The last, I swear, of the Academy Award movies that The Boy and I are going to see for 2011 is the Polish film In Darkness, the story of a Polish sewer inspector who hides Jews in the nooks and crannies of the sewers he knows so well.
I mean, during WWII. From the Nazis. It's not like Jew-caching is some kind of weird hobby for him.
That'd be a hell of a movie right there. I picture Will Ferrell shoving Ben Stiller into tiny alcoves while Stiller protests ineffectively and, I dunno, finds a civilization of sewer gnomes who torment him at first but eventually he becomes their hero as he saves them from The Great Flush.
But I digress.
This is a serious movie, and it's a damn good one that's been rather harshly reviewed.
The lead character is a Pole, who is anti-semitic and greedy, and in fact a thief. The movie opens with him robbing from the houses of Jews who have been sent away by the Nazis. He negotiates with a wealthy family of Jews to hide them—for a price. When the kał hits the fan, and he ends up with a bunch more Jews than he bargained for, and he shows no particular generosity.
He's also constantly being challenged as far as the money goes. Given what he risks, he has to constantly re-evaluate whether it's worth the money, whether he can possibly get more out of them, whether he should just rip them off and turn them in and, as I said, you don't really know which way he's going to go.
Also, as secluded as the sewers are, they're not all that well insulated. Noise travels upward and outward. And the Jews themselves are not a happy group.
This particular aspect felt really true to life (and this is based on actual events, and a biography written by one of the survivors). There is snobbery and class-ism, cowardice, pride, licentiousness, and so on. They don't know how bad the camps are, and so they don't realize that this is the end of the world for them.
How bad are the camps? At one point, a guy who's been living in a sewer for nine months sneaks out with the intent of infiltrating the nearby camp and finding a missing family member, only to be spotted by a Nazi who says he's too healthy to have come from the camps.
That's bad.
Another great thing is that the lead character's wife is a fascinating creature by herself. A plump woman who blows everyone's mind by telling them Jesus was Jewish (this made me laugh a lot, because they would all say "Really?") and who chides her husband for his greed and bad behavior on the other hand hardly embraces his scheme.
She's a wildcard.
This is a long movie, but even The Boy didn't object. "It was immersive," he said. And it's true; it's an expert piece of film-making that manages to convey a tremendous claustrophobia and fear. I guess the New York Times criticized it for being a perfect story that's already been told before, but I think the fact that it works—and despite my snark at the start of this post—without exciting yawns or ridicule is indicative of how effective a film this is.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the WWII films getting more attention these days are films where the Nazis are more sympathetic (like The Reader). While there's enough veniality to go around, there's no doubt who the villains are in this film. And this is done without making the villainy cartoonish.
No, it all feels very real, and we both liked it greatly. I actually prefer it to the Academy Award winner, A Separation, because it was more gripping, but I'd note that these were two of the best films of 2011, and way better than the nine English-language films nominated for Best Picture.
It's also, despite my swearing, probably not the last of the 2011 Oscar noms, since the other foreign films probably won't make it to theaters for another couple months.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
And The Oscar Goes To...
Who gives a rat's ass? I mean, seriously. We'll do the 2011 round-up shortly here at the Bitmaelstrom but it feels like more than ever, the nominations just go to the films with the right pedigrees/marketing plans. I mean, it's always been this way to some degree, but the nomination process seems less and less likely to include anyone or anything surprising.
Ten slots for best picture and no nom for a Harry Potter or a Win Win? We have room for the widely panned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close because, you know, it's important and has Tom Hanks in it. Moneyball is a trivial film but Aaron Sorkin wrote it, so, yeah, give that puppy an award. War Horse? Really?
It's worse in the writing department: Both the murky Margin Call and the risible Ides of March are nominated. I guess I should be grateful neither Cars 2 nor TinTin made it into the animation category.
UPDATE: Wow, my worst set of guesses ever 1/10! I guess I really am out of touch with Hollywood these days!
OK, enough grousing. My annual guesses follow:
Best Picture
Will win: The Help
Should win: The Help
Observation: The beauty of The Help of course is that it didn't happen, which sort of makes it a pleasant lie celebrating the fiery, liberated white woman journalist.
My pick: Normally, I do a big thing where I list all the movies and whittle them down and mull, but I really don't have to this year: Machine Gun Preacher was, hands down, the most interesting, challenging and dramatic film of the year.
Possible upset: The Artist, which is at least as good a movie as The Help, but has the Weinstein Oscar machine behind it. This is why Shakespeare In Love has an Oscar.
Best Actor
Will Win: Gary Oldman
Should Win: Demien Bechir
Observation: It's not that Oldman is so great in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He's great in everything. And Smiley is not exactly a broad character—it's not Sean Penn screaming IS THAT MY DAUGHTER IN THERE!? seventeen times, which is what Oscar loves. So why Oldman? Simple: He doesn't have an Oscar yet. Clooney and Pitt? Really? You know, these categories used to be dominated by acting giants, not just people in the "in club". (That's not true at all but it makes for a great rant.)
My pick: Demian Bechir would definitely be on my short list, along with Paul Giamatti. But I'd probably give the best actor nod to Gerard Butler (Machine Gun Preacher) or Robert Wieckiewicz (In Darkness) or...
Possible upset: Jean Dujardin. What he did was nothing short of astounding in The Artist. It's all very well to create a narrative of a charming movie heartthrob, and another thing to portray it so convincingly.
Best Actress
Will Win: Glenn Close
Should Win: Sure, why not.
Observation: I pick Close for the same reason I picked Oldman: She doesn't have an Oscar yet and she probably should. For Fatal Attraction, if nothing else. And, truth be told, she was quite good in Albert Nobbs. Not at pretending to be a man, which she doesn't really. But just being a compelling character.
My pick: Er...uh...Have you noticed there aren't a lot of great roles for women in American movies? I'm having a hard time thinking of any really standout performances this year. Judi Dench and Mia Wasikowski in Jane Eyre were good. The French had a bunch of 'em, like Margueritte in My Afternoons With Margueritte and the Hedgehog in The Hedgehog. In Darkness had a bunch of great female parts. Michelle Monaghan was excellent in Preacher.
Possible upset: Michelle Williams. She allllmost pulled off Marilyn. Seriously, though, while I'll be kinda pissed if Clooney or Pitt win for actor, all of these women did a worthy job.
Supporting Actor
Will Win: Jonah Hill
Should Win: Christopher Plummer or Max von Sydow
Observation: Plummer and von Sydow will split the old guy vote delivering the tropy to Hill, who is playing the first likable person in his career.
My Pick: Christopher Plummer. But for The Man In The Chair, not the gay movie. (Which was fine, but Chair was a better role.)
Possible Upset: The only thing I can think of is that neither Sydow or Plummer will rack up enough votes for their movies that no one saw to not split the vote. Beginners in particular is fairly obscure. But it's got the gay cachet. Is that still brave? They both have two noms and no Oscars, and both are in their '80s. The Academy doesn't want another Ray Walston on their hands.
Supporting Actress
Will Win: Melissa McCarthy
Should Win: Sure, why not
Observation: See previous rant on actress roles. This is the comedy ghetto, award speaking, and McCarthy doesn't exactly fit the preconceived notion of a Hollywood starlet, so if she wins, there's lots of fodder for the women's media about how it's not all about the skinny girls any more. (See America Ferrara, Kathy Bates, Camryn Manheim, Oprah Winfrey, etc.)
Director
Will Win: Terence Malick
Should Win: Terence Malick
Observation: I've never seen Tree of Life or any other Terence Malick film. I just don't see Michel Hazanavicius winning for The Artist and the other three movies sucked. OK, maybe not sucked, but at least weren't particularly impressive. Tree of Life has scope.
Possible Upset: Michel Hazanvicius
Animated
Will Win: Rango
Should Win: Rango, I guess. Not a great year for the 'toons.
Foreign Language
Will Win: In Darkness
Should Win: In Darkness. A Separation was good, too. But Nazis are people pleasers. At least as movie topics.
Original Screenplay
I'm done guessing. A Separation should win this.
Adapted Screenplay
Mehhhhhhh....Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Moneyball was more enjoyable, but the former was a nigh impossible task. Points for difficulty.
Aaaand...already bored. Like I'm gonna watch this slow-mo train wreck? I don't think so.
Ten slots for best picture and no nom for a Harry Potter or a Win Win? We have room for the widely panned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close because, you know, it's important and has Tom Hanks in it. Moneyball is a trivial film but Aaron Sorkin wrote it, so, yeah, give that puppy an award. War Horse? Really?
It's worse in the writing department: Both the murky Margin Call and the risible Ides of March are nominated. I guess I should be grateful neither Cars 2 nor TinTin made it into the animation category.
UPDATE: Wow, my worst set of guesses ever 1/10! I guess I really am out of touch with Hollywood these days!
OK, enough grousing. My annual guesses follow:
Best Picture
Will win: The Help
Should win: The Help
Observation: The beauty of The Help of course is that it didn't happen, which sort of makes it a pleasant lie celebrating the fiery, liberated white woman journalist.
My pick: Normally, I do a big thing where I list all the movies and whittle them down and mull, but I really don't have to this year: Machine Gun Preacher was, hands down, the most interesting, challenging and dramatic film of the year.
