the time to notice. As his marriage begins to bore him, Kane turns to Susan (Dorothy Comingore), a pretty young thing he passes one day, and the affair leads to divorce and the second marriage. But this marriage collapses also, because although Kane dotes upon Susan to no end – paying for her operatic career and even building the marvelous Xanadu estate just for her – Susan wants real affection, something Kane does not understand or know how to give.

It is Kane’s desire to receive and give love – or what he thinks is love – that leads to the alienation of just about everyone who would befriend him. Lifelong companions desert him, his newspaper empire falters, and his political campaign dissolves in the wake of his scandalous activities. In the end, he spends his last days alone in a palatial estate that has nothing to offer him but the echoes of his footsteps.

So we now must answer the central question foundational to this review’s purpose: Why is this film held in such high esteem? Without re-writing all the books that have covered this question, let me put forth some brief thoughts. These will perhaps not be in the same order others would propose, but I have my reasons.

First, and perhaps the reason with the least impact, is its notoriety. Though Orson Welles (The Third Man) never admitted it out loud, it was obvious that he was presenting a thinly disguised and highly scathing biography of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. It is not a scene-by-scene parallel of Hearst’s life, but the comparisons between Kane and Hearst are too numerous to be coincidence, and Hearst knew it. He did everything in his power to ruin Welles and prevent the film’s release, but even his vast fortune and leverage could not stop it from reaching the public.

While that history is interesting, I assign it the lowest significance because Hollywood is regularly churning out films that anger people. If Citizen Kane had had nothing else in its favor, the publicity inadvertently afforded it by Hearst would not have been enough to sustain its power up to the present day.

Second, and decidedly more amazing, is the fact that this was Welles’ first film. Given the tremendous skill that even some of the worst directors must possess to get a film finished, Citizen Kane represents an astounding achievement for someone whose previous experience had been entirely in radio and theater, and who was only in his 20's when he began production on the film.

Third, Citizen Kane represents great leaps forward in cinematic creativity. My guess is that it was Welles’ own inexperience that actually contributed to this ingenuity: He was not bound to the conventions of contemporary cinema because he had never been trained in them, so he did things that went thoroughly against the grain.

His innovations were guided by his experience as a radio prodigy and his philosophy of excellence. This was the man who so successfully imitated emergency news broadcasts in performing The War of the Worlds that he caused real panic among listeners. In the same way, Welles’ attention to detail enabled him to craft the opening scene in Citizen Kane to mimic the style and idiosyncracies of actual news reels that would play in theaters before the feature. I remember watching for the first time and being confused by all the “authentic” news footage of a man I was certain was fictional. I’m fairly sure Welles would have felt satisfaction on hearing that.

Additionally, the deep-focus lenses, unusually long single takes, double-exposure of the film negative, massive crane shots, and many other techniques we now take for granted were once new, and many of them are now so commonplace in modern films precisely because Orson Welles first gave them a try.

No single reason supports the film’s status by itself, but my fourth reason holds the most weight in my opinion: It’s a powerful movie! Certainly it is old, and we have made vast improvements in film stock, sound recording, editing, and all the other technical aspects of production. But Citizen Kane rises above its archaic facets with a strong story told well.

In the same way we suffer as we watch Hamlet lose himself to his vengeful obsession, or feel horror creep over us as we realize the heinous crimes Oedipus the King has unknowingly committed, we watch with sadness as Kane sinks because of his own selfish choices. He buys a newspaper because it feeds his ego, he marries Susan because it makes him feel good, he lavishes gifts upon her because he wants to feel loved. Kane is a man who never learns to shed childhood impulse; he is classic self-absorption – Me, Me, Me! – from beginning to end, even when he sincerely believes that he is doing things for other people. Deprived of love in his youth, he craves it desperately; but he never comes to the realization that true love is not focused inwardly at all, but outwardly.

Perhaps a few lines by Jed Leland (Joseph Cotten) summarize it best: “You don’t care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love ‘em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. It’s something to be played your way according to your rules.” By the time Kane accepts this (if he ever really does), it is too late.

This tragedy is expertly played out by Welles and his cast, most of whom were part of his radio troupe and joined him on the silver screen for the first time. Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt) plays Kane’s school buddy Leland, who slowly becomes disenchanted with his friend as Kane shifts from a Socialist idealist to, frankly, an arrogant ass. In one scene, showgirls perform a song that Kane wrote for his own glory, and while Leland goes through the motions of clapping along, Cotten brings a look to Leland’s eyes that reveal his growing doubts.

The supporting cast is impeccable, with Everett Sloane and George Coulouris giving the performances that stick most in my mind. However, I find Agnes Moorehead’s performance strangely wooden; and while I can only assume Welles wanted it that way, it adds a layer of surrealism to her scene that makes the bizarre event of a woman signing away her son to a banker even more unfathomable.

I’m not going to delve into the technical arts of the film any more than I already have. Let it suffice to say that everything in the film, from the lighting to the editing to the music score, is a product of that fertile creativity Welles brought to Hollywood. Innovations abound, many we are not even aware of when watching.

If you’ve tried Citizen Kane and gave up or dismissed it, or if you’ve never even bothered because it was just “some old movie,” let me encourage you to try it again with these ideas in mind. Check out some books on Welles’ journey in making the film. Or, if your reading time is slim, find the DVD edition that features Roger Ebert’s commentary. Within a compact two hours, Ebert brings up some interesting anecdotes about the making of the film, and points out many of the tricks and techniques that Welles and Toland invented.

And then back up, close out all other distractions, and really watch it for what it has to say about humanity, particularly the difference between love and selfishness. In my opinion, this more than anything is what gives the film its richness and longevity. As long as we remain a race of self-absorbed beings, the warnings from Kane’s tragic plight will be potent and poignant.

My Score: 10

Now Playing

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Greetings and welcome to Mr. Director’s Reviews! You’ve come to the right place for the correct opinion on movies, books, theater, and any other art media I feel like reviewing. You’re sure to be enlightened!

Okay, so I’m really just another guy with a blog and an opinion. But I enjoy watching movies, I’ve made a handful of amateur efforts with the goal of directing a feature film for wide release someday, and I enjoy writing about movies. (And I’ll throw in the other storytelling arts as time and opportunity permit.)

What makes a movie good or bad? That is a question that is entirely unanswerable. Certainly there are technical aspects that should attain an unwritten standard: The film should be shot in focus; the audio should be audible; distracting elements, both visual and aural, should be avoided.

But after those basic requirements, it becomes a matter of taste. And while we could debate about what constitutes good taste and what does not, no two people are going to have the same taste all around.

So the reviews here are simply my personal take on things. You’re welcome to stop in often, leave notes, agree or disagree, and have fun with it. If, somewhere in there, I can pass on a little of what I believe makes a movie good or bad, then I’ve succeeded.

See you at the movies!

The Blues Real Bad

2010-11-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Ray

PG-13 / 2 hrs., 32 min. / 2004

I know precious little about Ray Charles. I am not a fan of his music, and I have only caught glimpses of his performance mannerisms in Pepsi Cola commercials. Now that I have seen Ray, I realize just how far-reaching his musical influence is. Call me naive, but I did not know he was the figure behind “Georgia On My Mind” and “Hit the Road, Jack,” and half a dozen other songs I’ve hummed in my lifetime.

Taylor Hackford’s Ray begins chronicling the life of Ray Charles as he leaves his native Florida in his early 20's and heads to Seattle for his first legitimate employment. Surrounded by sleazebags and conniving managers, Ray starts learning to stand up for himself and make his own way in the music world. His loss of sight only increases his other senses, enabling Ray to know when his employer is skimping on his cut of the pay, or when nightclub owners are attempting to rip him off. He uses his wits and brainpower instead of muscle to fight off the crooked bosses and studio honchos who try to steer him according to their plans. And he gains so much leverage in his quest that he can even demand an unprecedented clause in his contract: Personal ownership of his master recordings. Let it be said that my knowledge of the legendary figure has been enlightened.

And I have also been depressed and disturbed. Ray Charles apparently led a life of extensive drug use, marital infidelity, and the usual fame-induced attitude problems. Although the DVD case describes the film as “Ray’s inspirational journey; a tale of hope [and] redemption,” there is not a great deal of inspirational material in the film. The part about hope and redemption doesn’t even rear its head until the end credits are ready to roll. In the end, I think I would have preferred not knowing everything I now know about Ray. (And for those who would prefer not knowing any more about the film before seeing it, be aware that from here on out there may be some mild “spoiler” material.)

The problem with the movie’s entertainment value is in its choice of focus. The film spans a fair amount of time, but it is precisely that time in Ray’s life when things go from dark to darker. His drug addiction and his womanizing that nearly shatter his family tend to dominate the storytelling. (I can’t help thinking that his wife should have seen it coming, since she was sleeping with him before they were married, a ready indicator that he was not bringing a lot of high moral scruples into the union.) When the film does focus on Ray’s musical career, we are subjected to his increasingly egocentric behavior.

It doesn’t help that the flashbacks, designed to give us insight into why Ray is so driven, reveal a tragic and depressing childhood. Certainly this history to his personality is necessary, but combined with the weight of Ray’s present-day problems, we are really burdened down and pressed hard to squeeze some positive enjoyment out of the whole experience.

When I leave a theater, I generally like to feel better than when I went in. Ray fails here, as the entire film is 150 minutes of Ray’s long slow downfall into a pit of despair. Certainly there are the musical successes and the amazing celebrity status that this little boy from the South achieves, but these are not so much bright spots in the film as they are opportunities for Ray to sink even lower.

The film ends as Ray checks into a rehab clinic. A confrontation with his wife has enabled him to see what the drugs and the fame have done to him, and so he goes in for treatment. In other words, the film ends just when the advertised hope and redemption are finally entering Ray’s life; and all of his shining future is relegated to three or four screen captions just before the end credits, leaving us no chance to rebound with him and cheer him on. How much more rewarding to have taken the content of this film and assigned it to the first two-thirds of a movie that spends the last third rejoicing in Ray’s comeback.

Two things keep this film from becoming one of the most dreary sob stories ever made: Jamie Foxx’s performance, and the regular inclusion of Ray Charles’ upbeat musical numbers.

Jamie Foxx (Collateral) is outstanding as Ray. He has the manic sways and swings of the performer, the broad smile, and the speech patterns down so well, I did not recognize him as Foxx until a scene in which he takes off his glasses to “look” at his mother. I cannot compare him with the other four performances he was up against at his respective Academy Awards, but his victory as Best Leading Male was certainly reasonable at the very least. Quite a surprise from a man who started on In Living Color and appeared in such forgettable trash as Booty Call and Breakin’ All the Rules.

Foxx is backed up by a wonderful set of supporting performers, including Kerry Washington (Against the Ropes), Clifton Powell (Rush Hour), Harry Lennix (Get on the Bus), and Regina King (Jerry Maguire), among many others – and just when I think I’ve seen the last of Warwick Davis (Willow), he pops up again; this time he’s the announcer at Ray’s first Seattle gig.

The music of Ray Charles is peppered throughout the movie, as we would expect it to be, and fans will no doubt find themselves humming along. He apparently had quite the musical range and energy, and his fan base swelled so immensely that there’s a good chance “Elvis Lives” will soon be replaced by something else entirely. (That’s just a guess; I’m not an Elvis fan either.)

Taylor Hackford (Dolores Claiborne) has a sense of direction that is as energetic as Charles’ music. He keeps things moving right along. Sometimes too fast, even. The opening half hour of the film seems too eager to skip to “the good parts,” and feels choppy in its rush to get there. This is a minor complaint compared to the wonderful job Hackford does overall. We are convincingly and expertly swept into Ray’s world – but unlike Ray, we get to see it in all its sequined and neon glory.

I was not around during the times covered in the film, but everything feels right. From the hot, sweaty plantation in Florida to the grimy nightclub in Seattle and all across the country, the people look real, their costumes are right, the sets feel authentic. It is actually harder to work Production Design on a film that takes place just a generation ago than it is to redesign long-extinct civilizations – Stephen Altman and all the artists under him have done a wonderful job re-creating the American 1940's through 1960's.

It is entirely appropriate that since Ray Charles was a recording artist, it is his actual recordings that dominate the soundtrack. The only drawback is that Jamie Foxx’s speaking voice and Ray Charles’ singing voice are just dissimilar enough that the first time we hear one of Ray’s songs dubbed over Foxx lip-synching, it is a distracting change. Charles’ voice was slightly deeper and mellower than Foxx’s, judging from the recordings used, so the change in timbre from Foxx to Charles provides a slight jolt. A few of the songs do appear to be coming from Foxx’s vocal tone, and the end credits indicate that he did contribute singing talent to the soundtrack. Perhaps he should have contributed more, I don’t know.

Well, ultimately, I want to enjoy this film more than I actually did. The music is enjoyable. Foxx is wonderful. There is a zest in the storytelling. But I cannot shake the depressing tone of the film. Where most movies would consider Charles’ experiences in rehab to be the low point from which to spring into the third act, Hackford and writer James L. White let the curtain fall when the chips are down. And I am left with no desire to pick the chips up.

My Score: 7

A Bad Formula For Good Theater

2010-10-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Play Review:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Jeffrey Hatcher
adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson

Company: Cascades Theatrical Company
Venue: Greenwood Playhouse, Bend, Oregon
Run: 10/15/10 – 10/31/10

It is inevitable: When a literary work kicks around long enough, some writer or director gets it in his head that he can improve upon it by tampering with it in some significant way. From classic screenplays of the 1940's to Shakespeare’s dramas of the 1600's, “re-imaginings” abound. With very few exceptions, such experiments almost never actually improve upon the original. Unfortunately, Jeffrey Hatcher’s hatchet job on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, now on stage at Cascades Theatrical Company in Bend, Oregon, is not one of the exceptions.

By now those names are so familiar to our culture that issuing a spoiler warning is probably pointless. But if you happen to be a newcomer to it, my suggestion is to stop reading this review now, find a copy of the short story, and spend a night or two enjoying it in its proper form for the first time. Then if you really want to see Hatcher’s stage version, that’s up to you.

The set-up is primarily unchanged: A nasty little man named Edward Hyde has recently begun making appearances in London. With no apparent conscience or restraint, he engages in violence and acts of evil that quickly set the general populace on edge and on alert. But what is perhaps most disturbing about the situation is his apparent acquaintance with one of the community’s most prominent and upstanding persons, Dr. Henry Jekyll.

Why would the eminent doctor tolerate a remorseless monster like Mr. Hyde? Why no open denunciation of this fiend? Is Hyde blackmailing Jekyll? And at this point, I will remind those who do not know the story that I really am going to spoil plot elements and you should go read the work first.

The truth that the rest of you know is that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same person. On a quest to conquer the problem of evil, Dr. Jekyll has devised a potion that will isolate his evil desires into one “mind,” which has assumed the name of Edward Hyde. With all of his good desires and moral restraint locked away, Hyde spends his nights pursuing every wicked desire. And to make matters worse, it would seem that Hyde is becoming the stronger of the two personalities, threatening to take over Jekyll’s being entirely.

And then Jeffrey Hatcher comes along.

At Hatcher’s prescription, the script is performed with only six actors: One plays Dr. Jekyll exclusively, one plays a woman named Elizabeth Jelkes, and the other four play play multiple roles, from Utterson and Lanyon to medical college students and policemen, and everything in between. I can see where this would make the script an actor’s playground, giving enthusiastic thespians an opportunity to stretch out in many directions at once. I’ve played up to three different roles within one play, and it’s a fun challenge; so I can see the appeal from an actor’s viewpoint.

I suppose, then, this is the perfect place for the tangent into the Cascades Theatrical performers themselves, four of whom are familiar faces on our community theater stages. Brad Ruder plays Dr. Jekyll quite capably, handling both Jekyll’s dignity and desperation believably. Brad’s enthusiasm for acting and his young features have not been the best combination for getting significant roles in the Central Oregon area, so I’m happy for him – as I’m sure he is – that he has landed the leading man in this one.

Will Futterman makes a wonderfully gruff and ferocious Edward Hyde, then changes effortlessly into Dr. Lanyon complete with a lilting brogue in his accent. Liam O’Sruitheain brings a lifetime of training and experience to his characters, so that even the “smallest” of roles has interesting layers – the script presents Dr. Carew as merely a stuffy prude, for example; but with well-timed smirks and chuckles, O’Sruitheain turns him into a hypocritically lascivious lech.

Of less potency are performances by Jared Rasic, Kat Christiansen, and Zelia Horrell, but here two things must be said. First, I saw the Preview Night performance, which is basically the Dress Rehearsal made available to the public as a way of letting the cast and crew get used to having an audience. I have yet to see, be in, or direct a community theater production where every single technical kink was worked out, and every performance finely-tuned, by Opening Night. The usual course is that the refined acting comes out in the middle of the second week of the run, as I am sure will happen here as well.

Second, Hatcher’s casting directives mean that Rasic ends up with more than his fair share of the less-interesting characters, and that Christiansen plays at least two male roles (including an incarnation of Hyde that is rendered quite ineffective as a result), which in itself is an utter distraction that keeps the audience at arm’s length instead of drawing them in to a willful suspension of disbelief.

It should be the goal of every production company that the audience is so completely absorbed in the story that they lose sight of the technique. In this regard, the current production is almost entirely a failure, and I put all the blame on Hatcher. (And not just because I have friends in the cast and crew who may read this someday.)

Where to begin? Hatcher’s script instructs directors to dress the cast in neutral and matching costumes so that they can easily change from one character to the next by adding a hat or a scarf or a significant prop. But what this means is that every time an actor enters the stage, there is a brief period between the actor’s entrance and his speaking where the audience is drawn out of the story to assess what character we are meeting.

Over the course of the play, Hatcher has the four role-changers each assume the part of Hyde temporarily – another distraction. Why? Supposedly it has something to do with showing the many faces of evil, but it did absolutely nothing for me. It did not add any insight to the nature of evil that a single performer playing Hyde could not have done. Instead, it ends up just looking silly, particularly in scenes where all four of them are on stage as Hyde, each echoing each other in what I’m guessing is supposed to be a haunting and terrifying sound; or in the scene where they each speak to Jekyll in turn, passing Hyde’s trademark cane from one to the other with overdone theatricality. These were moments where Hatcher’s script had me embarrassed for the performers themselves.

In breaking up the script into over twenty-five scenes (nineteen in Act One alone, one of which is one sentence long), Hatcher subjects us to far too many total black-outs. Whatever spell may have been successfully cast during any given scene is shattered as the lights go down, in most cases for over ten seconds as crew and props rumble across the stage. Again, some of this will be smoothed over as the run of the play continues, but come on, Jeffrey! Nineteen scenes in Act One?? It’s like driving a car with a failing cylinder – the lurching effect disrupts the joy of the journey.

Less agonizing but still unnecessary are Hatcher’s embellishments to the story itself. Like many writers before him, he feels the need to insert a love interest into the plot. On Broadway it was Emma Carew; in films it has been Miriam or Claire or a dozen others. This time her name is Elizabeth Jelkes, and this time she actually falls in love with Edward Hyde, a plot twist so befuddling I never bought into it. Something to do with that strange attraction women apparently have toward dangerous men, I’m guessing, but the script is far too vague on the subject. She meets him, he threatens to kill her; and the next thing we know, she is paying affectionate visits to him on a regular basis. Okay, then.

If Hatcher gets something right, it is that Hyde is a human. The history of Hyde on film is that he is an oversized hairy beast with fangs and claws; I didn’t know until about a year ago that Stevenson’s original Hyde is actually human, and smaller than Jekyll. It is his twisted nature that makes him beastly, not his stature or body hair. Hatcher wisely keeps it in the realm of humanity, exploring Jekyll’s attempts to conquer evil the way Stevenson would have wanted.

So did I like any part of the play? Yes – one scene. In Act Two, there is a confrontation with the police at Jekyll’s home. While Jekyll attempts to sit calmly in his chair, Hyde (Futterman’s wonderful incarnation, thankfully) emerges from the shadows and the two minds speak to each other. In one instance, Jekyll speaks out loud what he only meant to think, giving the constable reason to be concerned. The scene is well-written, well-played, and maintains continuity; I was successfully intrigued, until the next hideous rumbling blackout came along.