Possible upset: The Artist, which is at least as good a movie as The Help, but has the Weinstein Oscar machine behind it. This is why Shakespeare In Love has an Oscar.
Best Actor
Will Win: Gary Oldman
Should Win: Demien Bechir
Observation: It's not that Oldman is so great in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He's great in everything. And Smiley is not exactly a broad character—it's not Sean Penn screaming IS THAT MY DAUGHTER IN THERE!? seventeen times, which is what Oscar loves. So why Oldman? Simple: He doesn't have an Oscar yet. Clooney and Pitt? Really? You know, these categories used to be dominated by acting giants, not just people in the "in club". (That's not true at all but it makes for a great rant.)
My pick: Demian Bechir would definitely be on my short list, along with Paul Giamatti. But I'd probably give the best actor nod to Gerard Butler (Machine Gun Preacher) or Robert Wieckiewicz (In Darkness) or...
Possible upset: Jean Dujardin. What he did was nothing short of astounding in The Artist. It's all very well to create a narrative of a charming movie heartthrob, and another thing to portray it so convincingly.
Best Actress
Will Win: Glenn Close
Should Win: Sure, why not.
Observation: I pick Close for the same reason I picked Oldman: She doesn't have an Oscar yet and she probably should. For Fatal Attraction, if nothing else. And, truth be told, she was quite good in Albert Nobbs. Not at pretending to be a man, which she doesn't really. But just being a compelling character.
My pick: Er...uh...Have you noticed there aren't a lot of great roles for women in American movies? I'm having a hard time thinking of any really standout performances this year. Judi Dench and Mia Wasikowski in Jane Eyre were good. The French had a bunch of 'em, like Margueritte in My Afternoons With Margueritte and the Hedgehog in The Hedgehog. In Darkness had a bunch of great female parts. Michelle Monaghan was excellent in Preacher.
Possible upset: Michelle Williams. She allllmost pulled off Marilyn. Seriously, though, while I'll be kinda pissed if Clooney or Pitt win for actor, all of these women did a worthy job.
Supporting Actor
Will Win: Jonah Hill
Should Win: Christopher Plummer or Max von Sydow
Observation: Plummer and von Sydow will split the old guy vote delivering the tropy to Hill, who is playing the first likable person in his career.
My Pick: Christopher Plummer. But for The Man In The Chair, not the gay movie. (Which was fine, but Chair was a better role.)
Possible Upset: The only thing I can think of is that neither Sydow or Plummer will rack up enough votes for their movies that no one saw to not split the vote. Beginners in particular is fairly obscure. But it's got the gay cachet. Is that still brave? They both have two noms and no Oscars, and both are in their '80s. The Academy doesn't want another Ray Walston on their hands.
Supporting Actress
Will Win: Melissa McCarthy
Should Win: Sure, why not
Observation: See previous rant on actress roles. This is the comedy ghetto, award speaking, and McCarthy doesn't exactly fit the preconceived notion of a Hollywood starlet, so if she wins, there's lots of fodder for the women's media about how it's not all about the skinny girls any more. (See America Ferrara, Kathy Bates, Camryn Manheim, Oprah Winfrey, etc.)
Director
Will Win: Terence Malick
Should Win: Terence Malick
Observation: I've never seen Tree of Life or any other Terence Malick film. I just don't see Michel Hazanavicius winning for The Artist and the other three movies sucked. OK, maybe not sucked, but at least weren't particularly impressive. Tree of Life has scope.
Possible Upset: Michel Hazanvicius
Animated
Will Win: Rango
Should Win: Rango, I guess. Not a great year for the 'toons.
Foreign Language
Will Win: In Darkness
Should Win: In Darkness. A Separation was good, too. But Nazis are people pleasers. At least as movie topics.
Original Screenplay
I'm done guessing. A Separation should win this.
Adapted Screenplay
Mehhhhhhh....Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Moneyball was more enjoyable, but the former was a nigh impossible task. Points for difficulty.
Aaaand...already bored. Like I'm gonna watch this slow-mo train wreck? I don't think so.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Ace of Spades wrote a rather dismissive review of the latest Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol on his blog claiming that the critical praise was due to the presence of the great Brad Bird (Early "The Simpsons", "The Critic", Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) at the helm, which was plausible enough to me that I lowered my expectations heading into the theater.
Also, Mission Impossible: Never cared for the series enough to watch an entire episode. Didn't care for the first two movies in the movie franchise to see the third. Never thought, "Hey, Tom Cruise! Love to see him in something." (Though I'm not a hater: He was good in Risky Business and seriously under-rated in Rain Man, but normally I'm indifferent.)
That said? We loved it. The Flower, The Boy and I were all enthusiastic by the end of the film. I can't say strictly that Ace is wrong, because he's saying the third one was better, and I haven't seen it, but it's hard to imagine it being the case.
Why does it work? Lotta reasons. Intriguingly, while I wasn't a fan of the show, I always thought it was dumb that they did a movie abut the show and then removed so much of what the show was about. Like, killing the team right off the bat in the first one and turning Ethan Hunt into more of a Rambo/McClane character.
This movie embraces the TV show. I'm sure I missed lots of references (never having seen the show) but there was: The lit fuse during the credits, the self-destructing message, and even the amazing tear-away Scooby-Doo mask make appearances, though updated to be more plausible and with a dash of humor. The theme from the show features prominently in Michael Giacchino's score, and Bird did well to bring him on board. (Giacchino scored The Incredibles which had similar '60s spy/action themes.)
Also, and more importantly, there's the team. You might actually remember them. Simon Pegg is the tech/nerd/comic relief, for example. Paula Patton is the girl, and the movie does a good job of steering her away from the typical clichés. Jeremy Renner completes the team and, once again, you think the movie's going to go one way with him but goes another.
The technology is fun. The right mix of stuff we have and stuff that's just out of reach. It's cool. And it fails. Often.
Ace criticized the film for being a "now we go here, no we go here, now we go here" Bond-style travelogue, but it actually seemed to flow logically to me. (He actually talks about an elaborate scheme which they do, despite it being pointless, but having seen it, I don't see how they could have called off the plan.)
Well, look, The Boy said "I have no problems with the movie at all."
He never says that. It's unheard of.
I had no problems with it either. Say what you want about Cruise, he looks plausible doing the action. You don't even say "for a 50-year-old", which he is. Well, 49. But still.
Michael Nyvqist is the heavy in this flick, in a dramatic shift from his milquetoast Blomqvist (from the Swedish Girl With A Dragon Tattoo Movies) though we don't see him that much. Léa Seydoux (Robin Hood, Midnight in Paris, Inglorious Basterds) plays a sexy, evil assassin, which works, somehow.
The whole thing just works: Just the right mixture of not-taking-itself-too-seriously against being-plain-goofy. Really the only action film of 2011 we all recommended unreservedly.
Also, Mission Impossible: Never cared for the series enough to watch an entire episode. Didn't care for the first two movies in the movie franchise to see the third. Never thought, "Hey, Tom Cruise! Love to see him in something." (Though I'm not a hater: He was good in Risky Business and seriously under-rated in Rain Man, but normally I'm indifferent.)
That said? We loved it. The Flower, The Boy and I were all enthusiastic by the end of the film. I can't say strictly that Ace is wrong, because he's saying the third one was better, and I haven't seen it, but it's hard to imagine it being the case.
Why does it work? Lotta reasons. Intriguingly, while I wasn't a fan of the show, I always thought it was dumb that they did a movie abut the show and then removed so much of what the show was about. Like, killing the team right off the bat in the first one and turning Ethan Hunt into more of a Rambo/McClane character.
This movie embraces the TV show. I'm sure I missed lots of references (never having seen the show) but there was: The lit fuse during the credits, the self-destructing message, and even the amazing tear-away Scooby-Doo mask make appearances, though updated to be more plausible and with a dash of humor. The theme from the show features prominently in Michael Giacchino's score, and Bird did well to bring him on board. (Giacchino scored The Incredibles which had similar '60s spy/action themes.)
Also, and more importantly, there's the team. You might actually remember them. Simon Pegg is the tech/nerd/comic relief, for example. Paula Patton is the girl, and the movie does a good job of steering her away from the typical clichés. Jeremy Renner completes the team and, once again, you think the movie's going to go one way with him but goes another.
The technology is fun. The right mix of stuff we have and stuff that's just out of reach. It's cool. And it fails. Often.
Ace criticized the film for being a "now we go here, no we go here, now we go here" Bond-style travelogue, but it actually seemed to flow logically to me. (He actually talks about an elaborate scheme which they do, despite it being pointless, but having seen it, I don't see how they could have called off the plan.)
Well, look, The Boy said "I have no problems with the movie at all."
He never says that. It's unheard of.
I had no problems with it either. Say what you want about Cruise, he looks plausible doing the action. You don't even say "for a 50-year-old", which he is. Well, 49. But still.
Michael Nyvqist is the heavy in this flick, in a dramatic shift from his milquetoast Blomqvist (from the Swedish Girl With A Dragon Tattoo Movies) though we don't see him that much. Léa Seydoux (Robin Hood, Midnight in Paris, Inglorious Basterds) plays a sexy, evil assassin, which works, somehow.
The whole thing just works: Just the right mixture of not-taking-itself-too-seriously against being-plain-goofy. Really the only action film of 2011 we all recommended unreservedly.
Thin Ice
Fargo meets A Simple Plan in this Midwestern tale of a small crime gone horribly awry? No, not really, but that's what I'd heard about the new Greg Kinnear flick Thin Ice.
Kinnear plays Kenosha, Wisconsin-based insurance salesman Mickey Prohaska who stumbles across an opportunity in the form of a dotty old man named Gorvy (Alan Arkin). Gorvy has a violin that's valuable, but he doesn't know it, so Mickey decides to swap it with a cheap Chinese piece o' crud. This simple plan is sent spinning out of control by the introduction of twitchy security installer Randy (Billy Crudup, of the giant blue penis).
It does invite comparisons with the aforementioned movies. But it has nothing like Plan's nihilism (nor its starkly beautiful cinematography), nor Fargo's study of the gradients from good to evil. It's actually quite a fun movie.
Kinnear is sleazy, which he's good at, but also charming and likable—which he's also good at. So just as it's hard not feel a little schadenfreude over his setbacks at first, it becomes impossible not to empathize with him and hope he finds a way out as he gets deeper in the muck.
Crudup is typically good as the unstable alarm installer. Alan Arkin, wonderful, as always. Bob Balaban, David Harbour and Michelle Arthur round out the cast, with Leah Thompson in a supporting a role, looking kind of haggard as Kinnear's put-upon but also somewhat cold wife. Michelle Hutchinson has a small role, which is kind of cute, as she was the escort in Fargo not won over by Steve Buscemi's charms.
The Boy and I were both greatly pleased, and it's somewhat surprising (at least to us) that the movie has such mediocre ratings on the various sites. Before seeing it, I attributed the ratings to it being a black comedy, which is never a big people pleaser.
But it's really not that dark. One of the (I think, unpopular) characteristics of a dark comedy is the inversion of morality, where evil is overtly celebrated or rewarded on a meta-level, and this movie—while lacking admirable characters—doesn't do that.
Nonetheless, it's not tearing up the box office, so see it while you can, folks!
Kinnear plays Kenosha, Wisconsin-based insurance salesman Mickey Prohaska who stumbles across an opportunity in the form of a dotty old man named Gorvy (Alan Arkin). Gorvy has a violin that's valuable, but he doesn't know it, so Mickey decides to swap it with a cheap Chinese piece o' crud. This simple plan is sent spinning out of control by the introduction of twitchy security installer Randy (Billy Crudup, of the giant blue penis).
It does invite comparisons with the aforementioned movies. But it has nothing like Plan's nihilism (nor its starkly beautiful cinematography), nor Fargo's study of the gradients from good to evil. It's actually quite a fun movie.
Kinnear is sleazy, which he's good at, but also charming and likable—which he's also good at. So just as it's hard not feel a little schadenfreude over his setbacks at first, it becomes impossible not to empathize with him and hope he finds a way out as he gets deeper in the muck.
Crudup is typically good as the unstable alarm installer. Alan Arkin, wonderful, as always. Bob Balaban, David Harbour and Michelle Arthur round out the cast, with Leah Thompson in a supporting a role, looking kind of haggard as Kinnear's put-upon but also somewhat cold wife. Michelle Hutchinson has a small role, which is kind of cute, as she was the escort in Fargo not won over by Steve Buscemi's charms.
The Boy and I were both greatly pleased, and it's somewhat surprising (at least to us) that the movie has such mediocre ratings on the various sites. Before seeing it, I attributed the ratings to it being a black comedy, which is never a big people pleaser.
But it's really not that dark. One of the (I think, unpopular) characteristics of a dark comedy is the inversion of morality, where evil is overtly celebrated or rewarded on a meta-level, and this movie—while lacking admirable characters—doesn't do that.
Nonetheless, it's not tearing up the box office, so see it while you can, folks!
Friday, February 17, 2012
The Adventures of Tintin
Journey with us now to the days of your youth, and the many hours you spent sprawled in front of a blazing fire reading about Tintin and his amazing adventures!
I mean, if you're a 70-year-old Belgian.
If not, you probably don't know who the hell Tintin is.
I don't know about you but I'm sort of at the point where, when Spielberg makes a movie, I'm just, like, "Whatever, dude." Seriously. Have the horse, like, defuse the bomb, or whatever. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? I've mentioned how the moment that Indy rode the submarine across the Atlantic killed my enjoyment.
It's just too stupid, you know? At any point, it submerges, as subs are wont to do—it's even built into the name!—and you're drowned. Even if you could hang on the entire length of the trip, it'd be a stupid thing to do.
So I readjust how I watch his movies. And that's worked for a while. But he keeps pushing the limits of dumb. It results in bizarre flicks like War Horse. Here? He's got CGI. So you don't even get the wow-factor of knowing that a shot was complicated to set up and choreograph. It's all some damn computer program.
Spielberg + CGI is a bad idea. The camera swooshes around because it can. The action sequences are so preposterous that they exacerbate Spielberg's already bad problem with eliminating all the suspense and thrill by reminding the viewer he's there guiding every moment of activity. If you could escape the uncanny valley for a moment—which is difficult because the voices don't seem to quite sync with the mouths—Spielberg throws you back in with some kind of silly shenanigans.
The Adventures of Tintin is almost as bizarre as War Horse. It's sensibilities aren't quite modern American, with the titular teen hero being allowed to run-around post-war Europe and Africa, shoot guns and do all sorts of non-PC things.
This was kinda cool. I can only assume that he expected to make his money in the worldwide market. (And he was right: About 75% of this movie's box is from the worldwide market.)
But you know what else is a bad idea? Speilberg + comic book. He already has trouble deciding whether to—well, look at Nolan's Batman movies: Hardcore realism. He never wants you do challenge the literalness of his movies. Whereas Burton just wanted something that looked cool.
Spielberg always seems to create a literal reality out of soap bubbles that he gleefully pops if you should ever start to feel invested. For example, Tintin has a dog, Snowy. (If you're like most people I've discussed it with, you probably thought Tintin was the dog, but that's Rin Tin Tin—no relation.) Sometimes Snowy's a dog, with dog powers. But if you ever need it, he's also a dog-ex-machina, who can read or capture the scroll from a hawk (don't ask), or whatever.
Look, at one point, an airplane crash due to low fuel is averted by having a drunk belch into the carburetor.
Maybe if it were cleverer. You know kind of Lewis Carroll-y where the absurdity is countered by puns or something. As it is, it feels ad hoc, sloppy, just not very engaging at all. There are a couple of incompetent Interpol cops, who look alike and have the same name (but who are not related), who provide slapstick comic relief which is as cute as it is unnecessary. (The movie never suffers from enough dramatic tension to require comic relief.)
But, hey, we weren't there so I could see it. The Barb wanted to, and she was ready to watch it again as soon as we watch the theater. Which, by the way, is true so far of every movie she's seen.
The movie ends weird, too. The actual ending is about 15 minutes before the credits roll, and the end is basically a setup for a series. Not even a sequel, but a series.
You're kind of expecting a surprise or a big finish, and it's just not there. It's all lead in for breakfast cereal and SatAM cartoons.
I didn't hate it, actually. It's better than The Zookeeper or The Smurfs. But it's all part of the big mishmash of mediocrity that closed out 2011.
Star-studded cast of voices. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the Interpol cops, while Edgar Wright has a script credit (reuniting the cast of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and "Spaced!") so, I dunno, maybe this was saved from being another 1941 by some serious script doctoring.
I should note that this seems to be something of a crowd-pleaser, according to IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. So, maybe I'm just getting curmudgeonly(er) in my old(er) age. At the same time, it didn't set the box office on fire, and I have to wonder if that's because, you know, it sucked. Adjusted for inflation, the box office this and War Horse are situated between Always and Amistad—and actually well below 1941.
Interestingly, Tintin cleaned up worldwide while War Horse didn't.
I mean, if you're a 70-year-old Belgian.
If not, you probably don't know who the hell Tintin is.
I don't know about you but I'm sort of at the point where, when Spielberg makes a movie, I'm just, like, "Whatever, dude." Seriously. Have the horse, like, defuse the bomb, or whatever. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? I've mentioned how the moment that Indy rode the submarine across the Atlantic killed my enjoyment.
It's just too stupid, you know? At any point, it submerges, as subs are wont to do—it's even built into the name!—and you're drowned. Even if you could hang on the entire length of the trip, it'd be a stupid thing to do.
So I readjust how I watch his movies. And that's worked for a while. But he keeps pushing the limits of dumb. It results in bizarre flicks like War Horse. Here? He's got CGI. So you don't even get the wow-factor of knowing that a shot was complicated to set up and choreograph. It's all some damn computer program.
Spielberg + CGI is a bad idea. The camera swooshes around because it can. The action sequences are so preposterous that they exacerbate Spielberg's already bad problem with eliminating all the suspense and thrill by reminding the viewer he's there guiding every moment of activity. If you could escape the uncanny valley for a moment—which is difficult because the voices don't seem to quite sync with the mouths—Spielberg throws you back in with some kind of silly shenanigans.
The Adventures of Tintin is almost as bizarre as War Horse. It's sensibilities aren't quite modern American, with the titular teen hero being allowed to run-around post-war Europe and Africa, shoot guns and do all sorts of non-PC things.
This was kinda cool. I can only assume that he expected to make his money in the worldwide market. (And he was right: About 75% of this movie's box is from the worldwide market.)