In the past, I have been jibed for my negative reviews of local theater productions, and I’ll probably get raked over the coals for this one. That’s the hazard of critiquing something your friends and peers have personally worked on, I suppose. But I will repeat here what I made clear in every single one of those past essays: I have never had any complaint about the quality of the acting or technical artistry of any community theater production I have reviewed. Director Lana Shane and the cast have done a fine job with the script – but the script itself was not a fine job by the author.

One of the earliest stage adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde featured Richard Mansfield, an actor who played both roles, and whose transformation into Hyde using nothing but posture, voice, and facial expressions, was nevertheless so convincing that audience members accused him of using chemical means or an inflatable rubber suit. His performance was so evil and terrifying he was later accused, in all seriousness, of being Jack the Ripper.

That is a show I’d pay $20 to see.

Basic Ticket Price: $20
Value for Money: Not worth it

Everyday Heroes

2010-10-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Ladder 49

PG-13 / 1 hr., 55 min. / 2004

On Veterans’ Day my family goes to the parade that marches through Redmond’s downtown section. Like every parade in Redmond, you know it is over because the fire trucks drive by. I remember wondering, as a teenager, who really cared. I mean, yes, they’re fire trucks; we see them often, thank you. But on one particular Veterans’ Day, I happened to see Ladder 49 later that evening. And now I think we should have fire truck parades more often.

Ladder 49 begins with a massive fire in a grain silo in Baltimore where fire brigades are searching for trapped workers. One worker on the twelfth floor is saved by firefighter Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) – and then an explosion inside the building sends Jack plummeting to the floor below. Painfully incapacitated, Jack radios to his captain (John Travolta) outside, and a rescue attempt begins. As Jack lies on the floor, debris falling around him, we are taken back to his first day on the fire crew, and from there through the highlights of his life so far.

There’s Jack’s arrival at the station, complete with something akin to a mild fraternal hazing by “the boys.” The rush and thrill of his first call to a fire, with his captain right behind him coaching him on using the fire hose. The meeting and marrying of a beautiful young lady (Jacinda Barrett). The joy of a child. The honor of saving lives from burning buildings. The solemnity of losing a comrade to an unpredictable blaze. And the reminder that firemen do not automatically come out alive.

The list of scenes in Ladder 49 would suggest that it will settle comfortably into one of the most formulaic, predictable, and droll films ever made on the subject. But writer Lewis Colick (October Sky) and director Jay Russell (My Dog Skip) have infused the whole production with a certain life of its own.

For one thing, the film is not about fire-fighting. It is not a macho assembly of action set pieces designed to numb our minds and excite our adrenaline or raw masculinity. It is an exploration of the people at Station 33. Our primary focus may be Jack and his rise from rookie to honored hero, but we also get reasonably fleshed-out portraits of the other men.

We get snapshots of the crew’s lives as they loosen up over a few drinks. We feel a younger brother’s pain when his older brother falls into a burning building. We are in the hospital with Jack when he sees the face of a comrade after it was boiled off by an exploding steam pipe. They are only glimpses, to be sure, but they add to the whole picture instead of being ciphers whose only purpose is to direct our attention to Jack.

Joaquin Phoenix (Gladiator, Signs) is an interestingly appropriate choice to play Jack Morrison. In another (and I would say lesser) version of this plot, our hero would be the sexiest hunk the casting directors could find, and the director would find multiple excuses to feature him shirtless. Phoenix may be a reasonably nice-looking gent, but he hardly fits the mold. He has a scar under his nose, and speaks and breathes in a way that hints at nasal injuries earlier in life. He has a large frame, but it is more hulky than chiseled. He is starkly lacking a tan. And one scene in the movie reveals something of a tummy. While it is not my habit to study the male body, I bring all this up to showcase the wisdom Jay Russell had in casting him. Phoenix is an excellent choice for an everyman, the average fire-fighter, the man who does not stand out in a fashion or fitness contest. The man who is simply a husband, a father, and a humble worker in one of those jobs where people neither notice nor thank you until you are directly involved in their lives.

John Travolta (Phenomenon, Get Shorty) plays Jack’s captain in one of his more enjoyable roles. Travolta is one of those actors I appreciate and tolerate much more now that he has matured. As I look back over the movie, his role really does not stand out in my memory, and I think that’s because of the way he plays it. He headlines the show with Phoenix, but he is very much a supporting character instead of a main one. For Travolta to take his prominent personality and contain it in a smaller character that way takes talent.

Jacinda Barrett (The Human Stain) is the love interest, and her role approaches and recedes at various times. There are times she is the classic worried wife found in most guy movies, and there are times she is more obviously central, especially to Jack’s life and happiness.

The other characters are somewhat interchangeable, although Robert Patrick’s grouchy older coot on the force makes an effort to stand out more than the others. His rodent stare that served him well in Terminator 2 is replaced with a roughened interior and exterior, complete with mustache, that makes him more of a scratchy personality than his usual typecasting from his earlier movies.

The film is set in Baltimore, and uses the location for much of its production design. Some sets were created for scenes of burning interiors, particularly for the grain silo blaze which is very realistic. Jay Russell and his crew agreed (and finally someone besides me feels this way!) that computer-generated flames do not have the necessary realism for a film where fires are its central pivot. All of the flames in this film are real, “live” on the set, including the burning chunk that catches Phoenix’s costume on fire as he slides down the collapsing concrete floor of the silo. I imagine the dangers of shooting for such realism were high, but the result is worth it.

There are a few distractions in the telling of this story. One is that it covers too much time without being clear about it. Apart from growing longer hair, Phoenix never seems to age, so it was a lurch in the viewing experience to suddenly land in a scene where his second child (when did she enter the picture?) is having her fifth birthday. This is only one instance, but there are several times where the delivery makes the passage of time vague, and we are distracted from the storytelling as we pause to figure out when the new scene is taking place.

The other distraction is certain attention-getting camera techniques. In a handful of scenes, the camera is either functioning as the direct point of view of the character, or it is mounted securely to things like the fire hose nozzle, or an object a fireman is carrying. These shots jump at us with no preparation, and do little more for the film than point a large neon sign at the cinematographer that says “Look at how creative he is being!” A film is successful when it can completely submerge the audience in the story for the entire duration, without ever once drawing attention to its technique. In this, Ladder 49 stumbles along the way.

The film has been picked on for being melodramatic, for glamorizing firemen, and for sensationalizing their jobs. Yes, I’m sure there is some grandstanding, like the way a majestic and triumphant musical composition accompanies Jack’s first fire. I doubt the people whose possessions were being burned to a crisp were feeling quite so roused and patriotic. But with the way many of these people put their lives on the line to keep the rest of the community safe, I think a little grandstanding is certainly permissible.

So I think the overall viewing experience is a good one. And it is a good reminder to us that our towns, our cities, our quality of life would not survive were it not for public servants like firemen. When my boy gets a little older, I’m going to take him to the local fire station and let him see the men responsible for putting out fires in our area. So that he will know who they are, so that he will never be cynical enough to ask, “Who cares?”

And so I can get a picture of him in one of those huge hats.

My Score: 8

Hopelessness as Art

2010-07-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Synecdoche, New York

R / 2 hrs., 4 min. / 2008

A synecdoche is a literary device in which an emblematic object is used to succinctly express a reality. When the order is for “all hands on deck,” the captain of the ship certainly expects more than just hands on the deck; he intends for fully-intact sailors to report. The word “hand”, then, is a synecdoche, emblematic for the sailor’s entire being. Until I reminded myself of that nugget of trivia picked up in college, I was at a loss to explain the title of Charlie Kaufman’s latest script and first directing effort, since the fictional Synecdoche, New York takes place in the very real Schenectady.

There is an air of despondency around Caden Cotard. His alarm clock wakes him up with a radio interview of a poet who thrives on verses about Autumn and its death-like symbolism. Every morning he turns to the obituaries in the newspaper. He regularly visits medical specialists who advise him to see other medical specialists. And he is wrapping up rehearsals of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, set to open soon.

It doesn’t help that box office manager Hazel has a crush on Caden, or that his wife Adele confesses in marital counseling to fantasizing about Caden’s death, or that the set for the play falls down shortly before Opening Night, or that Adele clearly shares no enthusiasm for her husband’s work anyway. Indeed, Adele is too busy preparing her display of paintings for an art show in Berlin to be much good as a wife to Caden at all.

When Adele departs for Berlin with their daughter Olive and the trip abroad begins to extend itself indefinitely, Caden finally realizes that he has been left, abandoned. As a director of performing arts, he decides to explore his feelings by staging a play; a play designed to be real, not full of pre-scripted phony emotions but raw and true to life’s pains. To accomplish this realism, Caden stages the play in a vast warehouse, where the set is a life-size replica of several city blocks.

Here in Caden’s personal synecdoche, he hires actors to play people he knows, including someone to play himself. His set includes a scale model of the warehouse they are performing in, and within the warehouse set is yet another warehouse set. Over a rehearsal schedule lasting several years, Caden’s real life and his theatrical life blur until the difference between what is true and what is theater become indiscernible.

Charlie Kaufman is certainly one of the most original screenwriters in modern cinema. He enjoys taking topics that other writers would treat mundanely and bending them, exploring issues like love and self-image in surreal ways. From the comparatively prosaic Adaptation to the bizarre fantasy of Being John Malkovich, Kaufman gives us a memorable and distinctive take on reality.

In Synecdoche, New York, he goes one step further, making it hard to peg reality at all. The first fifteen minutes take place in September, October, December, January, and March despite the immediate continuity of the events involved. The morning cartoons all seem to be about disease and death; and an animated Caden even appears on the television screen. After Adele leaves him, Caden thumbs through a magazine in a waiting room, only to find an interview about her inside. Caden discovers his daughter’s diary under her pillow, and the entries keep updating themselves over the years even though she has never been home to write more. A woman buys a house that is perpetually on fire. Another woman dies in a hospital, and her tattoos die with her. It is as if Caden is wide awake but dreaming at the same time, which is pure Kaufman.

Kaufman is also very thorough. As I sat watching the film for the second time (which is almost required if you’re going to review it intelligently), I was impressed with the way everything relates to Kaufman’s topic. Issues surrounding death, disease, or loneliness infect every scene. Dialogue that seems trivial on the first viewing turns out to be critical to the themes once you hear it again with awareness. And it is no mistake that Caden’s last name, Cotard, is a reference to a mental disorder in which a person believes he is already dead and no longer exists. Kaufman is a man clearly alert to the smallest of details, impressively so.

As Caden, Philip Seymour Hoffman more than capably plays a weary, downcast soul whose every attempt at finding joy and purpose is frustrated. At least three different women enter his life, and he always seems to want the one he has least access to at any given moment. He sends gifts to Olive in Berlin but never receives any reply. He struggles to produce the theatrical monument to realism for years, with each new artistic epiphany fading into confusion until the next one arrives, causing him to repeat throughout the film: “I know how I want to do the play now.” Hoffman makes Caden carry all that weight so effectively that I had a hard time making myself sit and finish the film – the melancholy and despondency are so heavy that reaching the end credits is labor, not fun.

Hoffman is surrounded by Kaufman favorites and seasoned veterans like Catherine Keener as Adele, who has relatively little screen time but uses it well. Though Adele’s words may blame Caden for the dysfunctional marriage, Keener’s tone and delivery render Adele as self-absorbed as Caden. Samantha Morton plays Hazel and successfully takes her character from the smitten young box office manager to Caden’s dedicated life-long assistant director with apparent ease. Every performance, right on down to Dianne Wiest’s appearance which is practically a cameo, is delivered with strength and believability. Or at least the sort of believability a Kaufman landscape can provide.

The script is a production designer’s nightmare, which is why its successful execution is so astounding. Script supervisor Mary Cybulski made elaborate master charts to keep track of which warehouse set each scene takes place within, and her work paid off. The film moves seamlessly from the real Schenectady to Caden’s set of Schenectady, to the set within the set, and on through the layers endlessly. The special effects to further enhance all of this blend in so well I could not tell I was looking at special effects, which should naturally be the goal of every special effects artist.

All in all, Kaufman and his entire company pulled it off with a very understated panache. What is unfortunate is that so much talent was wasted presenting an empty and useless viewpoint. Kaufman’s nihilism states itself overtly in two monologues in the film’s second half. One character talks about life’s being nothing more than waiting, and waiting in vain for something that will offer hope. Another character tells Caden, “You have struggled into existence and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience.” Jon Brion’s music underscores all of this with compositions that at best contain a wistful grasping at hope, but more often drag us down too effectively into Caden’s barren wasteland of existence.

To say I do not subscribe to Kaufman’s message is putting it nicely. Kaufman’s thinking is apparently void of any knowledge of real joy, real happiness, real love. He knows nothing of God, eternity, hope. Through one of his characters, Kaufman sums up life as a brief and pointless existence in which nobody cares about anybody else, in which any sense of satisfaction whatsoever is only attained when we are able to say with conviction: “F*** everybody.”

I’ve never understood why nihilists bother disseminating their message at all, let alone spending millions to preach it in cinematic form. If nihilism is true, then there’s no escape from it and thus no point in “helping” everyone realize this. It’s like having a cell mate who wakes up every morning and reminds you that you’re serving a life sentence in an inescapable prison. What is a person supposed to do with that knowledge? Likewise, what am I supposed to take home from the movie? If the film had suggested for a moment that because life is short I should let loose and live it up, I could at least follow the logical flow of thought even while still disagreeing. But Kaufman suggests that because life is short and painful, there’s nothing to do but sit around and mope about it until no one wants to be around you anymore. And maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get in some sex along the way.

Synecdoche, New York demonstrates once again that Charlie Kaufman is a clever and savvy writer. It also demonstrates that he is a talented director. And it also reveals that he is a blind, misguided, and ignorant philosopher.

My Score: 6

The Ultimate Senseless Violence

2010-06-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Wanted

R / 1 hr., 50 min. / 2008

Given the stories we hear of ordinary people who “were such nice neighbors” suddenly snapping and becoming raving killers, I’m not sure Wanted is the best entertainment to thrust upon American culture. In this film based on the comic books by Mark Miller and J.G. Jones, insignificant office marshmallow Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) goes about his perfectly spineless day when he suddenly learns that his father, whom he has not seen since he was seven days old, was not only the world’s greatest assassin, but has also been shot and killed by another assassin who now has Gibson in his cross-hairs as well.

On the run for his life with the help of a mysterious woman (Angelina Jolie), Gibson is invited to join the organization of assassins that his father was, until recently, a leading member of: The Fraternity. This gathering of professional killers was founded a thousand years ago by a group of weavers who took it upon themselves to rid the world of those evil elements that were responsible for corruption, crime, and chaos. Unfortunately, one of its contemporary members has gone rogue and is knocking off Fraternity personnel one by one.

Fraternity leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) impresses upon Gibson the importance of avenging his father’s death, and Gibson embarks on a training regime to learn the art of assassination. This includes getting his weak mind getting beat out of him, learning about knife-fighting via direct assault, and mastering the art of bending the trajectory of bullets by simply thinking about it. And then he has to practice a few assassinations on seemingly innocuous targets. Finally the big day arrives and Gibson the Fraternity graduate heads off to blast the snot out of the renegade member who has been stalking him. Let that be a lesson to you, the next time you pick on the insignificant marshmallow in your workplace.

Well, frankly, if there was ever a movie that had no more purpose than to satiate the bloodthirsty fans of gratuitous and explicit violence, Wanted is it – though anything by Quentin Tarantino comes in a close second. There is no ennobling tale among the gore, like Gladiator. There is no attempt at political and social discussion or pro-humanist anti-theist philosophy, like Watchmen. There is simply violence. Fist fights and bloody noses, knife wounds, uprooted teeth, the spray of cranial fluids, and bullets exiting foreheads in slow motion are among the charming images of what amounts to a total waste of time.

I will agree with my wife and say that were it not for the disgusting level of violence in the film, the story itself would be somewhat entertaining. Written for the screen by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan, and directed with rock star sensibilities by Timur Bekmambetov, the adventure that Gibson finds himself in is decently intriguing. Khazakstani director Bekmambetov plays this action movie for all the stylization and visual wit he can muster, which is quite a lot.

I think what I find most interesting about the film is my own reaction to its cinematic style. While I am not a fan of film techniques like ramping, bullet time, and ultra-cool leather-clad marksmen with groovy weapons, I found this film’s take on the “grunge” cinema to be actually rather interesting. Maybe it has something to do with that very American style being run through a Khazak’s cultural interpretation and coming out as something different in some subtle way. As I know I will not be able to put my finger on it, I won’t babble on in an attempt to sound intelligent. In short, while other “grunge”-style films have left me wishing in the worst way that they would end quickly, Wanted did not induce such repulsion in me.

James McAvoy (Atonement) is fitting as Gibson, a young man who has already surrendered any interest in conquering life. No attempt is made to make him stunningly sexy as he becomes an assassin: He continues to look like an ordinary guy. And he has a beautiful dry tone for the lifeless narrations that open the film.

Supporting McAvoy are veterans Morgan Freeman (Batman Begins) and Angelina Jolie (Mr. and Mrs. Smith), who are pretty much typecast following years of playing the rich-voiced black mentor and the svelte sex symbol, respectively. These two have played these roles so often I doubt there was any challenge to it. Nor did I sense they went hunting for any new challenge either; their performances seemed almost phoned in with a yawn.

While there is not much to say about the film’s production design, I did like the room in which a giant loom has been weaving fabric for a thousand years. Its purpose I will not divulge, but in terms of the art direction, this set struck me as the one memorable location in the film.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention the reason I bothered renting an R-rated action film at all, which is not my usual style. The music was by Danny Elfman, which is definitely my usual style. For the most part, this is Elfman phoning in his work as well, but he does treat his fans to his voice again as he writes and sings the featured song in the end credits. Not bad work, but I’m not desperately adding the soundtrack to my wish list.

Ultimately, I’d say skip it. The story is pointless, and the violence and gore really would not be healthy images to be stuffing into your brain. There really is no good reason to spend two hours watching this one, as indeed I wish I hadn’t. Just being brutally honest.

My Score: 6

Wish You Weren't Here

2010-05-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Postcards From the Edge

R / 1 hr., 41 min. / 1990

I rented Postcards From the Edge knowing only that there was a shot of Meryl Streep hanging from the ledge of a building and trying to find the best delivery in her call for help. The shot in isolation was very funny. The context for the shot is less so. This is one of those films you find in the comedy aisle, but which doesn’t really belong there at all: While some humorous situations and verbal interplay dance across the surface, at heart this is a drama.

Postcards From the Edge is the semi-autobiographical retelling of actress Carrie Fisher’s own experience recovering from a drug addiction. Kind of. It’s actually more about her relationship with her mother once the film hits its first turning point.

In this fictionalized version, Suzanne Vale (Meryl Streep) barely finishes principle shooting on her latest film when she overdoses and lands in rehab. As a recovering addict, she is now a liability for film insurance companies, and finding good work will be nearly impossible. There is a film company interested in hiring her, but on one condition: That she live with her mother for the duration of the production.

Vale’s mother is Doris Mann (Shirley MacLaine), faded has-been and mild alcoholic – never drunk, but always with a drink on hand. And she is one of those mothers that manages to be selfish in her generosity, always giving advice, giving encouragement, giving opinions – because it makes her feel good and in control to do so. And because it then gives her a reason to upstage her daughter. Vale has no hope of ever being the woman her mother’s lectures envision.

As Vale’s new film role commences shooting, she has to learn to deal with the ever-present drug urge, an adoring hunk (Dennis Quaid) who may or may not want her just for sex, an onslaught of “helpful” advice from the producers of the film, and her mother. Coping is not always easy.

There is a sense in which the film is nearly flawless. Mike Nichols (The Graduate) directs a smart script by Carrie Fisher and draws out a strong chemistry between Meryl Streep (Sophie’s Choice) and Shirley MacLaine (Steel Magnolias), a chemistry made that much more potent by Fisher’s story. I’m looking at Nichols’ list of credits, and he appears to specialize in real-life, present-day dramas, which is evident here.