But you know what else is a bad idea? Speilberg + comic book. He already has trouble deciding whether to—well, look at Nolan's Batman movies: Hardcore realism. He never wants you do challenge the literalness of his movies. Whereas Burton just wanted something that looked cool.
Spielberg always seems to create a literal reality out of soap bubbles that he gleefully pops if you should ever start to feel invested. For example, Tintin has a dog, Snowy. (If you're like most people I've discussed it with, you probably thought Tintin was the dog, but that's Rin Tin Tin—no relation.) Sometimes Snowy's a dog, with dog powers. But if you ever need it, he's also a dog-ex-machina, who can read or capture the scroll from a hawk (don't ask), or whatever.
Look, at one point, an airplane crash due to low fuel is averted by having a drunk belch into the carburetor.
Maybe if it were cleverer. You know kind of Lewis Carroll-y where the absurdity is countered by puns or something. As it is, it feels ad hoc, sloppy, just not very engaging at all. There are a couple of incompetent Interpol cops, who look alike and have the same name (but who are not related), who provide slapstick comic relief which is as cute as it is unnecessary. (The movie never suffers from enough dramatic tension to require comic relief.)
But, hey, we weren't there so I could see it. The Barb wanted to, and she was ready to watch it again as soon as we watch the theater. Which, by the way, is true so far of every movie she's seen.
The movie ends weird, too. The actual ending is about 15 minutes before the credits roll, and the end is basically a setup for a series. Not even a sequel, but a series.
You're kind of expecting a surprise or a big finish, and it's just not there. It's all lead in for breakfast cereal and SatAM cartoons.
I didn't hate it, actually. It's better than The Zookeeper or The Smurfs. But it's all part of the big mishmash of mediocrity that closed out 2011.
Star-studded cast of voices. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the Interpol cops, while Edgar Wright has a script credit (reuniting the cast of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and "Spaced!") so, I dunno, maybe this was saved from being another 1941 by some serious script doctoring.
I should note that this seems to be something of a crowd-pleaser, according to IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. So, maybe I'm just getting curmudgeonly(er) in my old(er) age. At the same time, it didn't set the box office on fire, and I have to wonder if that's because, you know, it sucked. Adjusted for inflation, the box office this and War Horse are situated between Always and Amistad—and actually well below 1941.
Interestingly, Tintin cleaned up worldwide while War Horse didn't.
Albert Nobbs
I went to a conference a few weeks ago where one of the presenters was a transvestite. I was trying to focus on what the person was saying but there were all these little, slightly off things that kept drawing me to the fact that she was a he. I found myself thinking about this person while watching Albert Nobbs, the latest (and I hope last) Oscar entry to occupy our local bijou.
Albert Nobbs doesn't have this distraction, fortunately, since you know it's Glenn Close and she's supposed to be a woman dressed as a man. It doesn't really work as drag per se, any more than the aforementioned presenter, but it works as drama.
This is a quirky little story of a woman who dresses as a man to serve in the (presumably more lucrative) manservant industry of 19th century Ireland, and who comes to dream of a life where she lives with the fetching young Mia Wasikowski (Tim Burton's Alice thingy), for which she almost has the money saved.
The cute part being Nobbs's complete (and almost male) inability to grasp the nuances of courtship, while Mia is being more than aggressively pursued (and conquered) by Aaron Johnson (the eponymous Kick-Ass, having had a kind of macho/bad-boy makeover).
It's not a bad movie, but it's not great either. Good acting, with Brendan Gleeson and a bunch of other English actors you'll recognize. Glenn Close has a script credit.
I suppose the premise is plausible. I think back to that presenter, and it's not like anyone stormed the stage yelling "You're no woman!" ('course, maybe I'm the only one who noticed.) Semi-interesting as a premise, although men are shown to be at the root of all lesbianism, or something.
I think the biggest negative about this film is that it's part of this line of films that are released for Oscar consideration that nobody ever considers whether they're good or not. If a film has a particular pedigree, and won't bank any money, they release it at the end of the year and clamor for awards.
It's an approach, I guess, but it's also kind of a sham. It's as though Hollywood is saying, "The rest of the year, we turn out crap. Here's the good stuff you cretins can't appreciate it." With no actual consideration of quality.
This year's batch has been a big pile of mediocrity. Nobbs is one of the better films, probably, but it's just passable. The Boy was tepid toward it, not displeased though he also saw through the drag easily.
It was either this or The Iron Lady and that seems like it would be an even more ostentatious sort of drag. (When liberals dress up as conservatives.) So I think we made the right choice.
Albert Nobbs doesn't have this distraction, fortunately, since you know it's Glenn Close and she's supposed to be a woman dressed as a man. It doesn't really work as drag per se, any more than the aforementioned presenter, but it works as drama.
This is a quirky little story of a woman who dresses as a man to serve in the (presumably more lucrative) manservant industry of 19th century Ireland, and who comes to dream of a life where she lives with the fetching young Mia Wasikowski (Tim Burton's Alice thingy), for which she almost has the money saved.
The cute part being Nobbs's complete (and almost male) inability to grasp the nuances of courtship, while Mia is being more than aggressively pursued (and conquered) by Aaron Johnson (the eponymous Kick-Ass, having had a kind of macho/bad-boy makeover).
It's not a bad movie, but it's not great either. Good acting, with Brendan Gleeson and a bunch of other English actors you'll recognize. Glenn Close has a script credit.
I suppose the premise is plausible. I think back to that presenter, and it's not like anyone stormed the stage yelling "You're no woman!" ('course, maybe I'm the only one who noticed.) Semi-interesting as a premise, although men are shown to be at the root of all lesbianism, or something.
I think the biggest negative about this film is that it's part of this line of films that are released for Oscar consideration that nobody ever considers whether they're good or not. If a film has a particular pedigree, and won't bank any money, they release it at the end of the year and clamor for awards.
It's an approach, I guess, but it's also kind of a sham. It's as though Hollywood is saying, "The rest of the year, we turn out crap. Here's the good stuff you cretins can't appreciate it." With no actual consideration of quality.
This year's batch has been a big pile of mediocrity. Nobbs is one of the better films, probably, but it's just passable. The Boy was tepid toward it, not displeased though he also saw through the drag easily.
It was either this or The Iron Lady and that seems like it would be an even more ostentatious sort of drag. (When liberals dress up as conservatives.) So I think we made the right choice.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Conversations From The Living Room, Part 35: These Aren't The Applicants You're Looking For
"How does that not-the-droid-you're-looking-for thing work? Some kinda Jedi/Force thing?"
"Yeah. But it only works on the weak-minded. Er, originally."
"So, Darth Vader's incompetent at hiring people?"
"What?"
"Well...stormtroopers?"
"I don't think he's actually down in HR screening the applicants."
"..."
"Don't think about it. Down that road lies nerd-dom."
"Yeah. But it only works on the weak-minded. Er, originally."
"So, Darth Vader's incompetent at hiring people?"
"What?"
"Well...stormtroopers?"
"I don't think he's actually down in HR screening the applicants."
"..."
"Don't think about it. Down that road lies nerd-dom."
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Coriolanus
To get the most important question out of the way, yes, it rhymes with "anus".
Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays, and Ralph Fiennes has chosen to remind you bitches that he's not just a noseless necromancer. Nay, Mr. Fiennes has chosen for his directorial debut to give you not just a master class in acting but a how-to-deal-with-Shakespeare for the 21st century.
The story is that Caius Martius (Coriolanus) is a great general who has saved Rome repeatedly from its numerous enemies. His ambitious mother, Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave), has seen to his ascendancy to the Roman consul, while the timid, faithful Virgilia (Jessica Chastain, looking a little overpowered) just wants her husband home safe.
The thing is, Coriolanus is a great general. He's not a political animal at all. Rising to the senate requires kissing the ass of the people, and if there's anything he holds in greater contempt than the senate, it's the people.
Pride is his sin, but he is definitely a giant among trivial sycophants and a pathetic rabble.
I feel like I should dislike him, but I can't. He's a magnificent animal who finds himself trapped and tortured by the machinations of Brutus and Sicinius, whose main concern is keeping their own jobs. There are two among the people, Tamora and Cassius, who are creating trouble, too, and between them they manage to get Coriolanus transformed from the Consul to an exiled traitor.
Coriolanus finds his revenge by allying with his martial nemesis, Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) in a joint effort to sack Rome.
Whoa.
Shouldn't've pissed him off, dudes. Brian Cox rounds out the cast as Menenius, the guy who gets Corioalnus and tries to mentor him through the difficult Consul approval process, and to get him to turn away when he's at the gates of Rome.
Coriolanus is not one of your chatty Shakesperean heroes. He does not monologue. He's a man of action. And Fiennes has cleverly opted for putting the action in a modern day setting. It's Rome, Antium, and the city-states of yore, but with a CNN-like news channel, modern weaponry, and so on. There's a nice touch that the rabble-rousing plebes look like communist revolutionaries, and during the uprising at the grain depot—the Boy spotted this—the riot police, with their shields, strongly evoked Roman legionaries.
This is a bold choice and some people aren't gonna like it. I consider them wrong, tasteless, stupid, and of likely dubious parentage.
The actions makes no sense from a literal standpoint. To care about that is to completely miss the point. Aufidius and Coriolanus have to be locked in physical, mortal battle. Coriolanus has to take the city practically single-handed. It's great drama, and it's signaled well by the fact that even though things look modern, the language is still Middle English.