Streep does a fine job of portraying a woman on the titular edge. She often looks strained, worn out, tired of fighting and coping. How easy it would be to take a few forbidden pills and retreat to rehab’s cozy private bedrooms again, and the weary fight against this temptation comes out in her performance.

Holding her own against Streep’s fine work is MacLaine, who is always reliable as a feisty overbearing type. She creates Doris as a self-proclaimed expert on life and fame and money and coping, but whose constant verbiage serves more to drown out her own pain rather than actually have a positive effect on anyone around her.

The lovable Mary Wickes (The Music Man) plays Mann’s mother, and the three generations in one room reveal a lot about why Vale turned to drugs. Also in supporting and cameo roles are Dennis Quaid (The Big Easy) as a smarmy lover, Gene Hackman (Mississippi Burning) as a Richard Donner-esque film director, and Rob Reiner (Sleepless in Seattle) as a film producer with the uneasy task of requesting a drug test from Vale. And that’s not including Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws), Annette Bening (Mars Attacks!), Simon Callow (Shakespeare in Love), and more. There’s a buffet of top talent scattered throughout the production, sometimes in roles that disappear before you can look twice, and none of which ever hit a wrong note.

Several scenes take place on the set of Vale’s film, and provide both amusing images and poignant symbolism. Many shots reveal facades and rear projection backdrops, hinting at the phony exterior Vale puts on in public while she wrestles with her inner agonies. Sometimes I had more fun looking at the film equipment and crew members at work than in following Vale’s journey.

But here’s the paradox: All this nearly flawless material adds up to a film that is just, well, uninteresting. I can offer no compelling reason to see it even once, let alone see it again or own a copy. I’m sitting here at my word processor trying to think of something, anything, that grabbed me, or of anyone I know to whom I would mention it with even a degree of enthusiasm. And nothing comes to mind.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen too many movies. Everything this movie has can be found elsewhere, and presented at least as well as it is here. For instance, the dialogue is strong, but there’s more interesting dialogue out there. For snappy conversations between a mother and her child, I recommend Mother by Albert Brooks, starring, interestingly enough, Carrie Fisher’s mother Debbie Reynolds. The performances here are good, but Streep and MacLaine are good elsewhere, too. Other films about characters struggling against addictions have touched me deeper.

Really, I’m clutching at straws here trying to fathom why this movie even really exists, besides the pedestrian explanation that a producer somewhere liked the script and so on. If it disappeared completely, or had never even been made, the cinema world wouldn’t be lacking in any way. And in fairness, I suppose that could be said about a lot of movies.

I’m not trying to slam the film. All its parts are excellent, but those parts just add up to a whole that completely fails to captivate me. I’ve seen other films where the same could be said, but this is the greatest disparity I’ve ever noticed between a film’s superior artistry and inferior entertainment. It’s that disparity that has me stumped.

If I could pinpoint an actual complaint, it is that the songs go on way too long. Both Vale and Mann have singing talent, and it is showcased twice in the film. In both instances, the respective singer covers the entire song, and in one case she does so in a single close-up. The songs are not a useless conceit – some family dynamics are revealed in the first musical moment – but their sheer duration brings the proceedings to a halt.

No doubt some fan of the film will read this and be stupefied, and I’ll be told that it’s a wonderful film. To this I can only say that while I agree it is quite exceptional in its execution, we all have our preferences and mine do not include Postcards From the Edge.

If you haven’t had your fill of MacLaine as a grouchy old woman, or if you have a compulsion to see everything Streep has ever appeared in, give it a go. You certainly won’t be wasting your time on a bad movie – far from it. And if you like it more than I did, more power to you.

My Score: 7

Learning to Fly

2010-05-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Play Review:
Peter Pan

by J.M. Barrie
Musical Adaptation by Mark Charlap and Carolyn Leigh

Company: Redmond High School
Venue: Redmond High School
Run: 5/18/2010 – 5/22/2010

There is a certain appropriateness in having a high school stage a production of Peter Pan, as it is a story about the necessity of growing up, of overcoming one’s fears about adulthood and admitting that eternal youth in Neverland is not an enviable lifestyle. This week Redmond High School, along with select performers from local junior high and elementary schools, brings J.M. Barrie’s story to life in the musical incarnation by Mark Charlap and Carolyn Leigh.

The story, of course, is the familiar tale of Wendy, John, and Michael Darling, and their encounter one night with Peter Pan, the spritely boy in green who can fly and who has sat outside their bedroom window, more evenings than they know, listening to Wendy tell her younger brothers their bedtime stories. Now Peter offers to take Wendy back to his home of Neverland, where you never grow up, so she can be “Mother” to all the Lost Boys there and tell them stories forever.

Peter’s constant enemy in Neverland is Captain Hook, who wants to kill the Lost Boys. And when he discovers a “Mother” on the island, his plan is to keep her on board to tell stories to his pirates forever. This leads to the grand swordfight finale between Pan and Hook aboard the pirate ship, and a happy ending that becomes a slightly bittersweet ending and then we all go home. If that felt rushed, it’s because I’ve written it before in a film review.

Frankly, it would be easy to attack this latest production on many levels. For one, I’m just not crazy about the Charlap & Leigh musical version. Apart from the iconic “I Won’t Grow Up”, the songs strike me as not really striking me, and in some places feel desperately tacked on to no good purpose. It is possible, if I ever make myself watch the classic Mary Martin performance, that the songs may feel more integrated and catchy when performed by professionals, but I doubt it – amateur delivery does not seem to be the problem here. If you like the musical version, you may ignore this old codger’s opinion with abandon.

In this run, Peter Pan is played by two students. At my showing, Una Wagner was the featured performer; the other is Billy Brandt, and I might see if I can catch a snatch of his performance Friday by buttering up the right school administrators. Miss Wagner has a lot of the necessary charm and energy for the part, though I am partial to having actual males in male roles, as when Jeremy Sumpter played the role in the 2003 film. Wagner has an enthusiastic smile as well as a delightful singing voice, and does a fine job skipping, jumping, and crowing about the stage.

As can be expected from a school production, the talent level covers a wide spectrum. The performance that surprised me the most was Jeffrey Richards, a cute little speck of a thing I am assuming was recruited from an elementary school. As Michael, Richards shows more confidence and personality than some of the high schoolers, and has the advantage of being totally adorable in his white night shirt.

And naturally, as a school production, there is a disjointed blend of strong and weak elements. Some characters had microphones and were clearly audible, others went unaided in their projection and were lost completely under the ruckus of Indian chases and sword fights and the orchestra. At times the orchestra was simply too loud, though when the piano had the melody, the pianist seemed reticent to actually speak up.

Costuming was surprisingly extensive, and included a vibrant pirate costume for Captain Hook, and full-body dog and crocodile outfits as well. And though I’ve seen better sets at previous RHS productions, the large cut-outs and the “coloring book” look are very fitting for a children’s story. The school also managed to secure the services of Flying By Foy, so that they do indeed fly through the air as gracefully as any professional company. They even managed to do one better than the high school production I saw in Utah, where either John or Michael had to make repeated efforts to get off the ground while a banging sound backstage suggested some trouble with the wires.

I will also point out that the playbills are very professional. I mention this because six or seven years ago the RHS playbills were flimsy, poorly laid out, and riddled with typos. A good playbill should present a professional welcome to audience members, and the one for Peter Pan achieves this.

And now I have to be cruelly honest: The quality of the production does not justify the $10 ($12 at the door) ticket price. Certainly as a former drama teacher I am aware that a school play is mounted as an experience for the students. At the educational level, the audience is not there to be entertained; they are there to provide an audience for the young performers learning what it is to memorize lines, create characters, and go out on a stage and face down a paying crowd. The audience becomes another facet of the students’ dramatic education.

And I have happily paid between four and seven bucks in the past for some very good shows at Redmond High, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and even that depressing Woody Allen drama with the title I cannot recall that was very well acted despite its dreary message of hopelessness. So I am not just being a mean old critic who does not know how to view school plays for the educational value they present to the students. I simply did not receive a twelve-dollar show last night.

I think any and all troubles can be summed up as the director Phil Neely biting off a bigger project than the school was ready to chew. One of the first signs is that almost every Lost Boy and pirate is played by a female (much like the female Russian soldiers in my junior high adventure through Fiddler on the Roof). And I could be wrong but the presence of students borrowed from other schools would suggest that there was not enough in-house student interest to pull the play off.

Were I to list all my thoughts, they would largely revolve around little things that could have spiced up the production a notch. One example: Despite having a choreographer on the crew, some moments were a little bland. While Peter Pan sings “I Gotta Crow” the character pretty much just stands there. I so wanted to see him bound about the room like the cocky and vibrant imp that he is. I’m surprised no one on the creative staff found anything interesting to do with that scene.

I could go on, but I will retreat and remind myself that it is for the students that a school play is put on. And as such, several dozen kids are getting a good experience putting on a massive production. They are learning what it is to get into costume, enter on cue, act and react. In the wings, the crew are learning about timing of curtain, lights, music. And certainly they are learning that when cast members are flying fifteen to twenty feet off the stage, there is no room for getting distracted. I was not satisfied as an audience member, but I would not have the students involved miss out on this facet of their education no matter what the crusty old critics say.

Despite the play’s rough edges – of which there were plenty – as I sat there with my five-year-old son and heard again the play’s message about growing up, I did have to hold back a tear or two. They grow up so fast, don’t they? But the alternative of remaining a petulant child forever would not truly be as wonderful as it sometimes sounds.

I certainly hope that if you are a family member or friend of cast or crew that you will go see what they have achieved. For all others, I leave it up to you.

Lowest ticket price: $10
Value for money: Very hard to justify the expense

The Spear Misses Its Target

2010-05-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
End of the Spear

PG-13 / 1 hr., 48 min / 2006

In the mid-1950's, missionary pilot Nate Saint flew Jim Elliot and three missionary companions into the jungles of Ecuador in an attempt to make contact with the Auca tribe. Their goal was to share the Bible’s message of salvation, the Gospel, to the natives.

On January 8, 1956, the five men were mercilessly slaughtered by a group of Auca tribesmen.

Whether readers of this review believe in Christianity or not is beside the point. Saint, Elliot, and the others did firmly believe that all people everywhere are destined to Hell unless they place their trust in Jesus Christ. Spreading the Gospel, enabling people to hear of Heaven and the escape from eternal pain and suffering, was of the utmost importance to them. They were willing to give their lives in the process if God so decreed.

But you sure can’t tell that by watching End of the Spear.

The film is told from the point of view of Nate’s son Steve, who was not yet a teen when his father was killed. We begin with a shot of an adult Steve (Chad Allen) paddling along a river with a Waodani tribesman named Mincayani (Louie Leonardo). Where they are going is not yet revealed, but Steve’s narration leads us into the story of how Mincayani ended up sitting in a boat with the son of the man he killed.

In the earlier part of the century, Mincayani was a prominent member of a dwindling tribe. Certainly some tribal rituals were part of the problem: When a parent died, for instance, his living children were to be buried with him – which really puts a damper on any hopes of a flourishing family tree. In addition, in-fighting among the various Ecuadorian tribes was leading to the extinction of all of them. But one enemy they all had in common was the “foreigners” – which basically constituted any white man.

There is a sub-plot involving what I think was Mincayani’s sister ending up being adopted by some white missionaries years before, but when the missionaries try to inform the Waodani that she is still alive and well, Mincayani is skeptical. Indeed, his skepticism and distrust eventually boil over into the rage that leads to the five deaths.

While these deaths bring grief to the hearts of the wives the missionaries left behind, these women also believe as their husbands did, and head out to minister to the Waodani tribe. Under the constantly distrustful eye of Mincayani, Elisabeth Elliot and the other women encourage the tribe to lay off killing other tribes, to foster honorable character. The women also prove very helpful when polio enters the tribe, administering medicine and therapy to heal the natives.

This loving treatment in light of his murderous behavior tortures Mincayani’s heart until, years later, he finds himself paddling up the river with Steve to the place where Nate and the missionaries were killed. There, both Mincayani and Steve must finally come to grips with the tragedy.

It has been the history of Christian films that, because they are not as hugely marketable as generic Hollywood entertainment, they operate under much lower budgets, and therefore end up with low production values all around, from acting to costumes to music to editing. In its favor, End of the Spear plays very much like a moderately well-budgeted film.

For what it is, the screenplay by Bart Gavigan, Jim Hanon, and Bill Ewing is respectable fare, with Mincayani’s story vividly laid out and woven together with Steve’s. Some of the lesser details puzzle me, like why the tribe is called the Waodani here when they are known as the Aucas in articles about Jim Elliot. And like many biopics, events are often compressed: The men made contact with the tribe on more occasions than are chronicled here, for example. But the overall structure is reliable, and the script is not inept.

Directed by Hanon, the production is entirely watchable, far removed from some of the embarrassments of Christian cinema’s earlier years. With some beautiful imagery by Robert A. Driskell, Jr., and production design by Clarence L. Major, we are taken into the steamy, dirty world of the Waodani, and the makeshift existence of the missionaries. It’s not perfect – the opening attack of one tribe upon another felt a little staged, for example. But clearly money was involved with this one.

Thanks to a beard and glasses, Chad Allen (NYPD Blue) works as both father and son without being a casting distraction, though far more charming is young Chase Ellison (The Young and the Restless) who plays Steve as a youth. But even with two roles, Allen actually doesn’t have a lot of acting to do. He flies the plane, lands with the men, and gets the dramatic death scene even though most anyone who knows this story thinks of Jim Elliot long before thinking of Nate Saint.

The film’s running time really belongs to Louie Leonardo (All My Children) as Mincayani. Leonardo must deal with all of the painful emotions running through Mincayani as he struggles with having his tribe’s tradition imposed upon by foreigners while at the same time wrestling with the perils those very traditions present. Leonardo gives no hint of his soap opera background, where melodrama reigns. He feels real in this performance.

Jack Guzman (Days of Our Lives) plays a tribesman named Kimo, who is the first to accept the ways of the missionary wives. Deciding their lessons of peace to be the better way, he helps with building new shelters, and reaches a point where he breaks his spears as a sign that he will no longer participate in killing other tribes. Guzman and Leonardo successfully generate the necessary tension between the two competing ideologies – they made me temporarily doubt what I knew was the historical outcome.

But under all of the quality production values lies a problem: If ever I have seen a biopic that totally misses the point of its subject matter, End of the Spear is the one.

Yes, I’m a Christian who very much admires Jim Elliot’s total devotion to God. But I’m not writing the following to turn any readers into Christians. I’m simply trying to describe the movie’s huge failure. I shall aim for succinctness.

It is the Bible’s claim that all souls throughout history are sinful from birth and sentenced by a perfectly holy God to pay for their sins by enduring never-ending unbearable suffering in Hell. Far from leaving it at that depressing conclusion, however, the Bible claims that God himself has paid that penalty by having his Son Jesus Christ die in mankind’s place, and that anyone who simply acknowledges this and places his trust in Christ will be rescued from the sentence of Hell and be welcomed into eternal bliss in God’s presence in the afterlife.

Saint and the missionaries believed all of this, and believed that giving the Waodani (or Aucas) the opportunity to hear that message and thus be saved from Hell was more important than any other goal in life. Still with me?

So if a person gave his life trying to rescue souls from Hell, shouldn’t a movie about that person include his central mission? End of the Spear turns Saint and Elliot, and later their wives, into people whose primary goal was to bring modern civility to the tribe; a shallow thesis compared to what they really went to Ecuador for. If you’re not familiar with Christian beliefs and the significance of my argument doesn’t strike you, let me put it this way: It would be akin to making a film about Martin Luther King, Jr., and leaving out that minor detail about his stand for racial equality.

The Bible’s message is not about living “the good life” here on earth. It is about the opportunity to live an unspeakably joyous life after this one. But Saint’s and Elliot’s heart-felt belief that God wants to save people from Hell is reduced to a message that God wants everyone to get along, get dressed, eat right, and stay healthy.

No wonder a homosexual activist and two soap opera hunks were willing to play leading roles in a “Christian” film: Had this movie truly portrayed what Nate Saint and the others stood for, I doubt Allen in particular would have touched the project. And no wonder so many non-Christians were angry: The film turns Saint and Elliot into nothing more than meddlers who had the presumption to assume that Western civilization needed to be spread to this backwater tribe.

I repeat, believing the veracity of the Bible’s message or not is up to you. My point is that End of the Spear thoroughly trivializes what happened in Ecuador, both in January of 1956 and years later when the next generation of missionaries returned, by ignoring Saint’s true motivation for going there. I give it points for production values, but cannot in good conscience call it a good movie.

My Score: 6

Two Parts Fluff

2010-05-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Julie & Julia

PG-13 / 2 hrs., 3 min. / 2009

Until Julie & Julia came along, my only memories or knowledge of Julia Child came from seeing her television show as a young boy. Not that I was into cooking shows at age seven; mostly she was just a “funny old lady” to watch when Sesame Street wasn’t on.

Well, it turns out Mrs. Child was quite instrumental in encouraging American housewives to cook, to really cook and not just whip up Betty Crocker’s powdered mixes; and to enjoy the process at the same time. But apparently dozens of women in the theater already knew this, based on the comments I overheard.

Nora Ephron’s latest is a charming, romantic, and very funny comedy that weaves together two true stories: Julia Child’s life in France as she attempts to learn the art of French cooking and pass it on by writing a cookbook; and Julie Powell’s attempt to cook every recipe in Child’s book within one year.

The film opens like a beautiful postcard, with a car being lowered from a steamer and driving through the French countryside. In it are Paul Child (Stanley Tucci) and his wife Julia (Meryl Streep), newly transferred to Paris by the United States government. It is post-war France, and Julia is an ebullient personality that absorbs her surroundings, especially the French cuisine, with complete enthusiasm. But the exotic new locale is entertaining in itself only for so long, and soon Julia feels tedium creeping in.

As she enjoys eating good food so much, Julia enrolls in cooking school. Determined to learn French cooking, and encouraged by her husband, she lets nothing keep her down – not even the scornful attitude of the provost of Le Cordon Bleu. Eventually Julia joins forces with two French ladies to run their own cooking classes and to assemble their recipes into a cookbook written in English for American middle-class women.

Meanwhile (or rather decades later in 2002), Julie Powell (Amy Adams) grows weary of her monotonous government job in New York City and gives herself purpose by taking up Child’s published book (which deflates a little of the suspense about whether Child will get her book published) and working her way through it in a year, with an accompanying blog for whoever in the vast world wants to read of her adventure. Needing to average about two recipes a day, Powell dives in fully, potentially at the expense of alienating her husband Eric (Chris Messina).

Anyone familiar with Nora Ephron’s repertoire will definitely sense her presence here. The deft hand that created Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail brings the same buoyant spirit to Julie & Julia. Some may criticize Ephron’s works as inconsequential fluff, but the older and crankier I get, the more I have to wonder: When did we reach a point where we believed it was a film’s moral obligation to have something serious to say? Films were once about entertaining us; critics have made us believe they have to be important. I sincerely appreciate Ephron’s light and frothy spirit of fun that infuses the three works of hers that I have now seen, a spirit that lets me bounce out of the theater with a smile. Oh, there is a “serious” side to Julie & Julia, but it could hardly be described as “weighty”, and any problems that rise up before our protagonists are fairly easily dismissed.

The contemporary half of the story has Ephron’s signature all over it. But in presenting Child’s life in France, Ephron proves that her sense of comedy and romance are not relegated strictly to present-day big cities. In fact, it is Child’s story that is the more engaging of the two; without it, Powell’s storyline would not have stood on its own as a captivating movie.

Julia Child is played by Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!), and she is utterly convincing. The mannerisms and speech patterns I recall from the television show were all there. And had I not known any better, Streep’s imitation of Child’s voice would have completely fooled me. The performance is not mere mimicry; she definitely brings a real person out of the impersonation. Consider the quiet and tender way Child deals with her inability to have children. In Streep’s hands, these moments are subtle and believable, and the scenery is left unchewed.

A good performance is one in which the audience forgets the actor and sees only the character. Streep so successfully absorbed me that I would put her right up there with Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood or Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. When I originally reviewed the film for a local magazine, I wrote that it is one of those performances that should be nominated for an Oscar, but which probably won’t because it has none of the political gravitas or heavy social relevance that the Academy falsely assumes is a requisite for an award. I am pleased to have been wrong, as Streep did indeed receive a nomination, proving that once in a while the Academy actually has some class.