It's also kind of awesome that the update includes a more colorful cast than might have been found in 1610 England. As a result we get Shakespeare spoken with a variety of accents, include Gerard Butler's thick Scottish brogue.
It's just a bold drama done boldly. It's going to be a little hard to parse the language, if you don't have your Shakespeare ears on—no subtitles—but it gets easier as the movie goes on, of course. And it's so worth it. At least it was for me; I was laughing more than the other people in the audience.
The Boy was impressed. At first he indicated a strong, general approval, but over the next few hours and days, it constantly rose in his esteem.
It won't get much attention, relative to its quality: It's too martial. This is a story of how society grinds up its great people, ultimately destroying itself in the process.
Great stuff. Check it out, you cretin.
Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays, and Ralph Fiennes has chosen to remind you bitches that he's not just a noseless necromancer. Nay, Mr. Fiennes has chosen for his directorial debut to give you not just a master class in acting but a how-to-deal-with-Shakespeare for the 21st century.
The story is that Caius Martius (Coriolanus) is a great general who has saved Rome repeatedly from its numerous enemies. His ambitious mother, Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave), has seen to his ascendancy to the Roman consul, while the timid, faithful Virgilia (Jessica Chastain, looking a little overpowered) just wants her husband home safe.
The thing is, Coriolanus is a great general. He's not a political animal at all. Rising to the senate requires kissing the ass of the people, and if there's anything he holds in greater contempt than the senate, it's the people.
Pride is his sin, but he is definitely a giant among trivial sycophants and a pathetic rabble.
I feel like I should dislike him, but I can't. He's a magnificent animal who finds himself trapped and tortured by the machinations of Brutus and Sicinius, whose main concern is keeping their own jobs. There are two among the people, Tamora and Cassius, who are creating trouble, too, and between them they manage to get Coriolanus transformed from the Consul to an exiled traitor.
Coriolanus finds his revenge by allying with his martial nemesis, Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) in a joint effort to sack Rome.
Whoa.
Shouldn't've pissed him off, dudes. Brian Cox rounds out the cast as Menenius, the guy who gets Corioalnus and tries to mentor him through the difficult Consul approval process, and to get him to turn away when he's at the gates of Rome.
Coriolanus is not one of your chatty Shakesperean heroes. He does not monologue. He's a man of action. And Fiennes has cleverly opted for putting the action in a modern day setting. It's Rome, Antium, and the city-states of yore, but with a CNN-like news channel, modern weaponry, and so on. There's a nice touch that the rabble-rousing plebes look like communist revolutionaries, and during the uprising at the grain depot—the Boy spotted this—the riot police, with their shields, strongly evoked Roman legionaries.
This is a bold choice and some people aren't gonna like it. I consider them wrong, tasteless, stupid, and of likely dubious parentage.
The actions makes no sense from a literal standpoint. To care about that is to completely miss the point. Aufidius and Coriolanus have to be locked in physical, mortal battle. Coriolanus has to take the city practically single-handed. It's great drama, and it's signaled well by the fact that even though things look modern, the language is still Middle English.
It's also kind of awesome that the update includes a more colorful cast than might have been found in 1610 England. As a result we get Shakespeare spoken with a variety of accents, include Gerard Butler's thick Scottish brogue.
It's just a bold drama done boldly. It's going to be a little hard to parse the language, if you don't have your Shakespeare ears on—no subtitles—but it gets easier as the movie goes on, of course. And it's so worth it. At least it was for me; I was laughing more than the other people in the audience.
The Boy was impressed. At first he indicated a strong, general approval, but over the next few hours and days, it constantly rose in his esteem.
It won't get much attention, relative to its quality: It's too martial. This is a story of how society grinds up its great people, ultimately destroying itself in the process.
Great stuff. Check it out, you cretin.
We Need To Talk About We Need To Talk About Kevin
The thing is, if you're going in blind, We Need To Talk About Kevin sounds kind of like a comedy. It's not, of course. It's about as far from a comedy as you can get. At the same time, I think the movie might work better if you go in blind, so I'm going to advise you not to read the capsules, and only brush on the story shape here, and overall tone—which will be more than enough for you to determine whether you want to see it.
When we meet Eva, she's living in a run-down little house in a small town somewhere and desperately looking for work. In between shots of her present day life, we see threads of her former life: Her courtship with Franklin, the birth of her son, Kevin, who is difficult to say the least, and her daughter, Celia.
The focus of the movie is the friction between Kevin and Eva, which allows for a certain degree of incompetency on Eva's part but which mostly focuses on Kevin's innate evil.
That's right, this is The Bad Seed. Or Orphan, if you prefer. Done Oscar™-style!
Which should be a big tip as to whether want you to see it. Production-values-wise: Tilda Swinton is great as Eva, expectedly, though she's better as tortured mother than glowing bride or expectant mom. John C. Reilly is Franklin, and he—well, he seems to fit perfectly into just about every role he's in, doesn't he. (OK, I guess if you see him as the buffoons he's been playing in some of his bigger budget flicks, maybe not, but I think that's your problem, not his.)
There are three different Kevins and, frankly, I think they're a mixed bag. There's a real challenge to the role that I'm not sure the pre-schooler and grade-schooler are up to. I mean, they're so cuuuuuuuuute!
I just had a hard time buying the evil there.
In fact, despite the stark realism, it didn't feel like a real thing to me. Less so than a Bad Seed or even an Orphan. Why? Because this is an "arty" film, there's a compulsive injection of ambiguity into the proceedings.
You could say this isn't a Bad Seed so much as a Bad Mom movie, as it has this week need to inject ambiguity into the proceedings. Eva's not a great mom to Kevin. Partly it's because she's self-involved, but mostly it's because he's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil! This has a bizarre side-effect of raising the question, "Was he born that way or did she make him that way?"
But that's silly. Distracting. Crappy mom's don't make evil kids. Evil moms, sure. Psycho moms, yeah, why not. But just slightly cool moms? Good lord, the entire Northeast upper middle class would be riddled with psychotic sociop—okay, maybe a bad example.
You get my point. It's one thing to have the mom wonder, "Did I do this?" This is a fair question that generates sympathy with the viewer. If you have the audience wondering "Well, is she just that awful a bitch that she's driving her son to extremes?" you take away a lot of sympathy. Or just make things murky.
Despite the mis-steps, it's dramatically effective. Stark, nihilistic, this movie lives deep in the very darkest heart of despair, reminding us that a roll of the dice can doom your entire existence to the bleak realms of gray from which there is no escape.
Not really my kind of flick, you know? Not bad, and it managed to engage me moments after finding certain devices too cute or manipulative. But Bad Seed movies aren't my thing precisely because of the ickiness, and this movie doesn't skimp on the ick.
The Boy was...moved. Disturbed. That tells you something about it right there.
When we meet Eva, she's living in a run-down little house in a small town somewhere and desperately looking for work. In between shots of her present day life, we see threads of her former life: Her courtship with Franklin, the birth of her son, Kevin, who is difficult to say the least, and her daughter, Celia.
The focus of the movie is the friction between Kevin and Eva, which allows for a certain degree of incompetency on Eva's part but which mostly focuses on Kevin's innate evil.
That's right, this is The Bad Seed. Or Orphan, if you prefer. Done Oscar™-style!
Which should be a big tip as to whether want you to see it. Production-values-wise: Tilda Swinton is great as Eva, expectedly, though she's better as tortured mother than glowing bride or expectant mom. John C. Reilly is Franklin, and he—well, he seems to fit perfectly into just about every role he's in, doesn't he. (OK, I guess if you see him as the buffoons he's been playing in some of his bigger budget flicks, maybe not, but I think that's your problem, not his.)
There are three different Kevins and, frankly, I think they're a mixed bag. There's a real challenge to the role that I'm not sure the pre-schooler and grade-schooler are up to. I mean, they're so cuuuuuuuuute!
I just had a hard time buying the evil there.
In fact, despite the stark realism, it didn't feel like a real thing to me. Less so than a Bad Seed or even an Orphan. Why? Because this is an "arty" film, there's a compulsive injection of ambiguity into the proceedings.
You could say this isn't a Bad Seed so much as a Bad Mom movie, as it has this week need to inject ambiguity into the proceedings. Eva's not a great mom to Kevin. Partly it's because she's self-involved, but mostly it's because he's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil! This has a bizarre side-effect of raising the question, "Was he born that way or did she make him that way?"
But that's silly. Distracting. Crappy mom's don't make evil kids. Evil moms, sure. Psycho moms, yeah, why not. But just slightly cool moms? Good lord, the entire Northeast upper middle class would be riddled with psychotic sociop—okay, maybe a bad example.
You get my point. It's one thing to have the mom wonder, "Did I do this?" This is a fair question that generates sympathy with the viewer. If you have the audience wondering "Well, is she just that awful a bitch that she's driving her son to extremes?" you take away a lot of sympathy. Or just make things murky.
Despite the mis-steps, it's dramatically effective. Stark, nihilistic, this movie lives deep in the very darkest heart of despair, reminding us that a roll of the dice can doom your entire existence to the bleak realms of gray from which there is no escape.
Not really my kind of flick, you know? Not bad, and it managed to engage me moments after finding certain devices too cute or manipulative. But Bad Seed movies aren't my thing precisely because of the ickiness, and this movie doesn't skimp on the ick.