Amy Adams (Enchanted) takes over for Meg Ryan in Ephron’s handbook of characters, as “the cute leading lady.” I don’t say this with derision – Ephron writes cute leading ladies so that they are believable and worthy of empathy; she manages to avoid making them syrupy and stupid. Adams is worthy of the performance, with zest and a darling smile that make her character entirely enjoyable; but as already noted, she is given the less interesting material.

Conversely, it is Chris Messina (Vicki Cristina Barcelona) as Powell’s husband that outshines Stanley Tucci (The Terminal) as Child’s husband. For reasons I cannot put into words, I enjoyed watching Messina work alongside Adams. He didn’t feel like the typical movie spouse; he feels real, and loving, and someone I’d want my daughter to marry. Tucci is always a pleasure to watch and does an excellent job; but of the male roles, he is the one with the lesser material.

A couple of very minor things prevent me from giving it a perfect score, one of which is a totally useless scene in which the Powells sit and watch Dan Aykroyd’s impersonation of Julia Child on Saturday Night Live. Aykroyd is funny, but watching someone watch Aykroyd for a full minute is not.

Otherwise, I like this film. A lot. It’s happy and perky. It is brightly lit. It is colorful. Alexandre Desplat’s bright little melodies are catchy. And while pop songs in movies generally annoy me, Ephron has a way of choosing and adding songs to the mix that actually complements her films. And (call me a prude) the only people who sleep together are the married couples!

Dare I end with a bad pun? For delightful viewing on a quiet evening, Julie & Julia is the perfect recipe.

My Score: 9

An Awesome Flight of Fancy

2010-02-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Peter Pan

PG / 1 hr., 54 min. / 2003

J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is the classic tale of Wendy Darling (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and her brothers John (Harry Newell) and Michael (Freddie Popplewell), who share a room and bedtime stories. Wendy is at a delicate age: She is a child on the verge of adulthood, and she is about to be forced to make the change by her father (Jason Isaacs). But she is offered an escape from this fate by Peter Pan (Jeremy Sumpter), a lively young sprite who invites her back to Neverland, a magical place where no one ever grows up.

But Neverland is not a perfect paradise: It is also home to Peter’s nemesis, Captain James Hook (Jason Isaacs again), who bears a hook instead of a hand, which he lost in a fight with Peter. The hand and a clock were swallowed by a crocodile that has stalked Hook ever since, hoping for dessert. And Hook has stalked Pan ever since, hoping for revenge.

Raise your hand if you did not know any of that. Everyone with a hand raised needs to report to Childhood Classics 101.

I grew up on the Disney animated version of Peter Pan, which delivers a fine presentation of a fantasy adventure for the whole family, despite the derogatory comparison it is receiving in the wake of this new adaptation. I am also familiar with the stage script, having played Mr. Darling in college. What is interesting about most of the adaptations of the story is that our focus is on a simple children’s adventure – possibly even a dream – that comes across as a piece of literary fluff. Then I saw what P.J. Hogan (My Best Friend’s Wedding) had drawn out of it, and I was completely floored.

Having recently perused Barrie’s novelization of his play, I am a little surprised at the number of critics who praise this new film for “staying so close to the book.” In terms of a scene-by-scene comparison, the Disney version is far more accurate than what Hogan and writer Michael Goldenberg (Contact) have come up with. This new film tosses out whole chapters, adds entirely new scenes and characters, and otherwise tampers on a wholesale level with the structure of the tale. Hogan has done away with clapping as the cure for dying fairies, and Peter never crows. The film also jettisons the traditional ending (“I’m old now, ever so much more than twenty”) in favor of an ending that is slightly smarmy, but which provides a shorter denouement if not necessarily a better one. I am willing to overlook these changes because of what the film does right. What this version absolutely nails, without compromise and with an excellence that blows away its predecessors, is the real message of the book.

Humor me while I theorize on this subject: In this new screenplay, Peter is more than a rogue; he is, as the book suggests, Childhood personified. Wendy is no longer merely escaping the world of adults; she is flying off hand in hand with her very youth and immaturity, which she initially believes she wants to maintain forever. And Childhood must eventually face its fear: Adulthood, personified in Captain Hook.

Contrary to my impressions of earlier “Pan” adaptations, this film does not say that growing up is bad; in fact, maturity is to be commended. It is not Adulthood itself that Wendy is fighting on the pirate ship, but her irrational beliefs about growing up; and that is an important distinction, even if she doesn’t notice at the time. Indeed, Wendy must grow up, for to remain a child forever is the height of selfishness. At the beginning of the film, Mrs. Darling (Olivia Williams) points out that “there is the bravery of thinking of others before oneself,” and by the end, Wendy realizes this and comes home to fill her rightful place in the world, both now as a young girl and later as a grown-up. At the end of the story, Childhood finds it has no permanent home in the Darling household, and returns to Neverland until Wendy’s children come along. Such is the message that I believe has been there all along, but which previous films presented so muted as to be lost entirely on the typical audience, including myself.

The film is stellar in more ways than one. First, we finally have an actual male playing Peter! I have never been able to fully accept Pans played by females – I am constantly distracted and unable to abandon myself wholly to the story. Jeremy Sumpter, who debuted in Bill Paxton’s Frailty, is a wonderful blend of impish prankster, show-off, and heart-breaking rogue. He has a great face for the role, and pulls some wonderful expressions – watch his face when he agrees, without saying a word, to let John and Michael come along to Neverland. A line or two felt stilted or under-enthused, and his lack of a solid English accent in the midst of the other characters is a deterrent; but overall, I think he’s an excellent choice. I hope someone also casts him as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream before he gets much older.

Jason Isaacs continues the tradition of having the same actor portray Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, thus enhancing Wendy’s fearful association of Adulthood with her vision of her angry father. Isaacs has played nothing but malice since I first saw him (The Patriot, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), but here he is far more timid than even in Barrie’s play, where Mr. Darling was all bluster to hide his shortcomings. Isaacs lets us see a reserved Mr. Darling grow more blustery as he is pressured into being “powerful” by Aunt Millicent (Lynn Redgrave).

Other noteworthy performances include Rachel Hurd-Wood’s debut. She is positively charming, with a lovely smile and giddy girlie energy throughout the film. Ludivine Sagnier is a deliciously wicked Tinkerbell, with some of the best laughs in the whole movie. Equally excellent are Harry Newell and Freddie Popplewell and Carsen Gray and the lovable Richard Briers (Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost) and, well, everyone else in the film. Casting was a strong point in an already strong production.

This is a film I regret having missed in the theater. The art departments have so pumped up the visuals that I wanted to sit as close as possible to my TV screen. The film opens with a gorgeous blue night sky, swoops through tufts of pink clouds over a storybook London, to the Darling home. Neverland is green and red and blue and ice-cold and summer-warm and bright and dark and every other imaginative extreme. Add to this that the colors change with Peter’s mood, from a fierce red during his sword fight to a chilling blue when Hook shatters his joy to a shocking pink when Wendy kisses him. And yes, Peter’s reaction is very much what happens when a young man is first kissed. I know from experience.

Speaking of kisses, a plethora of published critics have commented on the “sexual tension” in the film, but I must say I have no idea what they are talking about. There is a difference between longing for something (like permanent childhood) and getting turned on. I see nothing to indicate Peter and Wendy are erotically aroused, and parents who avoided the film because they heard of its sexual overtones from critics should rest assured that there is nothing to be wary of here.

The production department based many of their designs on the way a child would imagine things. Who among us has not seen a junior high student’s model of the universe, with brightly colored planets all within inches of each other? As Peter leaves Earth’s atmosphere, we are treated to just such a universe, as the children go careening past dozens of flourescent heavenly bodies.

Cinematographer Donald McAlpine and the effects team have provided us with some gorgeous images. I love the sequence in which Michael leaps off his bed attempting to fly. In one single shot, we see Michael spinning out of control, and Peter Pan above him sprinkling fairy dust on him. It’s beautifully composed and is as magical as the story itself. I also enjoy the image of Peter flying through what appears to be the night sky, until he puts out a hand and runs it through an ocean of water and we realize we are looking down upon him, not up at him. These are just two of the many visual high points.

Special effects are strong and excessively creative. I particularly enjoyed the early scenes involving Peter’s shadow. It has an entire personality all its own, sometimes swatting at Peter, sometimes cowering behind him. Once you’ve seen the whole film, watch the nursery sequences again and focus on just the shadow. Your viewing experience will be enriched.

Complementing all of it is James Newton Howard’s gorgeous orchestral score. I disagree with the addition of a pop rhythm to certain cues – I feel it wrenches us out of Edwardian London gracelessly – but the overall impression is of a fun and fantastical musical adventure.

I could go on, but you should probably just see the film for yourself at this point and revel in one of the best fantasy-adventures of its decade. It is visually lavish, emotionally stirring, and intellectually assertive, in addition to being a whole lot of gee-whiz swashbuckling high-flying fun. It is never lazy about its creativity, but fills the whole screen with life and joy from start to finish. It may be true that all children grow up (except one), but this is two hours of your life where you can slow the process considerably.

My Score: 9

Whisper, Whisk, Flit and Tick

2010-02-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Book Review:
Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury / Bantam / 1962

The back cover of my soft-cover Bantam edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes has a better introduction than anything I could come up with, I’m sure: “What if someone discovers your secret dream, that one great wish you would give anything for? And what if that person suddenly makes your dream come true – before you learn the price you have to pay?”

If you’ve never read Ray Bradbury’s classic piece of good old-fashioned horror and nightmares, you might want to stop reading this review even now and go find a copy at your bookstore. Letting the dark fantasy unfold with each page is the way it was meant to be experienced. If, however, you’re fine with hearing something about it first, read on.

It is the story of Will Holloway and his friend Jim Nightshade, two youngsters growing up in that classic era of Americana, the Midwest of the early 1900's. Both have dreams, but fatherless Jim in particular yearns to be older, a grown-up. And there is Will’s father, already in his middle-age years when he married, now considering himself old, too old to be a good father to Will.

Into the heartaches of these three and their fellow townspeople comes a carnival. Ordinary enough to look at, the carnival soon begins to make a frightening impression on people like Miss Foley, who so wishes to be young and beautiful again; or on Tom Fury, the lightning-rod salesman, forever racing ahead of storms to sell metal pieces of fire insurance. Carnival staples like the mirror maze and “The Woman Frozen in Ice!” first seduce then terrify those in town who have lives buried in regrets. The carnival and its owners, Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger, seem to thrive on the anguish of others. As Will and Jim learn more about the carnival’s dark secrets, they find themselves running for their lives from a menagerie of side-show freaks who want to quiet the boys up.

Ray Bradbury is hit-and-miss for me, but Something Wicked This Way Comes is definitely one of my favorite books. The author creates an unforgettable tale, along the lines of something Stephen King might produce; but in my opinion more subtle, and certainly much less reliant on language, gore, and sexuality than King. As with other of his works like Dandelion Wine that play off his childhood memories, Bradbury takes us back to a small town where everyone knows the barber and the cigar store owner, where there is only one employee at the library because two wouldn’t have enough to do. Though the year is never stated, the atmosphere created is enough to let us know we are not reading about our contemporaries, at least not as far as the literal setting is concerned.

Bradbury has an interesting way with words. His choice of vocabulary is not one any other writer would think of, and yet his choices become so vivid and lend so much atmosphere. He talks of the library being “bricked with books”, or of arcs of electricity as “electric blue eels.” He runs sentences together not out of ignorance for the rules of English, but because when those sentences are then read, the pulse and tempo of the character’s very thoughts are amplified. Many of the characters do not speak as real people would, but they speak as real people might think in tense, pressurized times of life. As with much of Bradbury, especially his short stories, the point is the beauty, flow, and atmosphere of the words, not their denotative functions.

Bradbury’s theme is an interesting one, exploring those things in life that cause us internal pain, whether sharp or dull. The device of an infernal carnival allows him to look at how man spends his days wishing, regretting, envying – and then looks at what might happen if those wishes could be answered, if regrets could somehow be corrected. Even if Mr. Dark did not exact a hideous fee for making young boys’ dreams come true, the natural consequences of craving an alternate reality would, in Bradbury’s reasoning, be enough to drive a person mad.

I’m not going to delve any deeper, because this is one of those books that is best when it is simply absorbed page by page. A review of it could never really do it justice, neither before nor after reading it. Let it suffice to say that I highly recommend it. At 215 pages, it is not a laborious trek through an epic adventure, but good for finishing over the course of a handful of bedtimes. And at night in bed is definitely the best time to read it and experience its chills.

Worth The Read?: Absolutely

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Leash

2010-02-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
The Wolfman

R / 1 hr., 42 min. / 2010

The past two decades have seen Hollywood resuscitate Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy, so, given how Hollywood’s sense of originality has been flailing in its final death throes for most of the past decade, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone latched on to The Wolfman.

When Ben Talbot dies a brutal death at the hands (or claws) of a vicious but unknown killer, his widow Gwen (Emily Blunt) writes to Ben’s estranged brother Lawrence (Benicio Del Toro), pleading for him to return to the Talbot family manor. The family patriarch Sir John (Anthony Hopkins) welcomes Lawrence as best a bereaved father can, and Lawrence pledges to delay his return to his adopted home of America until Ben’s death is solved.

Lawrence’s amateur investigation leads him to a gypsy camp outside the local village, where one fortune-telling gypsy (Geraldine Chaplin) may or may not know how Ben died. But before anyone can fully answer Lawrence’s questions, something begins attacking the gypsy camp. Seen only fleetingly as it races through shadows, the thing is obviously large, strong, and brutal. It doesn’t seem to be hungry so much as it just likes sinking large claws and teeth through any part of a gypsy or vigilante that might happen to make a nice, gooey, slurping sound for 21st-century audiences.

In the course of saving the life of a gypsy boy, Lawrence gets assaulted and bitten by the beast. This brings ominous words of woe from the gypsies, who for completely unknown reasons switch from English to their native tongue and back again in mid-conversation. The ominous words of woe suggest that Lawrence is now cursed, but in what way no one will say – in either language.

The curse, of course, is that he is now a werewolf, doomed to become a big hairy animal consumed with bloodlust whenever the moon is full. Lest you think I’m spoiling anything for the younger generation who did not see the original film and who have been so busy falling in love with sparkling vampires that the concept of werewolves just might be new to them, the film spoils itself in the opening shot. There really is no unfolding suspenseful mystery here, save our finding out who the werewolf is that bites Lawrence in the first place. And frankly, given Hollywood’s slavish adherence to the rules of screenplay writing, the average film-goer should be able to answer that mystery about twenty minutes into the film. Maybe thirty. And the scene in which this is “shockingly revealed” is yet another one of those moments where, because the plot would be too convoluted for Our Hero to figure it out in a two-hour movie, the guilty party simply spills his or her guts (no pun intended).

I guess I segued right from an unfinished plot summary into a critique of the script itself. No matter; the plot is straight from the cookie cutters in Hollywood’s pantry. There’s a man who becomes a monster, there’s a single woman who falls in love with the man, both are played by reasonably charismatic stars. So what part of this plot do you still need summarized? The only creativity that writers Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self add is to sling bloody body parts around and spill intestines on the ground. Even this is not new territory for Walker, who wrote half a dozen severed heads into his adaptation of Sleepy Hollow.

Their script is not only pure formula, it is also a bit murky regarding how you kill a werewolf. Anyone? Anyone? Silver bullets, right? Maybe. Someone in the first half hour muttered something about how werewolves can only be set free by true love; I forget the precise wording but Walt Disney would have liked the line. And based on events in this movie, I would say that if you find yourself facing a werewolf and you did not happen to bring your silver bullets along, it still might not be hopeless. Get creative – your intestines and other gooey, slurpy parts of your body will thank you.

In the midst of all this, there are a few positive surprises to be had. The first is that Joe Johnston, the All-American director of such All-American adventures as The Rocketeer and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, does have a decent handle on creating a moody, Gothic work of British horror. Working with production designer Rick Heinrichs and cinematographer Shelly Johnson, Johnston crafts a film with a quality look instead of settling for anything cheap. He gives the script a far better delivery than it deserves.

I was particularly captivated and impressed by a scene where Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving) chases the Wolfman through London. Johnston gives it a nice look, a nice pace, and does not overdo the action or the length of the chase. The scenes in the asylum torture chamber and lecture hall are also well told, with Antony Sher (Erik the Viking) as the head doctor keeping my attention throughout.

My only disagreement with Johnston’s artistic contribution is regarding his time-lapse technique. With a monster like a werewolf, the only truly interesting parts of the story, the parts horror fans paid to see, take place one night per month. To get us there, Johnston inserts shots of the moon whizzing through the sky, waxing and waning at record speed. Not only is the first use of this technique so sudden it is jarring, but he does it too often and it becomes an annoyance that pulls us out of the story instead of letting us be fully absorbed.

Another positive surprise is how well Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) fits his role. My experience with Del Toro films is limited, but before the film began I was wondering what nut thought putting him in this film was a good idea. Whoever it was, they were right. Maybe not the world’s most brilliant casting decision, but Del Toro pulls off an American accent and an appropriate look for the film respectably well.

Anthony Hopkins (Red Dragon) basically sleepwalks through his role. I don’t mean it’s a bad performance; I just mean how hard can it be for Hopkins to play an English country gentleman? The voice, the face, and the bearing are something he has on a daily basis. Just add dialogue. Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria) and Hugo Weaving (The Matrix) round out the main roles, with Weaving looking particularly convincing as an English investigator. Not everyone looks good in period costumes; Weaving does. Blunt doesn’t seem to add anything any other attractive young actress could not have added – but then neither does the script ask much of her.

This is not really the kind of film that catches my interest before its arrival. Had it not been for one name in the credits I would not have spent the time or money to watch it. But I went because Danny Elfman wrote the music. On that point I was satisfied if not impressed. Elfman’s score sounds very reminiscent of the tragic and romantic music in older Hollywood films; it is more of a traditional, classic tone and less of either his signature or experimental styles. As such, it does its job for the film, but it doesn’t have me frantically adding the soundtrack to my wish list for next Christmas.

Well, so there you have it. The script alone deserves a failing grade, but I’ll give points to Johnston, whose storytelling skills and visual style did keep me interested throughout. It’s a one-timer for anyone into monsters and classic horror stories. And twenty years from now some executive producer will latch on to the idea again, and the cycle will continue – kind of like the predictable way there’s the same old full moon every month.

My Score: 6

Elwood's Bad Dream

2010-02-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Donnie Darko

R / 1 hr., 54 min. / 2001

Donnie Darko is one of those movies that is fascinating to watch until about the last ten minutes. Then it becomes incomprehensible. In this, it is not unlike Mulholland Dr., which I rented on the same weekend to kill some time while my wife was recovering from the medical procedures used to deliver our first child. Although Donnie Darko was much more coherent than Mulholland Dr., overall I think I wasted my weekend. I would venture to say my wife had more fun sitting in her hospital bed for hours staring at our boy asleep in her arms.

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) appears to be a normal teenager attending some kind of prep or parochial school. He has a respectable home, with reasonable parents (Holmes Osborne and Mary McDonnell), even if he doesn’t always get along with his sister (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake’s real sister).

But something is clearly wrong with Donnie. He is morose, withdrawn. And he has recurring visions of a grotesque grey figure named Frank that visits him at night and gives him instructions for committing random acts of violence. Who or what Frank is is uncertain, but “he” wears a rabbit costume that is – well, to say it is merely unsettling is like saying Satan is merely bad. It is a rabbit to be found only in nightmares – sort of a deranged Harvey.

Donnie owes it to Frank to follow his violent instructions since Frank saves his life early in the film by telling him to leave his house. Shortly after Donnie steps off his property, an airplane engine crashes through the Darko house roof straight through Donnie’s bedroom – which leads to Frank’s other talent: Foretelling the future. He has predicted the end of the world on the day before Halloween, and all of the violent assignments Frank gives to Donnie are part of – well, I’m not quite sure; either Donnie is helping bring Frank’s dire prediction to a successful fulfillment, or helping Frank stave off the world’s undesirable doom. I was a little foggy on that point.