The Boy was...moved. Disturbed. That tells you something about it right there.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Conversations From The Living Room, Part 34: Beating a dead War Horse
"OK, so here's another problem with War Horse."
"I'm pretending to be interested."
"The main character?"
"Yeah?"
"It's a horse!"
"And?"
"Well, in a dramatic narrative, you want the main character to go through changes. To be different in the end than in the beginning."
"..."
"And maybe Joey did change from the beginning of the story to the end. But, you know, he's a horse. It's not like he can tell us."
"..."
"And, maybe what he decided was that the Germans had the right idea. He went into the war being pro-English but came out primed to support The Fourth Reich."
"..."
"I mean, Germans saved him a couple of times! The English sent him to charge against machine guns! We could be viewing this movie all wrong: It might be a demonstration of how Nazi horses are made! Wait, where are you going? You can't rule out this exegesis just because it makes you uncomfortable!"
"..."
"Stupid Nazi horses."
"I'm pretending to be interested."
"The main character?"
"Yeah?"
"It's a horse!"
"And?"
"Well, in a dramatic narrative, you want the main character to go through changes. To be different in the end than in the beginning."
"..."
"And maybe Joey did change from the beginning of the story to the end. But, you know, he's a horse. It's not like he can tell us."
"..."
"And, maybe what he decided was that the Germans had the right idea. He went into the war being pro-English but came out primed to support The Fourth Reich."
"..."
"I mean, Germans saved him a couple of times! The English sent him to charge against machine guns! We could be viewing this movie all wrong: It might be a demonstration of how Nazi horses are made! Wait, where are you going? You can't rule out this exegesis just because it makes you uncomfortable!"
"..."
"Stupid Nazi horses."
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
A Dangerous Method
The problem with David Cronenberg movies is that he'll never top having an exploding head (as in the first five minutes of Scanners).
Heh.
Actually, a strong argument can be made that his best films have been his more recent ones: A History of Violence and Eastern Promises perhaps even overshadowing his amazing remake of The Fly back in '86.
Also, Cronenberg seems to be like Soderbergh, in that I always feel like he's doing what he wants. He probably doesn't have the same kind of freedom that Soderbergh does but, really, would a movie about Jung and Freud and the woman who came between them get made if the director didn't really have a passion for the story?
What's more, does anyone get a better performance out of Viggo Mortensen? I think not. Viggo outdoes his 15 hours of dialogue with Liv Tyler in the Lord of the Rings movies in 15-minutes of any of his Cronenberg films. Even in this movie, where he's actually playing the supporting character of Sigmund Freud, it's hard to remember it's Viggo.
The real star of this movie is Michael Fassbender, recently of Haywire and Shame, and the one who got to utter the immortal "we'll fight in the shade" line in 300. He's good enough to where I might go see Shame even though it looks pretty shameless to me.
He plays the sensitive and tortured Carl Jung, who manages to achieve a certain success using psychoanalysis with a charming but batpoop crazy Russian patient, played Keira Knightley.
Now, the affected kind of cuckoo Knightley has to play isn't one of the easy kinds. It's turn-of-the-20th-century-hysterical kind of crazy, with a lot of it seeming like childish acting out. But she's helped (if not exactly cured) by Jung, which means the shape of her neuroses has to change but still echo her previous performance.
And she has an affair with Jung, which is tumultuous, and brings out another kind of intense crazy. Her teeth and jaw serve her well, here. And she does more acting than in all the pirate movies combined. (Not just her: Anyone. Well, except Bill Nighy. He does more acting brushing his teeth than most actors do in their careers.)
Though, as Vincent Cassell (as the aptly named coke/sex-addict Otto Gross) points out, all psychotherapists sleep with their patients. (I think the actual number is, like, 40% of mental health professionals have inappropriate contact, but it puts priests and even teachers to shame.)
Anyway, you got all these good elements, along with the lovely Sarah Gadon in a subtle role as Emma Jung, combined with some great two-shots and a typically wonderful Howard Shore score, bringing to life the story of how Jung falls out with Freud over the issue of the role of metaphysics in psychoanalysis and Freud's insistence that all neuroses stem from sexual repression, into which Jung's patient, Anna, finds herself in the middle, and you've got yourself a so-so movie.
Yeah, sorry about that, DC. I mean, if you're into the whole history of psychoanalysis, then you could view this as a clash of titans, but really, it's just a couple of guys flailing in the dark, with one (Freud) completely unaware of how his thinking is probably influenced by his abuse of cocaine.
They never actually mention or show it in the movie, but Freud was big on the cocaine for years. And sexual obsession is a pretty common side-effect with cocaine, or so I'm told. Seems important, given Freud's complete recalcitrance with regard to the topic, but what do I know?
Also, it's not like there's a really clean dramatic story arc, either. Although Cronenberg does a good job with it, I think, there's just an adherence to the actual facts which is somewhat ill-serving of a really tense drama.
I have a hard time recommending it as a result.
One of the things you know Cronenberg isn't gonna shy away from is the bizarre sex—which actually was fairly tame by his standards. Anna is a masochist. Jung is swept up by her. Knightly goes topless. But overall, tame compared to the intense oral sex scenes in A History of Violence. It's almost like the genteel feel of the story seeps into the seamier parts and makes them almost quaint.
Those are the pluses and minuses of it. Lotsa good parts around a not super compelling drama, some elements of which you may really dig and some which might put you off it completely.
The Boy was unmoved.
Heh.
Actually, a strong argument can be made that his best films have been his more recent ones: A History of Violence and Eastern Promises perhaps even overshadowing his amazing remake of The Fly back in '86.
Also, Cronenberg seems to be like Soderbergh, in that I always feel like he's doing what he wants. He probably doesn't have the same kind of freedom that Soderbergh does but, really, would a movie about Jung and Freud and the woman who came between them get made if the director didn't really have a passion for the story?
What's more, does anyone get a better performance out of Viggo Mortensen? I think not. Viggo outdoes his 15 hours of dialogue with Liv Tyler in the Lord of the Rings movies in 15-minutes of any of his Cronenberg films. Even in this movie, where he's actually playing the supporting character of Sigmund Freud, it's hard to remember it's Viggo.
The real star of this movie is Michael Fassbender, recently of Haywire and Shame, and the one who got to utter the immortal "we'll fight in the shade" line in 300. He's good enough to where I might go see Shame even though it looks pretty shameless to me.
He plays the sensitive and tortured Carl Jung, who manages to achieve a certain success using psychoanalysis with a charming but batpoop crazy Russian patient, played Keira Knightley.
Now, the affected kind of cuckoo Knightley has to play isn't one of the easy kinds. It's turn-of-the-20th-century-hysterical kind of crazy, with a lot of it seeming like childish acting out. But she's helped (if not exactly cured) by Jung, which means the shape of her neuroses has to change but still echo her previous performance.
And she has an affair with Jung, which is tumultuous, and brings out another kind of intense crazy. Her teeth and jaw serve her well, here. And she does more acting than in all the pirate movies combined. (Not just her: Anyone. Well, except Bill Nighy. He does more acting brushing his teeth than most actors do in their careers.)
Though, as Vincent Cassell (as the aptly named coke/sex-addict Otto Gross) points out, all psychotherapists sleep with their patients. (I think the actual number is, like, 40% of mental health professionals have inappropriate contact, but it puts priests and even teachers to shame.)
Anyway, you got all these good elements, along with the lovely Sarah Gadon in a subtle role as Emma Jung, combined with some great two-shots and a typically wonderful Howard Shore score, bringing to life the story of how Jung falls out with Freud over the issue of the role of metaphysics in psychoanalysis and Freud's insistence that all neuroses stem from sexual repression, into which Jung's patient, Anna, finds herself in the middle, and you've got yourself a so-so movie.
Yeah, sorry about that, DC. I mean, if you're into the whole history of psychoanalysis, then you could view this as a clash of titans, but really, it's just a couple of guys flailing in the dark, with one (Freud) completely unaware of how his thinking is probably influenced by his abuse of cocaine.
They never actually mention or show it in the movie, but Freud was big on the cocaine for years. And sexual obsession is a pretty common side-effect with cocaine, or so I'm told. Seems important, given Freud's complete recalcitrance with regard to the topic, but what do I know?
Also, it's not like there's a really clean dramatic story arc, either. Although Cronenberg does a good job with it, I think, there's just an adherence to the actual facts which is somewhat ill-serving of a really tense drama.
I have a hard time recommending it as a result.
One of the things you know Cronenberg isn't gonna shy away from is the bizarre sex—which actually was fairly tame by his standards. Anna is a masochist. Jung is swept up by her. Knightly goes topless. But overall, tame compared to the intense oral sex scenes in A History of Violence. It's almost like the genteel feel of the story seeps into the seamier parts and makes them almost quaint.
Those are the pluses and minuses of it. Lotsa good parts around a not super compelling drama, some elements of which you may really dig and some which might put you off it completely.
The Boy was unmoved.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
A Separation
Iran sucks. Just thought I'd get that out of the way before looking at this (legitimately) acclaimed tale of a woman who separates from her husband because he won't leave the country with her. I thought at first this was going to be the woman's tale, following in the footsteps of other "Iranian women take it in the burka during the Islamic Revolution" genre, but it turns out that the 1979 look of thing hearkens back to Iran sucking.