Donnie is in a fog as well, apparently. He spends a great deal of time in the movie looking into the concept of time travel, for reasons I appear to have missed. Perhaps he wants to know how Frank knows so much. Donnie even experiences limited prophetic abilities himself, able to foresee a few seconds into the future. How this is portrayed is interesting and a bit unsettling in its visuals.

Despite a certain sense of meandering that I was afraid would sabotage my interest, things do seem to head somewhere. Donnie learns about the hypothesis of time travel through wormholes (a word so popular in science fiction these days that I wish Stephen Hawking had never coined it), and discovers that the crazy old lady on the mountain road is the one who wrote the book on the subject. Frank himself, or at least his name, begins turning up in unlikely places, causing Donnie to be on edge constantly. And all of Donnie’s assignments from Frank result, strangely, in good being accomplished, despite the fact that Donnie may be committing flagrant crimes.

But then, we are never really sure that Donnie is actually committing the crimes. Is he dreaming? Is Frank simply telling him that someone is doing these things as a way of proving his prophetic abilities? It’s creatively vague, and I’m not going to tell.

Then there is a sudden tragedy that I cannot reveal, but which seems to have been caused by Frank himself. And it is at this point, the last ten minutes of the film, that the plot swerves into the realm of the unexplainable. It’s not that Donnie Darko is a bad movie; it’s just that the ending renders everything we’ve seen befuddling.

What happens works within the rules the film’s unity has set up, but it fails to explain everything that has gone before and, more frustratingly, it does not explain why any of it happened. Frank has been guiding Donnie – but to what conclusion? What would have happened if Frank had not given Donnie these assignments? Or if Donnie had refused to go along? I can deal with the inconsistencies and impossibilities of time travel theory as long as they are presented in an engaging way (and the film succeeds here), but I have a hard time with a film that fails to answer its own “So What?” If I do not understand or care about the main character’s final fate or condition, or do not at least learn something from what he’s gone through, why did I watch?

Amazingly, the director’s own commentary on the DVD does not help answer the question. Richard Kelly explains the whole movie, and at the same time fails to actually explain it. Though I have not seen the later Director’s Cut, Roger Ebert testifies that it is largely as bewildering as the original.

This problem of resolution should never happen, even in the worst movies; but it is particularly painful here, where the movie is successfully absorbing. This is Richard Kelly’s third writing and directing endeavor, and he does a good job, especially considering he’s a year younger than me and is doing the very thing I want to do: Directing films. Kelly knows what he’s doing as a director, but this script reveals he needs to step outside for a minute and try to read it as an unsuspecting audience member.

Jake Gyllenhaal (October Sky) is an excellent choice as Donnie. He looks and behaves like he is either constantly on drugs, or just really depressed by the inanities of the world, both of which are true for Donnie. And when Frank puts him up to his assignments, Gyllenhaal has a wonderful sardonic smile that suggests mischievous machinations. Gyllenhaal’s ability to be an Every-Teen makes it clear why Sam Raimi was considering him to replace an injured Toby Maguire in the Spider-Man franchise.

The supporting cast fill out their undemanding roles well. Most notable is Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing) as a disgustingly glossy self-esteem guru whose curriculum for health classes boils all of life’s decisions down to “Love or Fear.” Donnie correctly challenges him on this during an open-mic seminar; and although one cannot root completely for Donnie’s life attitudes, here was a moment I was on his side. Swayze’s excellent portrayal has so much sugar on it that diabetics will be rushing for their medication.

For fun, keep an eye out for scattered cameos from both seasoned performers like Katharine Ross (The Stepford Wives) and Drew Barrymore (Ever After), and actors like Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) whose career had yet to begin at the time.

Ultimately, everyone involved does his job well. The film is competently constructed, ably performed, and intriguingly presented. It tells its story well, and will no doubt commend Kelly to producers in the future. So it really is a shame that we end up with no clue why we sat and watched it.

My Score: 7

A Challenge Met

2010-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

Book Review:
In Six Days

John F. Ashton (ed.) / Master Books / 2000

We have reached the point where science has so utterly and thoroughly demonstrated the possibility and likelihood of evolutionary processes being the operating mechanisms behind the generation and variation of all life on earth that it has essentially been proven as fact, right?

Wrong. What we have reached is the point where scientists have become such slick storytellers that they can take a hypothesis which continues to be so buried in unanswered questions and riddled with holes that it is downright laughable, and present it with such grandiose verbiage and all the certainty of great actors that the public has swallowed it.

They also have become masters at scorning (but not disproving) the Bible's view that the earth was created complete in a six-day period. It is such scorn that prompted John F. Ashton to assemble the book In Six Days.

In a university class, Ashton heard a visiting lecturer state that no scientist with a Ph.D. would advocate a literal six-day creation of the earth, a claim also made by scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr. The pondering of that claim resulted in this book: Ashton sought out doctorated scientists who did believe in the act of creation as presented in the first chapter of Genesis and asked them to explain their positions. He then selected fifty from among them and published the results.

And the results are very interesting. All fifty of the testimonies included are from scientists with at least one doctorate in a scientific field, ranging from geneticists to geologists to astronomers to biologists to orthodontists. All fifty of them have no trouble reconciling science to the Bible, because, as many of them point out, the presentation of evolution that scientists have foisted on the world is nothing more than theatrics. Behind the scenes, pro-evolution scientists have been observed ignoring contrary evidence, suppressing facts that would shatter their ideas, and even distorting their findings to fit their pre-conceived notions.

It is those testimonies in this book that specifically demonstrate the flaws in evolution that were the most fascinating to me. Though sometimes in such complex scientific terms that I could not follow everything being presented, I enjoyed hearing of the problems inherent in radiometric dating and the fossil record in the geologic column, both of which are two of the more common "proofs" of evolution. In fact, dating methods and the geologic column are so unreliable as to be useless in substantiating the evolution hypothesis, but those conflicting results rarely ever escape the laboratory because they are such an embarrassment to evolutionary thinking.

The irrational defense of evolution is also discussed in some of the testimonies, as many of these fifty scientists had first-hand experience with peers and colleagues ignoring or denying discoveries that would force them to discard their evolutionary views. Even published author Richard Dawkins is taken down in a handful of the essays; the inconsistencies within single volumes of his own books are plainly exposed, along with Dawkins' own admission that scientists have yet to discover one single example of a genetic mutation that has added information to the genetic code, an absolute necessity for evolution to be true. To date, all genetic mutations have resulted in a loss of information, which is in perfect harmony with the Bible and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but which makes evolution entirely implausible.

The essays come in a wide range, from the highly technical explorations of radiometric dating and discussions of the mathematical impossibility of having all of the correct-"handed" amino acids form a protein for life to begin, to brief overviews of broad topics. Some of the scientists clearly do not specialize in writing essays for the lay reader, but the information presented is still positively juicy in its decimation of the naturalist view of the origins of life.

The book has two difficulties, the first of which is a repetitious feeling. Because they were all writing independently, many of the scientists present similar information or reference similar sources. By the time I was halfway through the book, I felt like I was not receiving any new information.

Second, the latter half of the book has very little to do with actual scientific evidence: While I suppose it is meant to be reassuring to hear even generic affirmations of the Genesis account from doctorated scientists, ten to fifteen of them said little more than just that – "I believe in the Genesis account" – in their essays.

But I am very glad I discovered the book and had the opportunity to read it. Those interested in exposing some extremely severe flaws (and deceptions) in the "facts" of evolution in future encounters would do well to keep a pen or highlighter handy, as there is enough testimony here on key points of argument to shatter naturalist thinking.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth in six ordinary days. I have known that with complete confidence since I was in high school. It is encouraging to hear from doctorates of science that their research leads them to the same conclusion.

Worth The Read?: Most definitely

Home Video of Our Trip to New York

2010-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Cloverfield

PG-13 / 1 hr., 25 min. / 2008

So you’re in charge of the video camera at a friend’s going-away party when something monstrous attacks the city. What do you do? Why, naturally, you videotape the entire harrowing escapade, no matter how hazardous it is to be holding on to the camera with one hand while trying to stay alive with the other. And that, friends, is the story of Cloverfield in a nutshell.

But I’m feeling generous, so I’ll expound just a bit more. It’s Manhattan, and the party is for Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), a twenty-something who has accepted a spiffy overseas job offer. So his circle of friends are sending him off in style. Hudson “Hud” Platt (T.J. Miller) ends up with the job of capturing farewell sound-bites from party-goers as the evening progresses.

The party has hit a low point for Rob: Old flame Beth (Odette Yustman) brought a new beau to the party, which inflames Rob’s envy even though he has a new flame himself. I think. The room was kind of noisy and I didn’t have much chance to identify characters before they became ciphers in a monster movie.

So anyway, yes, around about the time Rob is not enjoying his party anymore, The Creature From Long Island Sound makes certain he really doesn’t enjoy it at all. A huge shudder, a blackout, an explosion near the coast, and the sudden arrival of the Statue of Liberty’s head in the middle of a downtown street cause a certain amount of panic. People run everywhere, and Hud’s camera manages to catch a glimpse of something’s tail, which is big enough to indicate that even Godzilla will be cowering in fear – but I will leave that alone, as exactly what is on the rampage is the part of the movie worth discovering for yourself.

The central circle of friends, numbering about five, heads toward one of Manhattan’s bridges, but their way gets cut off. Then there’s an escape down into the subway system, and at some point Rob realizes Beth is trapped in her apartment deep in the city. Donning his shining armor, Rob heads back to rescue her, and his friends come along despite their own protests. All of which Hud gets on camera.

And that is where I simply cannot get with a film like Cloverfield. I have been the family’s camera operator since I was twelve. We have tons of footage of babies, parties, youth group camping trips, monuments, historical sites, coastlines, highways – I even have the entire experience of Disney World’s Haunted Mansion on tape. So I have a pretty good grasp of how amateur video footage looks.

Like its forerunner, The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield is never fully convincing as supposedly accidental footage from a home video camera. The attempt is made to simulate such footage, with shots of the ground, feet running, and wild shaking images as Hud panics. But Hud has the unbelievable ability to hold that camera remarkably still at times – so still, in fact, one might suspect that he has either worked with a consumer video camera for years, or else has a steady-cam rig handy whenever he just happens to be recording something that just might later have relevance in, say, helping a theater audience follow along with either the chase or the human relationships.

Other tell-tale marks of amateur footage are missing as well. Not enough shots are cut off in mid-sentence. There are no notable digital artifacts that would normally result from the cajoling the camera takes as these guys run like mad through the city. The audio is crystal-clear for important lines of dialogue. In fact, for a bunch of college-aged kids, they found themselves a camera with a darned good microphone. The list could go on, but the point is that anyone with experience in “family vacation” videos will almost continually spot ways in which the images in Cloverfield are clearly orchestrated to look un-orchestrated.

Not to mention the fact that Hud holds on to the camera at all. Again, like The Blair Witch Project, a line or two of dialogue is meant to provide motive for Hud to keep the tape rolling even when he’s about to get shot or squashed. But it’s simply not convincing, especially as it arrives right about the time I’m thinking, “Why doesn’t he put down the camera and run?” Orchestrated to look un-orchestrated. A dead give-away.

Okay, so that’s my huge complaint. Having said that, I think Cloverfield is a much more effective movie than The Blair Witch Project. For one thing, it is actually creepy, whereas The Blair Witch Project was good for little more than curing insomnia.

I think Cloverfield manages to remain as passable entertainment because of one major element, and that is the creature. It’s creepy. Its movements are creepy. The parasitic things that enjoy a symbiotic relationship with it are creepy. There’s even a cliche “jump” moment toward the end that I must confess sent a slight tingle through me even though I predicted it.

In addition – and those of you who know me and my constant complaint about computer-generated living beings will want to buckle up and hold on, because I am about to admit something – most of the shots involving the creature are utterly convincing. This may be because the camera is jiggling, so aspects of CGI that are normally crippling to its realism are hard to focus on. Indeed, when the camera held still long enough for a solid close-up of the creature, I had my doubts about its tangibility. But I was definitely impressed by how present the creature felt overall.

The live humans are somewhat less convincing, however. Their acting is decent enough, but the script renders them all as units to be killed off instead of as interesting people who are actually identifiable from each other. Even now I am looking at the cast list and do not remember who was whom apart from Michael Stahl-David and T.J. Miller. As relative newcomers to theater screens they did a satisfactory job with the material they were given.

But oh, the material they were given! Run, scream, cry, mutter incoherent dialogue, mutter coherent dialogue that goes against all common sense, run headlong into dangerous places with no actual evidence that the goal is attainable or worth the effort. The first credit in writer Drew Goddard’s portfolio is for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which explains a lot.

Well, so, there you have it. Basically, I think the movie poster was more intriguing than the actual film. Heck, even my taping of the Haunted Mansion ride is more gripping. Who could resist a certain glee upon hearing that deep, resonating voice: “Kindly step all the way in, please, and make room for everyone. There’s no – turning – back – now!” Kind of like how you can’t get your eighty minutes back after watching Cloverfield.

My Score: 6

Fun With Michael and Arthur

2010-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Michael Clayton

R / 2 hrs., 0 min. / 2007

When a company gets into legal difficulties, it turns to a law firm. But where does the law firm turn when its lawyers get into trouble? For the powerful association of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, their in-house problem solver is Michael Clayton (George Clooney).

The firm is six years into a class action lawsuit, defending the U-North corporation against farmers who claim the company’s agricultural chemicals are causing severe health problems. The U-North staff legal consultant, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), hopes that Kenner, Bach & Ledeen can ultimately sweep the whole lawsuit aside.

But the delicate situation erupts when Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), the defense’s leading attorney in the case, suffers a nervous breakdown: He strips off his clothes during the prosecution’s deposition, expresses love for one of the plaintiffs, runs naked through the parking lot, and begins to publicly assert that perhaps U-North is guilty as sin. To say this does not bode well for Kenner, Bach & Ledeen is an understatement: U-North could very easily pull the case out from under them, resulting in a financial loss so great that the firm would fold.

Michael Clayton’s assignment, then, is to rein in Edens and smooth the whole situation over. As firm partner Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack) subtly phrases it, “I’m telling you that by this time next week, Arthur will be under control.” But Edens will not be corralled so easily; and as Clayton follows Edens’ trail, he begins to suspect that maybe Edens is on to something.

On one hand, Michael Clayton is a standard legal thriller. Well-dressed lawyers racing to save their cases and whole reputations, powerful people hiding dark secrets, shady figures skulking in shadows – it’s all there. And despite its central legal case, it’s not a propaganda film attempting to blame the world’s ills on corporate greed and capitalism; it’s just a legal thriller.

On the other hand, it is not “just” a legal thriller. Michael Clayton is an original take on the genre that is crafted with such excellence that it rises far above its peers. The excellence begins with Tony Gilroy, who both writes and directs. Gilroy was comfortably ensconced in the writer’s chair – most notably for the recent adaptations of The Bourne Identity and its sequels – before making Michael Clayton his directorial debut.

What is stunning is that Gilroy works like a seasoned director who has already learned the difference between cheap gimmicks and real storytelling. He wisely avoids the shaky, hand-held camera work that is so popular today, and which has been used by other directors to no good purpose when bringing Gilroy’s scripts to the screen. Instead, Gilroy treats Michael Clayton with the calm confidence it deserves.

This confidence is reflected in the film’s pace, mistaken by impatient viewers as being too slow, but which is suitably deliberate. Some films – too many, in fact – seem to look the audience in the eye and say, “Here’s what this movie is about, and let’s get to it!” In contrast, Michael Clayton quietly lays out various threads – Clayton’s gambling, a hit-and-run accident, a nosey reporter – before the film’s primary story comes into focus. This will severely irritate those who like to be spoon-fed their entertainment, but it adds a nice layer for the rest of us who are in the mood to actually think about the movie we’re watching.

Additionally, having just watched the film again on DVD over two years after seeing it in theaters, I find it interesting how the film avoids being concerned merely with finding out who is committing what crime. Indeed, the crime is fairly obvious; Marty Bach even knows what it is, but it’s his job as defense to hide it from the prosecution team. The question is what will Clayton do with what he learns. Add to this the weight Clayton feels from financial troubles, family troubles, and unfulfilled career ambitions, and we get a film that is really about a person, not just a plot.

Playing this burdened soul is George Clooney (Syriana), who continues his streak of excellence by portraying Clayton as suave, confident, debonair – and tired. Clayton owes someone a large debt, and dialogue suggests the lender is less than kind about defaulting on a loan. His marriage is broken apart, he gambles, and he wearily refers to himself not as a legal fixer, but as a janitor. While it is standard Clooney, without any quirks or qualities to distinguish himself from the character he’s playing, he definitely finds all the right notes at all the right times.

Supporting Clooney are Tilda Swinton (The Beach) as a fraying wreck who does everything she can to maintain the unruffled exterior her company expects of her; Sydney Pollack (Tootsie) as Clooney’s boss in a performance that reminds me of how good Pollack is both behind and in front of the camera; and Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins) as the attorney who may or may not have lost his mind. The voice-over that begins the film may sound like the ravings of insanity; but in retrospect they are very carefully chosen words, and Wilkinson’s delivery of them is an unforgettable introduction.

Director of Photography Robert Elswit subtly creates a very moody production not with any particularly original camera angles, but through the highly contrasted lighting in critical scenes. Shadows are darker here than they would be in real life, but the effect works to amplify the dark truths being uncovered in Clayton’s pursuit.

And composer James Newton Howard avoids a full-scale action feeling. He is keenly aware that the drama is calm on the exterior, with the danger being in the subtext. Like much of his score for The Fugitive, Howard keeps it low-key with some synthesizers and a select few acoustic instruments.

If the film has weaknesses, they are minor. There is a prologue sequence that does little more than get our attention before misleading us, and which could have been dropped entirely without hurting the story. There’s also a great deal of vulgar language. I suppose there’s a certain realism to it, but I’m not a big fan of excessive use of a certain obscenity which happens to be peppered throughout the script.

And some will consider the ending a bit too clean, perhaps. Real life doesn’t always tie up all the loose ends so conveniently. But then, I don’t pay good money to go sit in a theater and watch real life; I can do that for free on a daily basis. It’s always nice to experience a little poetic justice escapism.

I always sit through an entire movie, even the pesky ending credits most people ignore. The credits for Michael Clayton reveal something I find very interesting: There are no special effects departments listed. I submit that a movie does not require a barrage of explosions, chase scenes, and computer-generated fiends to be gripping. It requires a strong story brought competently to the screen by a skilled cast and crew. Michael Clayton is such a movie.

My Score: 9

One Woman, Two Lives

2010-01-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Melinda and Melinda

PG-13 / 1 hr., 40 min. / 2005

For several years I have wondered what would happen if two different directors took the same script and each created his own film from it. I think it would be an interesting study in personal styles and interpretation of the material. On my budget, I’ll have to wait a while on that idea. But with Melinda and Melinda, Woody Allen has attempted something similar: Two different writers take the same story outline and put their own spins on it.

Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) and Larry Pine (The Royal Tenenbaums) play two playwrights dining with friends. A friendly argument regarding the nature of life – is it tragic or is it comic? – leads to a little challenge: The writers are presented with a basic story frame and are invited to defend their views on life by fleshing out the story in their individual ways.

The setup: A young woman arrives suddenly at someone’s door, manages to get invited inside, and tells her life story, which ultimately disrupts a marriage or two and leads into a romantic triangle of some sort.

Wallace Shawn as Sy takes the material and weaves a comedy: In a depressed moment, the up-tempo Melinda (Radha Mitchell) has taken a suicidal amount of sleeping pills, then changes her mind and staggers to a neighboring apartment to get help. The couple, Hobie and Susan (Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet), are in the middle of a dinner party designed to impress a film financier; but Melinda’s arrival upsets the affair. Soon, Hobie is infatuated with Melinda despite his best intentions of being a good and supportive husband to Susan.

Larry Pine as Max takes the material and creates a tragedy: Melinda is an old college friend of Lee and Laurel (Jonny Lee Miller and Chloe Sevigny), and after several months of obscurity she shows up while they are having a dinner party with friends. Melinda has been dumped hard by a previous husband and is ready to give up on love and life. Her plight and her “short” stay at Lee and Laurel’s home become a distraction to Lee, who is already cheating on Laurel anyway; and Laurel finds herself falling for a cocktail lounge pianist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who in turn falls for Melinda before falling for Laurel, thus leaving Melinda burned by a man for the second time.

I’m going to start by being totally candid: I have yet to see why everyone thinks Woody Allen is so funny. I rented this film because my wife was curious about the premise, not because I am a fan of Allen. I don’t even register as a blip on his Fan-o-Meter. But I will admit, equally candidly, that the premise as outlined on the DVD case did have me curious as well.

As an exercise in film production, Melinda and Melinda is a perfectly acceptable entry. The script works, in general; and Allen’s direction gracefully flows between the two disparate storylines, something that could have been hopelessly bungled and confusing in someone else’s hands.

Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland) plays both Melindas, and either one as its own performance would not be any noteworthy achievement necessarily. What does make her performance worth watching is the way she plays both parts in one movie. As the tragic Melinda, she is a chain-smoking, jittery, nervous wreck who talks a mile a minute because silence would be too painful. As the comic Melinda, she’s spunky, sometimes cocky, and much more buoyant.

The supporting cast includes Chloe Sevigny (Boys Don’t Cry), Amanda Peet (Identity), Josh Brolin (Hollow Man), and Will Ferrell (Elf). If it weren’t for Mitchell’s tour de force as the two Melindas, Ferrell would steal the show completely as Hobie, the naive and energetic B-rate actor married to Peet’s high-maintenance indie director Susan. Ferrell is the high spot of the comic tale, proving once again that not all Saturday Night Live cast members flop miserably when weaned from their weekly moronic shtick.

Now, here’s my problem: Melinda and Melinda is simply not very enjoyable. Certainly either tale by itself would not fly far at all, but even intertwined as they are, they still don’t achieve a whole lot. The comedy tale of Melinda is really not all that funny. Ferrell provides some chuckles, and the climax to his evening at home with another woman is light, but the story as a whole falls flat. It doesn’t help that I don’t find much to laugh about where adultery is concerned. On the flip side, the tragedy is not all that gripping. I was not drawn in to Melinda’s story, and just didn’t care about her plight by the end.

I can think of a few reasons why this film didn’t work for me. First, the flipping back and forth between the two tales does not allow us to be completely absorbed by either one. Around about the time we just might be working up some tears for Sad Melinda, the story pauses and switches to the Funny Melinda, throwing us for a bit of a loop. By the time we’ve recovered and are ready to laugh, we are suddenly watching Sad Melinda again. I see what the film wanted to accomplish, but its method manages to weaken the emotional impact on both sides.

Second, and probably more significantly, the film avoids some potentially far more interesting methods of study. As it stands, the two writers are presented with little more than a set-up, from which they both quickly diverge. Alas, I was hoping for more sheer similarity. The opening scene (and the DVD cover) suggests that what we are going to see is the same set-up, the same set of characters, and the same storyline – but viewed alternately through a comic lens and a tragic lens. Once the initial dinner party is over, our two Melindas strike off on entirely different paths.

I was also hoping for more interplay, more ironic cross-references between the two stories. Yes, there are marked similarities: Both stories include a pivotal conversation in the same restaurant set, the introduction of an ethnic character who appreciates good piano music, and a woman attempting to commit suicide by jumping out a window. But in the end, both stories can stand on their own two feet. This may have been what Allen wanted, but they therefore lack the dynamic that would have existed if somehow neither story made total sense without the other. If the stories needed each other in some way, how much more intriguing.

There was another interesting potential as the film progressed. Over the course of a few scenes, it looked as though the comic tale were drifting toward tragedy, and the tragic tale drifting toward comedy, thus turning the tables on both of the writers’ assertions. But this idea did not come to fruition, and faded away shortly after I began entertaining the hope that the film was about to get interesting.

And to really drive home its mundane nature, even the wrap-up with the two writers does not achieve anything. I can only imagine how much more complete and rounded the film would have felt if, for instance, the author of the comic version had left the dinner feeling despondent in some way, and the tragic author had left feeling somewhat elated. I won’t spoil it – not that there’s anything worth spoiling – but the ending we get is rather bland.

I realize I’ve spent a few paragraphs focused on what the film could have been instead of what it is. That is because it isn’t much, when all is said and done. It is quite possible that I would have enjoyed the film more had I not read the promotional description, because I would not have come to it with preconceived notions. When the reality did not meet up with my expectations, I felt a little let down.

But I don’t think I would rank it as highly entertaining either way. It is competently created, which I would expect from someone as seasoned as Woody Allen. But it ultimately lacks any real spice, any captivating reason for existing. With all due respect to his millions of admirers, I will continue to wonder why people enjoy Woody Allen.

My Score: 6

Plain Old Buttons

2009-12-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

PG-13 / 2 hrs., 46 min. / 2008

In the first few minutes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there is a fascinating flashback about a man who creates an unusual clock for a railway station. Someone needs to take that idea and expand it into a feature film all by itself. But they didn’t, and once the flashback ends, we are left with over two hours of less-interesting material.

Oh, the premise sounds fascinating on paper – that’s why I rented the movie. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, the film follows the life of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), whose body lives its life backwards. He is born looking eighty years old, and as he grows, his skin loses its wrinkles, his bones lose their arthritis. When he is twenty, he looks sixty; when he is sixty, he looks twenty. His mind, however, moves forward through the normal progression of life from infancy to senility.

Abandoned by his father because of his abnormalities, Benjamin is brought up by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a black servant at a Louisiana old folks’ home. As he grows, he learns about life and death, and how to handle both, from the residents of the home as well as his servant parents. And because of his older looks, his young, adventurous curiosity is often thoroughly whetted as people take him places he never would have gone as a little boy, confess things to him he never would have heard.

As the epic tale unfolds, Benjamin learns to play piano from Mrs. Maple (Edith Ivey), gets a job on a tugboat with Captain Mike (Jared Harris), spends a season in Russia, has an affair with a foreign secretary’s wife (Tilda Swinton), fights a naval skirmish in World War II, and falls in love with Daisy (Cate Blanchett) whom he eventually settles down with.

I once heard a comedian’s routine on how youth is wasted on the young and how much more appropriate it would be to age backwards. And clearly F. Scott Fitzgerald figured the idea could deliver a message. So the potential for an irresistible movie is all there, a movie that takes a fresh look at life and love.

But director David Fincher and writer Eric Roth settle for a movie that only looks innovative on the surface. Its melancholy tone suggests that it has something deep to explore, something poignant that its unusual story is able to present better than other stories. But in the end we are left with nothing new regarding the heartaches of human existence. A friend of mine commented that we’ve heard the same message, only better, in Forrest Gump, and I would agree. I suppose a movie does not need to have a deep purpose, but when its presentation suggests that it does have something new to say, it should say it.

The whole phenomenon of Benjamin’s curiosity is treated throughout as just that: A curiosity. Those who spend enough time in Benjamin’s life to notice the wonder seem to handle it with barely a raised eyebrow. The music score by Alexandre Desplat, which is beautiful in itself, suggests that even when the composer realized what was happening to Benjamin, he merely cocked his head to the side, went “Huh, that’s interesting,” and then ignored it. Not that I am in favor of turning the film into another action movie about a power-hungry government wanting to exploit Benjamin’s powers in some way, but surely someone in the movie could have been more amazed at what was happening.

The tagline for the film is: “Life isn’t measured in minutes, but in moments.” And I think that describes the film precisely: A collection of moments, some of which are actually interesting. But they do not add up to a collective whole that is anything to write home about.

One such interesting moment is a sequence in which Benjamin narrates the interesting web of activity that leads up to a certain tragedy involving a taxi. What if any one of the things in the web had not happened, Benjamin posits. Like the clock-maker flashback at the beginning, this section of the film is captivating in itself. What it does not seem to do is contribute to the film. Why this sudden change in mode of storytelling? The film would have told the same story without it, and the import of the narration at this point does not really affect any other portion of the story. A whole movie on that subject could have been interesting, but it lasts barely a minute here.

The film also includes one of my pet peeves: The flashback as a plot framing device. Even when used well, this method of laying out the story never feels as satisfying to me, in part because it gives away certain things by its very nature, such as the fact that we know the people we see in the present will survive whatever story in their past we are about to watch.

The choice to tell this story through flashbacks is utterly worthless. As Daisy’s daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) sits with her in the hospital, Caroline reads from Benjamin’s diary and we are led into the story. But this framing device adds nothing to the story, and the story adds nothing to the framing device. And the fact that Hurricane Katrina is brewing outside the hospital is equally superfluous despite its contribution to the final shot of the film.

Now, none of this is to say that the film’s individual elements are less than superb. Brad Pitt (Snatch) amply demonstrates that he has grown up as an actor and can handle something more significant than the cocky punks he plays pretty well. Buried in some of the best “old” make-up I’ve seen in a long time, Pitt carefully crafts his facial expressions, his walk, his body language to reflect the decay Benjamin’s body is in. He delivers his role with judicious restraint.

Cate Blanchett (The Aviator) looks positively radiant here, bringing to life a woman who seems almost intoxicated with ballet, the night air, and men. She is both graceful and passionately absorbed with the things she loves, and Blanchett obviously trained well for the ballet sequences as she delivers dance moves that are stunning. Unfortunately, in scenes where she plays a much older Daisy in the hospital, she is so wheezy and mumbling that I missed half of what she said.

Also unfortunate is the fact that despite quality performances, the characters are simply not endearing. Benjamin reminds me somewhat of Pitt’s turn as Joe Black: Curious to learn about life, but generally monochromatic emotions. Daisy apparently has some depth to her, but insights into why she seems to have some angst in her past are never revealed.

The same is true for the entire cast, really. I was convinced by everyone’s performance, but compelled by none of them – a fault which lies more with the script than the talent pool. The most alluring is Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading) whose very bearing is irresistible; but as the script requires her to cheat on her husband, I couldn’t really fall for her much.

The film’s production design successfully immerses us in the times and places that Benjamin travels. From Louisiana of the 1930's to a hotel in Murmansk in the 1940's and on up to the present, Donald Graham Burt and his artistic crew create a wonderful atmosphere that is ably captured by cinematographer Claudio Miranda. The images are often truly beautiful.

Overall, it is not at all a bad movie; and odds are that if you like character-based dramas, you will glean some enjoyment out of it. But in the end, it’s just another story. A story that pretends to be important and innovative, but which is little more than the gimmick of Benjamin’s age pasted on to some age-old and very obvious lessons about the human condition.

In other words, the film is not much of a curiosity at all.

My Score: 7

To Eat Fat

2009-12-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother

PG / 1 hr., 31 min. / 1975

Is there such a thing as a case that Sherlock Holmes (Douglas Wilmer) could not solve on his own? What if the client in question needed to feel safe in the arms of a dashing young man in order to give over the facts of the case? The aging Mr. Holmes would hardly satisfy.

Enter Sigerson Holmes (Gene Wilder), Sherlock’s younger and extraordinarily envious younger brother. Having spent years trying to better his famous older sibling, Sigerson jumps at the chance to finally conquer a mystery that seems to have Sherlock stymied.

Aided by Sergeant Orville Stanley Sacker (Marty Feldman) of Scotland Yard, Sigerson attempts to discern what it is that music hall singer Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn) is being blackmailed for, and what connection there may be in her case to the theft of a document of national importance; a document which, in the wrong hands, could lead Great Britain into a war. And thus The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother begins its comic romp through the hallowed halls of Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective.

Fresh from his classic performance as Frederick Frankenstein in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder directed for the first time, working from his own original screenplay. While his first solo effort has plenty of solid laughs and more than a few wry snickers, to place it alongside Young Frankenstein is to see where Wilder on his own could have used Brooks to help spice up the proceedings.

From the very opening scene, where the muttered voices of Lord Redcliffe (John Le Mesurier) and Queen Victoria (Susan Field) are clearly dubbed over for whatever reason, there are tell-tale marks of a first-time and perhaps low-budget directorial effort throughout the production. Wilder also follows his tendency to put a song or two into his scripts. But while “Puttin’ on the Ritz” became one of the signature moments of Young Frankenstein, the presence of “The Kangaroo Hop” in this film is just silly and inexplicable, even more so when it reprises at the end.

However, Wilder’s novice turn in the director’s chair still managed to produce some very clever material that beats out more polished productions even to this day. The initial interview with Jenny Hill and a scene where Sigerson does his best to interpret a coded message continue to strike me as very amusing twenty years after I first saw them. And while the action set pieces are among the more amateur moments, the concepts fueling them are worth a chuckle.

Wilder managed to round up a first-rate team of comedians for the production. Marty Feldman (Young Frankenstein) plays the Watson-like assistant Sacker, who has a “photographic sense of hearing.” If he hears it, he can remember it; and Feldman’s choice to have Sacker knock himself upside the head to get the motor running is delightfully silly. Feldman’s large eyes prove useful for just the right zany look to his whole bearing.

Madeline Kahn (Blazing Saddles) is the charming Jenny Hill, and Kahn once again proves that her sense of comic delivery can steal the show right out from under everyone else. The very tone of voice with which she turns down a cup of tea has been a part of my memories of this film for years. Even when she’s not being deliberately funny, her face and bearing are fine-tuned to bring a smile to audiences’ faces.

Joining in the fun are an exuberant Dom DeLuise (The Glass Bottom Boat) as opera singer and blackmailer Eduardo Gambetti; Leo McKern (Ladyhawke) as Professor Moriarty with a twist; and Roy Kinnear (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) as Moriarty’s hungry assistant. McKern in particular has a long history of much more serious roles, but he manages to contribute to the comedy significantly, including a priceless moment where he corrects Kinnear’s eating habits during an important meeting.

In fact, I think that’s kind of a summary of the film: Priceless moments. While as a whole it does not hold together as strongly and unified as when Wilder worked with Mel Brooks on Young Frankenstein or even The Producers, there are lines, conversations, and whole scenes that do succeed in presenting hilarious dialogue and visuals. A handful of sand in Sigerson’s face, a box of chocolates all over the floor, a cup of hot water instead of tea, a chilly dance through a ballroom – the ingredients to generate good hearty laughter are present.

All of this is dropped into some gorgeous scenery. Terence Marsh creates interior rooms that are lusciously decorated from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. If he's still designing sets when I get a budget, I'm hiring him.

Capping it off is a rousing score by John Morris, another Brooks collaborator. The opening titles are reminiscent of an Errol Flynn adventure, and the movie is granted a grand and exciting atmosphere, even if it doesn’t always totally live up to its music.

For a silly night of popcorn and laughter, have a good time with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. Pair it up as a double-feature with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley in Without a Clue and your face should be good and tired from laughing when it’s all over.

My Score: 6

One Film to Impress Them All

2009-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

PG-13 / 2 hrs., 58 min. / 2001

I read J.R.R. Tolkein’s massive fantasy adventure The Lord of the Rings about twenty years ago, and I decided at that time that it definitely needed to be remade as a live-action series of films instead of the Ralph Bakshi animated versions. It is with mixed emotions, then, that I must admit defeat to Peter Jackson – defeat because not only did he beat me to it, but because his films are so superb there will be no call for a remake during my lifetime. So I don’t know whether to be excited or sad.

I am writing this review after all three movies have come out, so by now a plot synopsis is probably pointless, but it’s my duty. The four books of the trilogy (the story proper and a prelude) take place in a mythical land called Middle-Earth – perhaps some rabid fans can clue me in here, but I’ve never been able to discern if Middle-Earth is supposedly an era in Earth’s history, or an entirely other fictional world. It is a moot point, as Tolkein provided so much detail in his books that he created a whole new world either way.

This fictional world is populated by all manner of traditional fictional creatures (trolls and elves) as well as a few new inventions (hobbits and ents). The epic revolves around two hobbits (creatures that are human in basic form though significantly shorter), Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) and his nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood), and their adventures in connection with a mysterious and powerful magic ring. Bilbo found the ring in what reads almost as a tangent in The Hobbit; and in The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo passes it on to Frodo.

The ring, we learn, was forged by the evil Sauron, a being we never really see either in the book or the film, but his watchful eye can be felt from great distances. With the help of Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), a powerful wizard, Frodo learns that the ring is Sauron’s evil in material form, basically, and must be destroyed by throwing it into the volcano it was forged out of.

To document Frodo’s adventures would be quite long, but in short: At Gandalf’s instruction, Frodo and his fellow hobbits Samwise (Sean Astin), Meriadoc (Dominic Monaghan), and Pippin (Billy Boyd) set off with the ring. Before long, they are running for their lives from black-cloaked horsemen; following the lead of a mysterious ranger named Strider (Viggo Mortensen); and arriving in the nick of time at Rivendell, an elven city and sanctuary.

At Rivendell, Frodo & Company expands to incorporate Boromir (Sean Bean), a Man who distrusts just about everyone and everything; Legolas (Orlando Bloom), an elf; and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), a dwarf. This counsel determines that the ring must be destroyed before Sauron’s minions find it, and that because of the frailties of the race of Men, only Frodo stands any hope of completing the quest before the lure of the ring consumes him. Thus the titular fellowship of the ring sets off toward Mordor, Sauron’s territory, where the volcano of Mount Doom resides.

At this point the drooling, maniacal devotees of the Tolkein cult (you can recognize them because they are dressed as dwarves and elves at the premieres) are complaining that I have not really and truly delved into the mythos underlying the epic struggle taking place in Middle-Earth, to which I reply: I am on your side, believe me; but I have a limited amount of words in these reviews. Yes, there is much more to the nearly three hours of film than the bland plot summary I have included, and those who wish to know more can either pick up one of the growing plethora of Middle-Earth pseudo-biographical studies appearing on bookshelves, or (here’s a thought) actually watch the movie – which is something I recommend.

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have done a wonderful job of taking a highly detailed book and boiling it down into, well, a highly detailed movie. Although I was one of the voices decrying the absence of Tom Bombadil, I will concede that a literal translation from book to film makes for a stilted movie (cough, cough, Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone), and that most of the alterations in the film are acceptable if not always explicable.

Elijah Wood (Deep Impact) has the lengthy task of playing Frodo. Critics have made much of the fact that Frodo does little more than twist his face up into painful contortions over the fact that he must carry the world’s greatest evil across much of the known world, but that’s what Frodo gets to do, and Wood does it well. He has a wonderful face for this role, complete with dazzling blue eyes that add to his persona as a fantasy creature.

The other actors range from satisfactory to excellent, including Ian McKellen’s (X-Men, The Shadow) Oscar-nominated turn as Gandalf, Sean Astin’s (Rudy, Memphis Belle) portrayal of Frodo’s closest friend, and Orlando Bloom’s (Wilde) graceful but deadly elf. The women don’t have a lot to do except stand around and look lovely while speaking at a tempo that would put Modern-Earth to sleep at parties. But they do it well, so props to Cate Blanchett (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Elizabeth) and Liv Tyler (That Thing You Do).

Now, how do I discuss the production values of this film in the space I have left? In sweeping superlatives, I suppose: The Film Looks Wonderful! This is a fantasy film that creates an entirely new world on a grand scale. With the help of computer animation and digital backgrounds, we are taken out of tight studio spaces (Labyrinth) or sets where the back wall is invisible but palpable (Hook) and launched into a full-scale epic covering hundreds of miles of territory and thousands upon thousands of warriors, elven armies, orcs, trolls, goblins, demons, wizards, and other nameless beasts.

The production designer, Grant Major, clearly had his hands full, but obviously loved it because he and his crew of art directors deliver the goods in every set, every costume, every prop. Indeed, every facet of this film could provide an essay on film production by itself, but I will throw out just a couple of quick notes.

The sets, even those portions unaided by computer additions, are wonderful to look at. Hobbiton is perfectly adorable, as it should be for creatures of that disposition. Saruman’s tower is menacing, while Sauron’s fortress is downright terrifying. If you are watching on home video, pause it several times during the Rivendell scenes, look past the actors, and examine the structures they are standing within.

Howard Shore’s musical score is grand and sweeping in its scope. A delicately transparent violin solo presents the countryside of Hobbiton, contrasted with the thick orchestral layers that follow the fellowship across the bridge of Khazad-Dum. A full choir joins the orchestra to enhance the fantastical themes of Middle-Earth.