Which is a shame. Iranians seem like good people. We should have helped them more.
In A Separation, Simin leaves her husband Nader to live with her parents for a while because he won't leave the country, but is also not forbidding her to leave—with their daughter Termeh opting to stay with her father. Nader's reluctance centers primarily around the care of his father with Alzheimer's, and when Simin leaves, he must hire a woman, Razieh to take care of him.
But, of course, the father is deteriorating, and Razieh, a devout Muslim, finds her in the position of having to clean the old man, which she considers inappropriate. She contrives a plan for Nader to contact her unemployed husband, Hodjat, through a mutual friend, so that he can take the job. (She can't tell her husband directly because she's been keeping the house of a non-related man.)
But Hodjat doesn't make it and Razieh comes back the next day, when bad things happen.
The subsequent story that unfolds is complex and rich, with each of the characters showing their strengths and weaknesses as they choose between what is easy, what is right, what is true, and what helps them survive.
This rightly has an Oscar screenplay nom, and some are saying it should be up for Best Picture (not just foreign language picture) which is also right—but in part because of the really weak field this year. The Boy pronounced it a "solid" flick but he felt it was over-hyped.
In that sense, it's much like The Artist: A solid movie of the kind Hollywood used to make, done with certain modern sensibilities—though perhaps ironically, The Artist is far more modern than this simple, yet subtle film.
Overall, though, this is a fine film of strong but flawed characters struggling to make it in an unforgiving world. The movie causes you to empathize with each character in turn and even share in their occasional moral indignation, only to reveal their own flaws, and humble the viewer.
Definitely a good film, worth seeing.
Which is a shame. Iranians seem like good people. We should have helped them more.
In A Separation, Simin leaves her husband Nader to live with her parents for a while because he won't leave the country, but is also not forbidding her to leave—with their daughter Termeh opting to stay with her father. Nader's reluctance centers primarily around the care of his father with Alzheimer's, and when Simin leaves, he must hire a woman, Razieh to take care of him.
But, of course, the father is deteriorating, and Razieh, a devout Muslim, finds her in the position of having to clean the old man, which she considers inappropriate. She contrives a plan for Nader to contact her unemployed husband, Hodjat, through a mutual friend, so that he can take the job. (She can't tell her husband directly because she's been keeping the house of a non-related man.)
But Hodjat doesn't make it and Razieh comes back the next day, when bad things happen.
The subsequent story that unfolds is complex and rich, with each of the characters showing their strengths and weaknesses as they choose between what is easy, what is right, what is true, and what helps them survive.
This rightly has an Oscar screenplay nom, and some are saying it should be up for Best Picture (not just foreign language picture) which is also right—but in part because of the really weak field this year. The Boy pronounced it a "solid" flick but he felt it was over-hyped.
In that sense, it's much like The Artist: A solid movie of the kind Hollywood used to make, done with certain modern sensibilities—though perhaps ironically, The Artist is far more modern than this simple, yet subtle film.
Overall, though, this is a fine film of strong but flawed characters struggling to make it in an unforgiving world. The movie causes you to empathize with each character in turn and even share in their occasional moral indignation, only to reveal their own flaws, and humble the viewer.
Definitely a good film, worth seeing.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Haywire
The deafening sound of the collective eye-rolling on Twitter—yes, I know eye-rolling doesn't make much sound, but that's the point—when awareness of the plot of Haywire rippled through the community was, um, deafening.
See, this is why I don't try to be clever.
Haywire tells the story of a secret agent who is betrayed by her superiors and must use all her powers to stay alive and avenge herself against evildoers.
Sure, we've seen it before. But have we seen it with a female secret agent?
Well, yes. A lot.
What about if the female is also a real-life athlete?
Well, yeah. It was Cynthia Rothrock's bread-and-butter in the early '90s.
What about if she's surrounded by over-the-hill former A-list actors?
Oh, yeah, big time. Also a staple of '80s and '90s actions flicks.
Well, what if it were directed by an A-list director! And! And that director was the critically acclaimed Steven Soderbergh, who could totally be directing Ocean's 14 or something?
Never seen that before, have ya, smartypants!
And, back-peddling a bit, the A-list actors supporting our heroine are actually still A-list: Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan MacGregor and rising star Channing Tatum.
But the point of this movie is to showcase MMA champion/former American Gladiator Gina Carano.
And for Soderbergh to do to the rogue-spy genre what he did for the outbreak genre. That is, make a reasonably intelligent, somewhat emotionally distant film that avoids most of the usual tropes and is never copied by anyone ever again. (OK, I'm guessing no one will copy it, but Soderbergh is largely blazing his own, unrepeatable trail these days.)
Hiring an actual athlete to play a part is full of all sorts of pitfalls, of course. They often can't act, for example. And sometimes that even matters. Sometimes the desire to showcase the athlete results in shoehorning inappropriate physical motions into—well, Gymkata, okay?
And, of course, when the athlete is female, it's customary to exploit the crap out of her figure from every conceivable angle.
So, the good news is that Carano has a fair amount of charisma and can deliver lines convincingly. She also moves convincingly in the action scenes, which are appropriate and not gratuitous. Soderbergh also resists the urge to show us Carano in the shower, or in lingerie, or even in shorts, dammit.
I mean, that was very mature of him.
The whole movie is very mature, really. Much like Contagion, Soderbergh seems to have asked himself, "Well, if this were really gonna happen, what would the plausible results be?" Carano isn't super-powered, just super-competent. Her opponents are less so, necessarily, but not ludicrously so, as is often the case in this type of film.
For instance, there are a couple of drops in this movie: Once where she falls, and another where she jumps off a roof. If you've ever fallen (or jumped) from a height, you know it hurts a lot and it doesn't take a very high fall (in movie terms) to end up with broken bones. Action movies tend to completely ignore this—and the challenge of most other physical tasks—resulting in increasingly goofy action sequences.
Not here: The fall winds her. When she jumps from a high point, she uses a couple of tricks that (while difficult) are fairly plausible.
The same goes with the fighting: It's not like she stands toe-to-toe with her male attackers trading punches. She positions herself to use more of her body weight. And she's no Kate Beckinsale, either, prancing around in a catsuit: Her fighting weight is a good 30 pounds heavier. She looks believable doing this stuff because she's doing this stuff.
You know how when there's an action scene involving some slip-of-a-thing starlet and it's all done with reverse shots and below-the-neck shots? And you know it's because there's no way that woman could do that. Sometimes they can't even get a stuntwoman who's even close to the body type?
My favorite example of that is Her Alibi where Paulina Porizkova is supposed to be climbing a rope (with just her arms, no less), and in the reverse shots—where they actually show the stunt woman climbing—her ass is five sizes bigger. They couldn't find anyone with Porizkova's body type who could climb a rope like that.
When Soderbergh does a neck-down shot, you know he's doing it so you can see the action, not because he's trying to hide something. This worked very well for me.
The breast implants are distracting, sadly, both because they don't fit with the character and because—well, large breasts, you know? There was something about her skin that was oddly distracting, too.
Overall, it's not a great movie—The Boy said he couldn't get into it at all, though he didn't blame this entirely on the movie itself, but more a prejudice toward the genre—but it's a solid one. It actually makes sense and proceeds logically from plot-point to plot-point. Soderbergh uses a cute device where half the movie is told in flashback to a clueless, frightened guy, which allows Carano to reinforce the significance of certain characters and elements of the plot so that we can follow as well.
The other thing is that it feels like a pilot for a TV series. It has a very B-movie feel. But it is good, and my reaction to it is much like of Contagion: It's good that he avoids the sillier tropes of the genre, but sometimes he seems to be trying to hard to remove a lot of the dramatic tropes that really engage.
See, this is why I don't try to be clever.
Haywire tells the story of a secret agent who is betrayed by her superiors and must use all her powers to stay alive and avenge herself against evildoers.
Sure, we've seen it before. But have we seen it with a female secret agent?
Well, yes. A lot.
What about if the female is also a real-life athlete?
Well, yeah. It was Cynthia Rothrock's bread-and-butter in the early '90s.
What about if she's surrounded by over-the-hill former A-list actors?
Oh, yeah, big time. Also a staple of '80s and '90s actions flicks.
Well, what if it were directed by an A-list director! And! And that director was the critically acclaimed Steven Soderbergh, who could totally be directing Ocean's 14 or something?
Never seen that before, have ya, smartypants!
And, back-peddling a bit, the A-list actors supporting our heroine are actually still A-list: Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan MacGregor and rising star Channing Tatum.
But the point of this movie is to showcase MMA champion/former American Gladiator Gina Carano.
And for Soderbergh to do to the rogue-spy genre what he did for the outbreak genre. That is, make a reasonably intelligent, somewhat emotionally distant film that avoids most of the usual tropes and is never copied by anyone ever again. (OK, I'm guessing no one will copy it, but Soderbergh is largely blazing his own, unrepeatable trail these days.)
Hiring an actual athlete to play a part is full of all sorts of pitfalls, of course. They often can't act, for example. And sometimes that even matters. Sometimes the desire to showcase the athlete results in shoehorning inappropriate physical motions into—well, Gymkata, okay?
And, of course, when the athlete is female, it's customary to exploit the crap out of her figure from every conceivable angle.
So, the good news is that Carano has a fair amount of charisma and can deliver lines convincingly. She also moves convincingly in the action scenes, which are appropriate and not gratuitous. Soderbergh also resists the urge to show us Carano in the shower, or in lingerie, or even in shorts, dammit.
I mean, that was very mature of him.
The whole movie is very mature, really. Much like Contagion, Soderbergh seems to have asked himself, "Well, if this were really gonna happen, what would the plausible results be?" Carano isn't super-powered, just super-competent. Her opponents are less so, necessarily, but not ludicrously so, as is often the case in this type of film.
For instance, there are a couple of drops in this movie: Once where she falls, and another where she jumps off a roof. If you've ever fallen (or jumped) from a height, you know it hurts a lot and it doesn't take a very high fall (in movie terms) to end up with broken bones. Action movies tend to completely ignore this—and the challenge of most other physical tasks—resulting in increasingly goofy action sequences.
Not here: The fall winds her. When she jumps from a high point, she uses a couple of tricks that (while difficult) are fairly plausible.
The same goes with the fighting: It's not like she stands toe-to-toe with her male attackers trading punches. She positions herself to use more of her body weight. And she's no Kate Beckinsale, either, prancing around in a catsuit: Her fighting weight is a good 30 pounds heavier. She looks believable doing this stuff because she's doing this stuff.
You know how when there's an action scene involving some slip-of-a-thing starlet and it's all done with reverse shots and below-the-neck shots? And you know it's because there's no way that woman could do that. Sometimes they can't even get a stuntwoman who's even close to the body type?
My favorite example of that is Her Alibi where Paulina Porizkova is supposed to be climbing a rope (with just her arms, no less), and in the reverse shots—where they actually show the stunt woman climbing—her ass is five sizes bigger. They couldn't find anyone with Porizkova's body type who could climb a rope like that.
When Soderbergh does a neck-down shot, you know he's doing it so you can see the action, not because he's trying to hide something. This worked very well for me.
The breast implants are distracting, sadly, both because they don't fit with the character and because—well, large breasts, you know? There was something about her skin that was oddly distracting, too.
Overall, it's not a great movie—The Boy said he couldn't get into it at all, though he didn't blame this entirely on the movie itself, but more a prejudice toward the genre—but it's a solid one. It actually makes sense and proceeds logically from plot-point to plot-point. Soderbergh uses a cute device where half the movie is told in flashback to a clueless, frightened guy, which allows Carano to reinforce the significance of certain characters and elements of the plot so that we can follow as well.
The other thing is that it feels like a pilot for a TV series. It has a very B-movie feel. But it is good, and my reaction to it is much like of Contagion: It's good that he avoids the sillier tropes of the genre, but sometimes he seems to be trying to hard to remove a lot of the dramatic tropes that really engage.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Carnage
So. Yeah. Roman. Again. Sigh. And Kate Effin' Winslet. John C. Reilly, in one of his arty outings (versus, say, teaming up with Will Ferrell or Jonah Hill again). Jodie Foster. Christopher Waltz.
Foster and Reilly play a middle-class couple whose son has been hit by Winslet and Waltz's son. With a stick. Hard enough to knock his teeth out. The two have gotten together to handle the legal and insurance and school issues (apparently) and to try to show that they're above the attendant emotions.
Which, of course, they don't.
This is based on a play. That means you've got 80-90 minutes of four people in one room arguing. Forewarned is forearmed. (The Flower was not forewarned, though I tried.)
Comparisons have been made to Virginia Woolf but I think that's a much darker film. This is a trivial movie about trivial people. And as far as that goes, it's not bad. The alliances shift during the film, and of course, all four are the finest of actors. They manage to convey varying degrees of likability that aren't entirely warranted by the nihilistic script.
And the moral of the movie seems to be "having kids messes you up".
I laughed at those parts more than The Boy or The Flower did. Obviously.
Polanski over-directs a bit. I mean, the camera doesn't need to move half as much as he moves it. It doesn't really matter much.
I like this kind of one-room deal and this was okay. Last year's Jack Goes Boating was better, though darker and more dysfunctional. One of my favorites is actually Cube, the horror flick. Actually, Wait Until Dark—though it has a decidedly different dynamic—is also a better example of the genre.
The kids didn't hate it. It wasn't funny enough for them. On the dramatic side, it's—well, it's just not very. Everyone's sort of desultory. The movie kind of trails off without any big reveal or point or purpose, which is all very post-modern, I guess, but not very interesting.
I thought maybe Kate Winslet would turn out to be pregnant. Oh—this movie features the most on-screen vomiting of any play I can think of, enough to put it in the running with Bridesmaids. So, you know, if you like that sort of thing and you're on the edge, there ya go.
Foster and Reilly play a middle-class couple whose son has been hit by Winslet and Waltz's son. With a stick. Hard enough to knock his teeth out. The two have gotten together to handle the legal and insurance and school issues (apparently) and to try to show that they're above the attendant emotions.
Which, of course, they don't.
This is based on a play. That means you've got 80-90 minutes of four people in one room arguing. Forewarned is forearmed. (The Flower was not forewarned, though I tried.)
Comparisons have been made to Virginia Woolf but I think that's a much darker film. This is a trivial movie about trivial people. And as far as that goes, it's not bad. The alliances shift during the film, and of course, all four are the finest of actors. They manage to convey varying degrees of likability that aren't entirely warranted by the nihilistic script.
And the moral of the movie seems to be "having kids messes you up".
I laughed at those parts more than The Boy or The Flower did. Obviously.
Polanski over-directs a bit. I mean, the camera doesn't need to move half as much as he moves it. It doesn't really matter much.
I like this kind of one-room deal and this was okay. Last year's Jack Goes Boating was better, though darker and more dysfunctional. One of my favorites is actually Cube, the horror flick. Actually, Wait Until Dark—though it has a decidedly different dynamic—is also a better example of the genre.
The kids didn't hate it. It wasn't funny enough for them. On the dramatic side, it's—well, it's just not very. Everyone's sort of desultory. The movie kind of trails off without any big reveal or point or purpose, which is all very post-modern, I guess, but not very interesting.
I thought maybe Kate Winslet would turn out to be pregnant. Oh—this movie features the most on-screen vomiting of any play I can think of, enough to put it in the running with Bridesmaids. So, you know, if you like that sort of thing and you're on the edge, there ya go.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
It's not exactly fair to call Tomas Alfredson's interpretation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy incomprehensible, but between the three of us, I was the only one who could figure out what was going on, and it took me an hour.
I did warn the kids in advance that spy movies could be rather difficult to follow. They don't really know that much about the cold war. (We won! Wooo!) Someone I know who read the book said it was impossible to follow without having read the book, so I can feel reasonably smug—or if I'm wrong about what went down, comfortably deluded.
The Flower didn't seem to mind too much. The Boy actually liked it, while conceding he didn't have the faintest clue what was going on.
I'm not quite sure why that is. There's a good atmosphere. (Alfredson's last film was the moody Let The Right One In.) The music is used judiciously and sparingly.
Acting? Well, Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, the lead spy and—well, what can I say? It's a dramatically understated part. He mostly has to be there. There's a quiet righteousness to it, but I suspect the garnering of nominations for Oldman are because he's Oldman, in spite of the part. (At least, I don't see award ceremonies really appreciate subtlety.)
There are more excitable characters around him, though not very. Toby Jones plays an irascible Scot, but most of the remaining cast are degrees of moody. Mark Strong (last seen in Green Lantern), Ciaran Hinds (of The Debt), Colin Firth, etc. Well, it's the cold war. Nobody was laughing.
Ultimately, this is what you'd expect from a cerebral espionage movie. A little murky, paranoid, effectiveness somewhat blunted by the occasionally confusing delivery.
What's probably the most noteworthy thing about it, is that the story works, even if you can't follow it. Compare that with so many of the movies this year, where you can follow the events perfectly, and yet there seems to be no actual working story.
I did warn the kids in advance that spy movies could be rather difficult to follow. They don't really know that much about the cold war. (We won! Wooo!) Someone I know who read the book said it was impossible to follow without having read the book, so I can feel reasonably smug—or if I'm wrong about what went down, comfortably deluded.
The Flower didn't seem to mind too much. The Boy actually liked it, while conceding he didn't have the faintest clue what was going on.
I'm not quite sure why that is. There's a good atmosphere. (Alfredson's last film was the moody Let The Right One In.) The music is used judiciously and sparingly.
Acting? Well, Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, the lead spy and—well, what can I say? It's a dramatically understated part. He mostly has to be there. There's a quiet righteousness to it, but I suspect the garnering of nominations for Oldman are because he's Oldman, in spite of the part. (At least, I don't see award ceremonies really appreciate subtlety.)
There are more excitable characters around him, though not very. Toby Jones plays an irascible Scot, but most of the remaining cast are degrees of moody. Mark Strong (last seen in Green Lantern), Ciaran Hinds (of The Debt), Colin Firth, etc. Well, it's the cold war. Nobody was laughing.
Ultimately, this is what you'd expect from a cerebral espionage movie. A little murky, paranoid, effectiveness somewhat blunted by the occasionally confusing delivery.
What's probably the most noteworthy thing about it, is that the story works, even if you can't follow it. Compare that with so many of the movies this year, where you can follow the events perfectly, and yet there seems to be no actual working story.
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