My word processor is crying out for a lengthy description of the special effects, but I must let it suffice to say that Peter Jackson and his crew have mastered the difficulties of size rations on their very first try. Using a stacked deck of effects tricks, they have maintained the illusion that Elijah Wood as a hobbit is significantly shorter than Viggo Mortensen (Crimson Tide) as a towering Man. To do this has required, at any given moment in the film, creating duplicate scaled versions of many of the sets, forcing the visual perspective, and having human dwarves stand in for the hobbit actors. I imagine the crew’s need to keep track of all the details single-handedly kept the yellow legal-pad companies in business during production.

Despite the hubbub over the fact that this film was the inspiration for an entire new computer animation program, I have my usual complaint regarding computer-generated crowds: When one looks closely, some characters, especially distant ones, look more like high-end computer games than real figures. And one particular close-up shot of Legolas vaulting from the head of a cave troll is especially bad. We have come a long way from the very mechanical CG passengers on board James Cameron’s Titanic, to be sure, but we also still have a long way to go.

As a fantasy-adventure enthusiast, I don’t so much watch a film like this as dive in and let it soak all through me. Mr. Jackson has accomplished something here that will long be remembered, and is perhaps a turning point toward new standards in fantasy-adventure production. So I guess I’ll forgive him that he got to the idea before I did.

My Score: 9

Honey, Can We Talk?

2009-11-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Solaris

PG-13 / 1 hr., 39 min. / 2002

There are two kinds of science fiction on the market. There is the Sci-Fi of Technology, where computers develop brains and take over, or spaceships take us deep into unexplored galaxies, or time travel takes us into unfathomable past or future worlds. And there is the Sci-Fi of Idea, where man delves into the philosophical implications of a newly developed technology or a strange new life force.

Most sci-fi movies will include both of these forms in their structure, to varying degrees. The classic sci-fi tales used the Technology aspect as a way of exploring the Idea aspect, such as the way H.G. Wells used time travel to parabolically examine modern society and its trends in The Time Machine; or Jules Verne’s postulations on the possibilities to be gleaned from the ocean floor in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

As our culture becomes more immune to the desire to actually think, we have shifted over to sci-fi that is concerned almost exclusively with the Technology and couldn’t care less about the Idea. The Star Wars franchise, while entertaining, is little more than standard mythology retold using Jedi knights, hyperdrives, light sabers, and Wookies. Fun, but check your brains at the door.

This new mentality so exemplifies the meaning of science fiction to most people that it is no wonder they were sorely disappointed by Solaris. There are no explosions. There are no robots. There are no drooling, multi-tentacled, carnivorous aliens. The technology of the one space ship involved is barely even given a passing glance. This is a film that is entirely concerned with the Idea.

There is a spacecraft circling the gaseous planet Solaris, and apparently something unusual is taking place on board. Such is the vague gist of the message that crew member Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur) sends down to his friend Chris Kelvin (George Clooney), a psychological counselor on earth. Gibarian’s message asks Kelvin to join him on the spacecraft, and in an effort to escape some painful memories, Kelvin accepts.

Arriving on board the ship, Kelvin is immediately struck by two things: The ship’s apparent vacancy, and splotches of blood on the walkways. After some searching, Kelvin finds two crew members: Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis). Both seem rather disturbed over undefined strange occurrences, not the least of which appears to be Gibarian’s suicide which took place sometime after he sent his message to Kelvin.

Now here’s my problem: On the one hand, if I describe any more of the plot, I will deprive you of the thrill of letting it unfold for itself as you watch. On the other hand, this tack will make it very difficult to discuss the film at all. On the third hand, I’m not sure “thrill” is the right word for describing the film anyway, so further plot revelations may not have anything to ruin. But I’ll play it safe and discuss only what I can.

Solaris is based on the book by Stanislaw Lem, and this is its second incarnation as a film. This adaptation is written and directed by Steven Soderbergh, whose previous works involved a great deal of action and high-stakes tension, so the extraordinarily calm delivery here is something of a surprise. But in general terms, Soderbergh handles it well, guiding us slowly into the depths of the story with long scenes that are visually static but emotionally dynamic.

But it is this snail’s pace that will kill the film for most people. I will not be so phony as to say the pace didn’t bother me at all, but I had heard going in that this was not a whiz-bang action piece, so I was braced for it. Even then, I occasionally lapsed into mental ruminations on other things I could be doing; but as a dedicated film student I got all the way to the end credits.

Why so slow? Because, once again, this is a film about the Idea. And the nature of the Sci-Fi of the Idea is that people sit around exploring the Idea. Aside from flashbacks to earlier scenes in Kelvin’s life, much of the film is Kelvin and a woman named Rheya (Natascha McElhone) dealing with the implications of an Idea that the ship’s crew discovers while circling Solaris. The single longest shot in the movie is of Kelvin and Rheya lying in bed simply talking. (This is also the George Clooney butt-shot scene everyone warned me about, but my thirteen-inch TV screen rendered it only mildly painful to the eyes.)

Within that slowness, the cast delivers a satisfactory performance. George Clooney (Ocean’s Eleven), Natascha McElhone (The Truman Show), Viola Davis (Antwone Fisher), and Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan) all demonstrate ample skill in delivering on an emotionally charged subject – although Davies, as a stoner techie, grows very annoying very quickly. Maybe it’s a tribute to his talent, but I was ready to slap him and tell him just to shut up.

In general, everything successfully contributes to the unity of the production, a feat too many sloppier efforts fail to achieve. In Solaris, the exploration of the Idea is the important thing, so the production design by Philip Messina, costumes by Melina Canonero, and music score by Cliff Martinez are kept appropriately unobtrusive. The score is almost atmospheric, filling the silence with minimalism but never presenting a melody to distract us from the proceedings. The director even fills out the crew with a minimalist mentality: The editing and cinematography are handled by Soderbergh himself under various pseudonyms.

Despite its professionalism, I was somewhat disappointed with the film for a handful of reasons, the first of which is the promotional paragraph on the DVD box. I am growing increasingly tired of inaccurate material designed to lure me into renting something, because inevitably I end up frustrated by the disconnect between what the material leads me to expect and what I actually get.

For Solaris, I was promised a ship filled with bizarre occurrences, something akin to Sphere, perhaps, only a little more thought-provoking. Anyone planning to view this film should ignore that promise, because whoever wrote the DVD sleeve material is lying. What we get is one bizarre occurrence; it is played out several times and in slightly different forms, but it is foundationally the same event repeated. This is not in itself a problem, but it is not what I was led to expect.

A similar comment could be made regarding the film’s first act. The blood splattered around the ship when Kelvin arrives inadvertently promises us something much more dangerous and tense than what we actually get.

Second, the pace could have been tightened a bit without jeopardizing the film’s theme or style. Some shots feel interminable, some of the actors’ meaningful pauses feel too long. I am not advocating wholesale surrender to the fast, choppy editing that is a poor substitute for true cinematic energy; but a general rule is to show what you need to show for as long as you need to show it, then move on. Soderbergh ignores this too often in Solaris.

And third, even a story about an Idea needs some forward momentum. It does not need to involve lasers and haywire robots and Sigourney Weaver blowing up screeching, snarling, deadly life forms. But there should be something requiring the characters to advance the story. Solaris contains no such thing except Kelvin’s increasingly conflicted feelings about the Idea. This can be very successful in a novel, and I imagine the book’s exploration of Kelvin’s thoughts makes for an interesting study. But ultimately, those thought processes do not translate into a consistently enthralling cinematic experience.

But surprisingly, for a film that feels so slow, I feel that the Idea we are presented with is not discussed enough. The film’s 99-minute running time makes any truly deep exploration of the Idea impossible. We are left with a Cliff Notes view of a philosophical dilemma.

The story has a few potential elements of momentum already present in its structure, but fails to make use of them. One such element presents itself within the last ten minutes of the film, but could have added just a dash of tension and urgency if it had been mentioned somewhere around the halfway point instead.

Despite half my review being criticisms, I’m giving the film an above-average rating. It is a good film, and I am, ultimately, glad that my friend Jason recommended it. I think its biggest problem is simply that it had the misfortune of being presented to a public that has long since distanced itself from thought-provoking cinema.

My Score: 8

How the West Was Weird

2009-11-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Dead Man

R / 2 hrs., 1 min. / 1996

I’d like to get inside Jim Jarmusch’s head. Or maybe I wouldn’t; I’m not sure. His neo-Western tale Dead Man is just bizarre enough that maybe I don’t want to know what he was thinking. The film is unusual, in the sense that a person can suddenly feel unusual stomach cramps or experience unusual pain in unusual places.

William “Bill” Blake (Johnny Depp) arrives by train at the western town of Machine where he has been hired to be an accountant for a metalworks shop. But he is informed twice, the second time at gunpoint, that due to his delay in reaching the town, another accountant has been hired.

Although jobless and nearly penniless, Blake’s gentlemanly nature earns him the attention of a saloon girl (Mili Avital) who takes him to bed, where they are discovered by her former fiancé (Gabriel Byrne) who promptly takes aim and kills the girl. Blake returns fire in self-defense, and manages by the third shot to fatally hit the man. Blake flees the scene in fear, leaving the townspeople to believe that he heartlessly killed both people.

Tired, wounded, and delirious, Blake is befriended by “Nobody” (Gary Farmer), an outcast Indian who once had a proper English education and therefore mistakes Blake for the poet of the same name. “Nobody” becomes Blake’s guide, both geographically and spiritually, leading him to an unknown destination that could be either real or mythical.

Somewhere behind Blake, three bounty hunters (Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, and Eugene Byrd) track him, along with regional law officers and, unofficially, a missionary (Alfred Molina). As Blake becomes more familiar with a gun and the body count rises, the price on Blake’s head rises as well.

As outlined here on my word processor, this sounds like a really good treatment for a movie. I can imagine anyone from Lawrence Kasdan to Kevin Costner swooping down with a sack of money to option the script. But don’t be fooled: There is a great chasm between the potentially exciting tale outlined here and Jarmusch’s particular vision that created the actual product. For my money, I’d like to see the version Jarmusch didn’t make.

The problem does not lie in Jarmusch’s technical abilities to manufacture a film. Shot in black and white with an A-list cast, the film is well assembled. I would not have thought of Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands) to appear in a western setting, but once he’s in costume, he looks satisfactorily like an east coast rube trying to impress the west coast frontiersmen. Depp is a talented actor who can turn himself into almost anything, as evidenced by his long list of eccentric characters: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Cpt. Jack Sparrow, Hunter S. Thompson, and Willy Wonka, to name a few. For all his talent, here Depp plays Blake as, well, Depp. Depp in a plaid suit. While that may work, I find it hard to believe Depp didn’t find any quirks, tics, or backstory to use in enhancing Blake into something more memorable.

The supporting characters, including Gary Farmer (Adaptation), Crispin Glover (Twister), Lance Henriksen (Super Mario Bros.), Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade), and the great Robert Mitchum (Night of the Hunter), are all acclaimed character actors. They inhabit this film as somewhat bent interpretations of personalities from classic westerns. Glover and Thornton in particular perform with a unique edge to their characters that renders them slightly surreal and rather intriguing, albeit befuddling.

Jarmusch also successfully creates his mood, which is definitely moody. The film is not about chase scenes and gun fights; it proceeds slowly and deliberately on its journey, concerned more with atmosphere than action.

There is the lengthy confinement in a railway car, the sprawling vistas of the untamed West, the mesmerizing forests of beech trees. The metal foundry is bleak, junky, labyrinthine, and populated with stringy old men. The whole scene feels like the brainchild of Terry Gilliam. Jarmusch takes full advantage of these elements to create a solid sense of isolation and melancholy. But the question remains: To what good purpose? Or even, to what purpose at all?

This is the overarching problem. I reached the end of the film and had no clue what I was supposed to take from it. Or even if I was supposed to take something from it. I feel similarly clueless with anything Robert Redford directs, but at least with Redford’s films I do feel like he’s trying to tell me something, even if I don’t get it. With Dead Man, I really didn’t even get the sense that there was a message to find at all, though common sense tells me you don’t invest months of your life and a bucket-load of money in something that has no purpose whatsoever.

The film is a collection of oddities that are interesting on their own, but do not contribute to a cohesive whole. The opening scene on a train is not only interminable, but inexplicable. We fade in and out several times as Blake treks across the country. In each new sub-scene, the train is peopled with an entirely new set of characters. Is Blake dreaming? Is he already dead and this film is going to be a metaphor? Or is it just that the train stops at stations and lets on new passengers during each blackout? Although the third answer seems most likely, Jarmusch provides no clues and leaves us doing double-takes.

Before the train ride ends, the engineer played by Crispin Glover comes in, sits down by Blake, and provides the film’s first line of dialogue: “Look out the window. And doesn’t this remind you of when you’re in the boat, and then later that night you’re lying looking up at the ceiling and the water in your head was not dissimilar from the landscape, and you think to yourself, why is it that the landscape is moving, but the boat is still?” If a train engineer, or any stranger for that matter, took a seat next to me and said that line, and said it with the strange tone of voice that Glover uses, I would be looking for the nearest police officer. This opening does not bode well for the film. But I shrugged off the worries and prepared myself for something a bit skewed.

And skewed it is: Parts of the film feel almost as if Jarmusch were a disciple of the Coen brothers. In particular I think of Blake’s encounter with three fur trappers, including Billy Bob Thornton’s character. The set-up and delivery of the scene is off-kilter, like something Joel Coen would direct. But it’s too weird. Coen characters have a rational eccentricity, if such a paradox is possible. The three fur traders are just odd: One wears a dress, they quote portions of the Bible that don’t relate to anything, and they have a fascination with Blake’s hair, none of which comes together for any definable reason. Unless it has something to do with that portion of the conversation in which the fur traders argue over which of them gets to “do” Blake, which in context could either mean kill him or sexually assault him; I couldn’t quite tell.

On top of all of this, the film is thoroughly marred by its music score. But calling the solo electric guitar that accompanies the entire film a music score is like slapping a giant glove to the collective faces of John Williams, Danny Elfman, and the entire Hollywood and independent film scoring community. Even no music score at all would have been more musical.

So what is the answer? Perhaps the shooting star outside the saloon girl’s room has something to tell us. Or the dead fawn Blake falls asleep next to. Or the lightning bolts “Nobody” paints on Blake’s face.

Perhaps it is in the references to the poet William Blake. “Nobody” quotes Blake’s poetry frequently, and at what seem to be relevant moments, but the relevance escapes me. I wonder if knowing more about the real William Blake would help. I grabbed a few things from Wikipedia to see what could be learned:

“Blake was an important proponent of imagination as the modern western world currently defines the word. His belief that humanity could overcome the limitations of its five senses is perhaps one of Blake’s greatest legacies. His words, ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite,’ were seen as bizarre at the time, but are now accepted as part of our modern definition of imagination.”

And this: “George Richmond gives the following account of Blake’s death: ‘He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ – Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten’d and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven.’”

While all of this is very informative in its own right, I’m not sure Dead Man has become any more clear to me. William Blake wrote: “Every night and every morn, some to misery are born.” I can point those people out to you: They’re the ones who sat through this movie.

My Score: 4

When Life Gives You Lemony

2009-11-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

Movie Review:
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

PG / 1 hr., 47 min / 2004

The danger in getting extremely excited about an upcoming movie is that one might end up over-anticipating, so that the film, once finally viewed, ends up being not really a bad film, but a disappointment in relative terms. Such was my case with Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I absolutely loved the theatrical trailer, which presents a movie I very much wanted to see (despite having never read a word from Mr. Snicket’s typewriter). But once I saw the feature, I felt a little let down.

The film is based on the first three books of the series – The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window – which follow the unfortunate tale of the Baudelaire children: Violet, the inventive oldest sister (Emily Browning); Klaus, the bookworm (Liam Aiken); and Sunny, the two-year old biter (alternately Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). These three are suddenly rendered orphans when a fire burns their house to the ground with their parents in it (all of which is off-screen so your tots won’t be horrified within the first five minutes). The family banker, Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall), takes the children to live with their closest relative, the eccentric – and, we soon discover, sinister – Count Olaf (Jim Carrey).

Olaf makes no charade to disguise his real reason for accepting the orphans: He wants the Baudelaire fortune. But since the fortune will not pass to the guardian until the wards die, Olaf sets out to kill them. This is, of course, a dark theme, and one which I would not rush to display before children, although the theater I was in was heavily laden with impressionable youngsters. If there’s a plus side, it’s that the dark themes of this movie are much more subtle than, for instance, Addams Family Values, in which Wednesday and Pugsley commit flagrantly fatal acts upon their newest sibling – and that theater was also filled with impressionable youngsters. Do parents not think anymore? But this is a tangent.

When Olaf’s plan to have the children killed by locking them in a car parked on the railroad tracks fails, Mr. Poe removes them from his custody – not because Olaf tried to kill them, but because he left the youngest, Sunny, in the driver’s seat unattended. Neither Mr. Poe nor any other adults in the film seem to believe the children when they tattle on their uncle.

The second foster parent is Monty Montgomery (Billy Connolly), a reptilian expert, who plans to pack the children off to Peru on a little adventure – until Count Olaf shows up disguised as a fellow scientist. I’m not spoiling anything by pointing out that it is indeed Olaf in disguise, because, although the make-up job is quite good, the children announce it is Olaf just seconds after seeing him. Once again, the dim-witted adult (what is the movie trying to say here?) doesn’t believe the children for a moment. I am not of the extreme view that adults should believe and side with every fancy that a child spurts forth, but I think the grown-ups in the film could have been made a little more sympathetic and/or intelligent.

The third foster home involves Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) who lives practically over the sea, in a shanty that juts out off a high cliff, supported by a rickety collection of beams. There is a comic irony here, because the aunt herself is paranoid about everything (“Don’t get too close to the refrigerator – it might fall and crush you!”). Oh, and Olaf shows up in disguise. I get the idea this is the format of each book in the entire series.

The plot is somewhat episodic this way, given that it comes from three volumes in an ever-expanding series of books. But I do not feel this is a flaw. Momentum is successfully maintained throughout the stor(ies), and it feels like a coherent whole despite its derivation from multiple sources.

I am always hesitant when a film has Jim Carrey cast in anything but a normal human role. He does human well (The Truman Show, The Majestic). When he is given unrestrained freedom, he is unbearable (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective). However, and this is important, when his manic personality has a reason for existing, he can be delightful (The Mask). Here, Olaf is a decidedly overboard and terrible actor, so Carrey is an appropriate choice. But he is actually more entertaining, I think, when he is playing Olaf in disguise. His Italian scientist and his Irish sailor are intriguing to study as he performs them.

The relative newcomers as the Baudelaire children are adequate, given that the script does not place them in highly demanding situations. The script and director even seem to have deliberately removed opportunities for Miss Browning and Mr. Aiken to really act, such as in the scene where they learn of their parents’ deaths and simply stare at Mr. Poe standing on the beach.

Billy Connolly (Timeline) and Meryl Streep (Death Becomes Her) seem to have fun in their supporting roles. Both are eccentric and amusing caricatures, Aunt Josephine more so than Uncle Monty. Streep must have been exhausted after every take – she is constantly jittery. For a bonus chuckle, watch her pince-nez: They bounce on her nose as if they are spring-loaded.

Other actors are not on screen enough to be noticed, really, which is a shame, because Timothy Spall (Nicholas Nickleby), Jennifer Coolidge (Best in Show), and Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice, Home Alone) are such talented and entertaining performers. And movie-goers familiar with Jane Lynch (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind) will get a kick out of her three-second cameo.

Academy-Award winner Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow) is responsible for the production design, and earned another Oscar nomination because of it. Under his artistic eye, the entire look of the film is excellent, a fantasy world evoking the same visual enjoyment I got out of the Harry Potter movies, and anything directed by Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton (a friend of Heinrichs’). Olaf’s house is a ghoulish run-down gothic mansion with carved eyes in several niches and sconces; the countryside is a depressing brown haze; the lakeside town is almost a painting.

And now to the disappointments, the largest of which are what I perceive to be anachronisms, elements out of place for the time and setting. Although the story is apparently set in a fairly contemporary Boston, the film looks and feels like a fantasy version of pre-war England, a notion that the British accents of Mssrs. Spall and Jude Law (Closer) had cemented in my mind not five minutes into the production. I was led to expect something old-fashioned and highly stylized. While this is largely achieved, director Brad Silberling allows a significant number of slips, in things like Carrey’s occasional use of modern lingo (“Let’s cast this puppy!”) in amongst his more grandiose verbal gestures, the presence of a Chrysler Imperial (and an ugly one at that), and Cedric the Entertainer as a police inspector. Certainly no racial offense intended, but Cedric’s very African-American voice simply does not fit the aura created by the other elements of the film. Neither does Olaf’s consuming a beverage from a fast-food paper cup. I could go on.

I suspect these elements are not so much the slips I accuse them of being, but rather evidence that Silberling simply failed to solidify the rules under which his fictional world would function. In the end, these inconsistencies do nothing except wrench us unexpectedly out of the setting that was so beautifully established in the opening few minutes.

The score by Thomas Newman takes some getting used to. I like the riff he employs when Uncle Monty enters the Reptile Room and again when Aunt Josephine opens her Wide Window, but overall the film cries out for the comic menace of either Danny Elfman or Alan Silvestri (Mouse Hunt – what a beautiful Main Title Theme). Very little of the score stands out as anything appreciable; I think the best moment is the musical number, “Loverly Spring,” right at the beginning. And Newman’s composition for the closing credits is just plain wrong – horribly out of place, like the Imperial and Cedric.

I have a natural love for wonderfully fantastic tales set in somewhat off-kilter worlds, especially as viewed through the eyes of a child. I think of the works of Roald Dahl, John Bellairs, and the tales of Dr. Seuss. From what I saw in this film, the works of Lemony Snicket could be added to the list – his stories carry all the necessary ingredients to make the kind of film I could positively drool over. But this first entry, in what I hope will be an ever-improving series, feels a little undercooked. Which is unfortunate.

My Score: 7

Sleeping Beauties

2009-11-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Coma

PG / 1 hr., 53 min. / 1978

When you’re selecting reading material for an extended stay in the hospital, make sure you do not bring anything by Robin Cook. As a former medical professional, Cook found his niche in the specialized genre of the Medical Thriller. In fact, he may have even been the genre’s creator. In his books, heinous crimes are committed upon the helpless patients strapped to surgical tables and ambulance gurneys, often by the hospital personnel themselves. Once you’ve finished a Cook novel, you’ll never look at your nurse the same again.

Based on one of Cook’s earlier efforts, the film Coma is about Dr. Susan Wheeler (Genevieve Bujold), physician at a major hospital, whose life is thrown into upheaval when one of her best friends comes in for surgery and fails to revive after the procedure. She remains in an inexplicable coma, and Wheeler wants to find the medical explanation.

When a second patient suffers a similar fate, Wheeler becomes convinced that something is not right. An unauthorized look into the hospital records reveals that a total of a dozen such cases have occurred within the past year, a failure rate that is suspiciously high.

But Wheeler is hampered at all turns. Her boyfriend Dr. Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas) thinks her claims of a sinister plot are irrational; the head of anaesthesiology (Rip Torn) rankles at her insinuation that his department may be to blame; and her supervisor Dr. Harris (Richard Widmark) threatens her with dismissal if she persists in violating hospital policy to solve the puzzle.

I had originally intended to spell out more of the plot, but that would deflate the suspense and fun of watching it unfold. In short, Wheeler is determined to find out why so many comas are occurring at the hospital, and her quest becomes increasingly harrowing.

Cook’s novel is brought to the screen by Michael Crichton, whose own novels are excellent tales of suspense and often nail-biting terror – even though they all end with the usual violent explosion that destroys whatever the problem was. My wife has read Coma and informs me that Crichton’s script adaptation is reasonably faithful, cutting or combining characters only to keep the film from sprawling out over an entire evening. And to convey the many technical medical concepts present in the book, Crichton inserts medical interns into the scenes where there were none in the book. This enables the doctors to explain everything out loud and thus Crichton makes sure the viewing audience doesn’t get lost in all the terminology.

I write a full thirty years after the film was released in theaters, and it does have a somewhat dated feeling. But it still holds up, thanks to Crichton’s skilled directing, which is remarkably captivating considering that it was only his third effort at the time. Just as Steven Spielberg demonstrated with Duel, Crichton has a respectable grasp of generating suspense using ordinary people in ordinary places. With no dinosaurs, killer apes, or alien spheres, Crichton takes a very common woman and puts her in an increasingly tense mystery. If you can look past the film stock quality, hairstyles, and a slightly slower pace than later thrillers, you’ll find a film as gripping as anything being produced today.

French-Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold (Dead Ringers) brings a nice combination of vulnerability and resolution to her role. She is not brashly unstoppable, but neither is she spineless in her efforts to unearth the truth. Her accent takes a little getting used to, but it is only a minor hurdle to our enjoyment of the story.

I had forgotten that Michael Douglas (The China Syndrome) was once a young man, but there he is. I think he’s gotten better with age, but he plays his role acceptably here. In a twist probably inspired by the feminism of the 1970's, he finds himself with the role of “nagging wife” that so many Hollywood actresses normally end up in – not a lot to do except alternately encourage and rebuke the Main Character.

The film is peopled with names that have grown to become stars, including Rip Torn (Men in Black), Tom Selleck (Three Men and a Baby), and Ed Harris (The Truman Show). Not that any of their performances blew me away; it was just a kick to see these now-prominent actors in their formative stages. Torn and Harris in particular are so young here I didn’t recognize either of them at first glance.

In watching a thriller of any type, we expect to be drawn to the edges of our seats, and Coma generally succeeds. There are at least three suspenseful set pieces, the most famous of which is Wheeler’s escape from the Jefferson Institute, the medical auxiliary that cares for the hospital’s coma victims. Crichton’s envisioning of Cook’s futuristic tale produces the film’s classic image: Bodies in tranquil repose, suspended several feet off the floor and bathed in eerie shades of light. And the Institute’s administrator, Mrs. Emerson (Elizabeth Ashley), doesn’t lighten the mood any, with her impersonation of a Stepford wife in a nurse’s uniform.

Overall, the film’s only significant weaknesses are due to its age. Portions of the acting, lighting, editing, and music are slightly less polished than if the film were made today. But then, if the film were made today, the producers would also want to put in language, sex, and gore that really wouldn’t enhance the story one bit, nor make it more suspenseful. It is strong as it is. (Miss Bujold does, however, display some nudity in a couple of scenes, and it is clear that she lives with someone not her husband. The film would probably earn a PG-13 rating today.)

I could delve further into this critique, but I would run the risk of revealing details that are more fun simply to experience as they unfold. In short, while I’ve never heard anyone describe Coma as a “classic,” it is well worth the viewing, plain and simple. Grab the popcorn and turn down the lights. Just don’t let the nurse take you into surgery afterwards.

My Score: 8

Just Eat Them Already

2009-10-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Open Water

R / 1 hr., 19 min. / 2004

Despite the number of films out there that are “based on a true story,” real life does not lend itself well to movies. The daily existence of most people is quite ordinary, which, of course, is why screenwriters exist: They hunt down those intriguing little nuggets of real life that do hold some interest and then punch them up a bit with colorful characters, spicy dialogue, a well-rounded three-act structure, and so forth.

Open Water is based on one of those intriguing little nuggets of real life. The film’s story is simple and sounds much like the news copy of the event: A couple (Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan) take a vacation to a seaside town where they sign up for a scuba diving pleasure cruise. While they are enjoying close-up views of reefs and exotic fish, the boat captain makes a fatal calculation in counting the number of people who have come back to the boat. Believing that all passengers are back aboard, the captain returns to shore, and the couple re-surface to see nothing but ocean on all sides.

With no hope of swimming the vast leagues to shore, or of catching the attention of any of the ships on the distant horizon, the couple float along together as the current takes them into unknown territory. As the hours pass, they talk, they distract themselves with little word games, they unleash pent-up fury over their situation, they argue over who got them into this mess, they cry, they reconcile. And they notice the sharks.

Innocent bystanders trapped in dangerous and seemingly inescapable places can result in very suspenseful films. I think of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, or the recent sci-fi indie film Cube. The foundational premise for Open Water is equally fascinating, made more gripping by the fact that it is drawn from actual headlines. Here we have the sheer terror of a vast ocean separating us from safety, with unseen dangers surrounding us and circling closer with every passing hour.

But there is a foundational problem that frustrates any attempts at Open Water becoming a great movie: The creators tried too hard to create Real Life. They opted to discard Hollywood’s polished dialogue, experienced performers, professional lighting and imaging, or emotional orchestral score; and what they produced is Exhibit A in why Hollywood’s techniques produce better movies. Everyone who complains about the tepid products the Hollywood Machine puts out should see Open Water to learn how boring the alternative is. (Of course, there is the third option – well-made indie films – but these are basically just Hollywood-quality production values with fresher ideas in the foundation.)

In looking at Chris Kentis’ script, there is very little to work with. We really only have one central crisis – a couple isolated in shark-infested waters – and one crisis does not fill out a film very well. There are minor crises along the way, such as the encounter with jellyfish, but these elements are spurious. Take Finding Nemo, where Marlin’s and Dory’s swim through a sea of jellyfish has ramifications in the story: Marlin takes another step toward real courage, he demonstrates that he cares about Dory despite being frustrated by her, and he earns the respect and aid of the sea turtles. In Open Water, once the jellyfish have moved on, so has any concern or consequence regarding them; they have absolutely no lingering effect on the characters or the situation. And this is the recurring trend throughout the entire film.

Certainly an attempt is made to have the crisis push the couple over a character arc. They start as a fairly well-adjusted duo who are rather confused at finding no boat on the water’s surface. They wonder if maybe they swam too far afield during the dive. As reality sinks in, they get nervous. As time passes and they are able to really absorb their situation, the husband starts relieving stress by shouting to the gods, which irritates the wife, which sparks a heated argument about why they were scuba diving at all instead of being off on a different holiday, which they would have been if “you weren’t always so busy at work,” and so on. But it is a weak effort that failed to captivate or engage me, either because it stuck too closely to its predictable template or because it just sounded too mundane, I can’t decide. The dialogue comes across like an obligatory plot device rather than the natural inspired conversation of two desperate people. Who knows what a great writer could have done with this same scenario. I’d love to hear the couple’s conversation as per David Mamet, for example.

There is an utter extraneousness to the entire script, in fact. The film opens with the husband and wife packing for the trip. In a professional screenplay, this scene would contain either dialogue or visuals that would serve a function: Perhaps foreshadowing something to come, or providing important insight into the personalities of the couple. Alas, no, the scene says little more than “Here is the man, here is the woman.” Okay, there is a hint that they are both a little bit modernized, dependent on their laptops; but like the jellyfish, this facet of their characters has no part to play later on.

The packing scene is supposed to be clever – the husband is in the car, the wife is in a house somewhere, they’re on cell phones talking to each other, and it turns out they’re a mere thirty feet apart – but plays so much like ordinary life that it is blandly uninteresting. And even claiming it plays like real life is a stretch, as all of the scenes before they hit the water are so poorly acted they feel like some of my early home video productions.

The same uselessness is true for the scenes at the beach hotel where they spend the night before diving, unless you happen to enjoy explicit nudity. They talk like an ordinary couple, they have some romance and she announces she just doesn’t feel like “doing it” tonight, they go to sleep, they get up in the morning. The truth is, we could have gone straight to the couple arriving on the dock, run the opening credits over their getting on the boat, and not be missing any critical information at all.

I don’t know the circumstances under which the real couple in the true story got abandoned at sea, but the method used in this film seems sloppy. I cannot believe that a professional scuba diving tour boat company would be so careless in keeping track of the identities of the passengers, especially in our hyper-litigious society where a mistake like that would have lawyers swarming over the managers faster than Democrats flocking to Ohio to demand a recount.

Once the couple hits the water, the acting kicks in a bit, and there is a certain believability to Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan, minus the dialogue’s drawbacks and the plot’s one-note crisis. I wouldn’t be surprised if either one of these performers shows up in another production. After all, if Hollywood is willing to keep hiring Keanu Reeves, then Travis and Ryan are shoe-ins.

For me, as a videographer, the worst part about the film is the image itself. It is painfully obvious that the production was shot on a video camera. A good video camera, yes, but still a video camera. There is a distinct blur that is only achieved by shooting at 30 frames per second on video and transferring to film at 24 frames per second. This is bad enough to view in theaters, but when the 24 FPS image is sent back to DVD at 30 FPS with a 3/2 pull-down, there is no hope left for any kind of quality image. (Even if those technical terms meant nothing to you, you can see the difference by watching any movie shot on film and sent to video, and compare the look with Open Water.) At least projects like Time Code and The Blair Witch Project had the courtesy to send their original video edits straight to video instead of using the film print as an intermediate.

On top of this, many shots in the film look as though the cinematographer had the video camera’s aperture set to Automatic. You know Uncle Joe’s home videos, where he walks out of the house, and as he does so, the back yard is horridly bright and white until the camera quickly re-adjusts and fades to a more natural level? Unbelievably – for people who knew enough to make this production at all – shots in Open Water do the same very unprofessional thing, making it feel like a cheap home video rather than a note-worthy artistic endeavor.

Do I have anything good to say? Yes, actually, two things. Specifically, there is one very admirable shot that captures the essence of Hitchcock’s belief that “Less Seen is More Frightening.” Toward the end, the camera is at water’s level, with waves lapping at the lens, and for a mere fraction of a second, we get a glimpse underwater at the teeming mass of sharks. It goes by so fast, but it is just enough to be absolutely terrifying. (The effect is deflated when we get a longer shot a few seconds later, but by itself the first shot is suspenseful cinematography at its best.)

And generally speaking, I appreciate the effort. Here we have a man taking available pro-sumer technology and fashioning a finished product. Chris Kentis took a boat, a couple cast members, and some crew, and spent several weekends hammering out the production – no easy task. Kentis is living his dream (I assume), and I always reserve a certain amount of applause for fellow novice film makers like myself who actually venture out and get something done. It’s unfortunate that his premiere opus is so hollow and inconsequential on an artistic level; but everyone starts somewhere, and Open Water undoubtedly provided Kentis with experiences that he will improve upon.

My Score: 3

Days of Greek Lives

2009-10-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Movie Review:
Troy

R / 2 hrs., 43 min. / 2004

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and beware of German directors bearing films: One takes your city, the other takes your money at the box office – both leave you nothing in return. Well, “nothing” is a bit harsh for Wolfgang Petersen’s latest effort, but it’s like getting food as a Christmas present: Once you’ve eaten it, the enjoyment is all over.

One would think the myths behind the battle over Troy would make a really good movie. A lot of sweeping, epic war scenes; political intrigue; and, if you’re into that sort of thing, a bunch of semi-naked hunks running around. Specifically, Orlando Bloom for the teen chicks, Brad Pitt for the lonely housewives, and Eric Bana for anyone I left out. Personally, I saw more of any of those men than I ever wanted to see.

I cannot speak for how Troy the movie relates to Troy the history, so I shall speak of the film alone, which plays like a soap opera dropped in the middle of ancient Greece. Achilles (Brad Pitt) is a morose, melancholic warrior, tired of being ordered around by King Agamemnon (Brian Cox). He wants his own fame, his own legendary status, a name to live on after him into eternity.

Agamemnon and his army are on a quest to subjugate all the separate city-states of Greece under one ruler. He has been tremendously successful so far, needing only Troy. His brother Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) is attempting to woo Troy’s fealty through peaceful talks with princes Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). Those talks have a slight break-down when Paris seduces Menelaus’ wife and queen Helen (Diane Kruger) away from him. The pursuit back to Troy is on, and the Trojan War erupts. I did not have time to verify that a thousand ships were in the fleet, however.

The rather long second act of the film involves Achilles leading the pack into the fray on the beaches of Troy and taking a vestal virgin from the temple as a hostage, in fact saving her life from the brutality of his fellow warriors. He falls in love with her, she falls in love with him, and somewhere in there his famous heel comes into play, but I won’t spoil it.

Meanwhile, Hector prepares to defend the city, Paris tries his hand at a one-on-one competition for Helen’s hand, Priam (Peter O’Toole) sits around looking nervous, and arrows fly back and forth.

Critics have positively savaged the film, but I would like to start by saying it’s not all that bad for what it’s worth, being a piece of summer escapism. It’s not all that good, either, but as something to sit and be amused by for a couple of hours, it generally succeeds, at least for me. I felt amused. There you have it. But it is definitely flawed, occasionally boring, sometimes laughable, largely uninspired beyond its predecessors, and generally not worth a second ticket.

So what went wrong? It’s hard to say, really. For me, the biggest detractor was the lack of a real hero. I’m assuming Achilles is our “Main Hero” since Brad Pitt (Ocean’s Eleven) looms across the movie poster and his name is the headliner. But for a protagonist, he does little if nothing at all to enlist our sympathies, our interest, or our admiration. Sure, he’s a supernaturally gifted warrior, but he’s cold, heartless, uninterested, lifeless, droll, moping – the list goes on.

I guess we’re meant to have our hearts cheered by the transformation Achilles undergoes upon taking the vestal virgin (Rose Byrne) back to his tent. The man who once would have raped her without question instead cleans her wounds and treats her gently. She softens to her captor, seeing past all the dirt and sweat and finding a heart, I suppose. Whatever she sees in him, they end up in a passionate embrace (happens all the time between brutal rapist captors and their victims!), and Achilles has found something worth living for. Well, okay. But I can’t say my heart went out to the darling couple in their final scene together.

Paris can hardly count as the story’s hero. He commits adultery and then encourages Helen to run away from her husband and live with him. Both of them falsely call what they feel for each other “love.” True love would have respected the marriage bond.

The closest one to being a halfway noble character is Hector. Unfortunately, he is willing to shelter Paris’ indiscretion and sacrifice hundreds or thousands of Trojan lives for it. So he misses the mark, too. But at least he wrestles with ethical issues and tries to do something brotherly instead of being wholly self-absorbed like Paris.

This ignoble storyline is not really helped by any of the technical aspects. Granted, the film is capably made. The fight scenes are big, the political scenes are well acted, the love scenes are steamy. The problem is that none of it, individually or as a whole, rises above anything that has come before. It is merely one more entry in the Big Ancient Epic Battle genre. It’s like when some new actor wants to try his hand at Hamlet or Othello even though these productions have been put on a million times. I’m guessing Petersen, Pitt, Bana (Hulk), Bloom (Kingdom of Heaven), O’Toole (Lawrence of Arabia), and the others involved saw an opportunity to work on a story they’ve “always wanted to try,” even though there was no call for it.

There was one, count it, one scene that caught my attention with its visuals. I won’t spoil it, but it involves giant flaming balls of rope, which looks quite cool and which isn’t as silly as it sounds on paper.

Since it’s the Trojan War, you know the Trojan Horse is going to figure into it. And one neat shot shows the horse resting in the Trojan courtyard late at night, still, silent – and suddenly dispensing warriors from its interior. But one of the screenplay’s biggest faults is the shameless way it brings the horse into the story.

A hopeless Odysseus (Sean Bean) sits by the campfire determined to find a way into Troy’s impenetrable walls. Next to him, a fellow warrior chisels a little horse out of wood to give to his son one day. A light goes on in Odysseus’ brain, and he engineers the construction of a hollow wooden horse to hide in. Now, usually a solution to a problem is based on, you know, an inspiration actually related to it. So would it not have made more sense to have Odysseus watching someone, I don’t know, hollow something out? And hide something in it? For all the lame dialogue and action, this has to be the worst moment of the film, a complete lapse in screenwriter David Benioff’s mental capacities as he was typing away.

Well, I started by accusing critics of savaging the film, and I have pretty much done the same. I will repeat my assessment that the film is not actually all that horrible. It is entertainment, and it is entertaining. It was created by a capable cast and crew, from photography to costuming to sets to the music score.

Like Achilles, it has fatal weaknesses. But unlike the Trojan War itself, no one will be talking about this film millennia from now. Probably not even into the next decade.

My Score: 5