Review: The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925 to ho-hum reviews, has come over the years to be considered one of the handful of great American novels. Therefore, there’s a certain ring of protection around it that’s been set up by English professors and their ilk to keep it from harm’s way, mostly in film adaptations. There have been six, none of them very good, and the latest, by Baz Luhrmann, continues that streak.

Lurhmann, who is to filmmaking as Gallagher is to comedy, has thrown everything at the screen in his adaptation. He is really one of the worst choices for this material (Michael Bay might be worse–we’d get an explosion then), as the book, only 169 pages of carefully constructed prose, requires someone who is steeped in subtlety, a word Luhrmann doesn’t understand. I can appreciate his attempt–he clearly admires the book, but in his hands it becomes a bombastic and boring spectacle. He may know the words, but he doesn’t know the music.

Speaking of music, I’m one who usually doesn’t care for anachronistic music, and it bristles here. This story is about a particular time–1922, the Jazz Age. There’s not that much jazz in it. We do get Andre 3000, but this is not a story that necessarily works as a cautionary tale about our own time. How about making a movie about these characters in their own time, with her own music? Even when Luhrmann tries to be accurate, he missteps. Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin, heard prominently here, wasn’t composed until two years after the events of the film.

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, it is narrated by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) a fellow on the brink of 30 who has moved to New York from the Midwest to become a bond salesman. He rents a house on a shore dotted with mansions in the fictional West Egg, New York (a stand-in for Great Neck). He eventually meets his mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby (Leonard DiCaprio), a vital man who seems to have the perfect life. When Gatsby realizes that Carraway’s cousin is Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), who lives with her husband in old-money East Egg, just across the bay, he asks Carraway to get them together. It seems that the two were in love five years ago, but were interrupted by World War I.

Daisy’s husband, Tom, a former polo star who is now an angry racist, decides to look into his past, especially his relationship with a “gambler” modeled on Arnold Rothstein. Tom is having an affair with the white trash wife of a garage owner in the Valley of Ash, a destitute patch of ground between the green mansions of Long Island and the bustle of New York City. All things will come to a head, and tragedy ensues.

The novel is about a great many things, primarily about the uncanny ability of Americans to reinvent themselves. Gatsby, who comes from a poor farm in North Dakota, has managed to change himself into millionaire and man about town. The book is also about the struggle between the Midwest, where Fitzgerald came from, and the east of New York. But Luhrmann has boiled it down to a romance between Gatsby and Daisy–”It was all for her,” Carraway says late. While Luhrmann’s script gives lip service to the other themes, he does the book a disservice in the telling.

But what about those who don’t care about the book, and have never read it? I saw a lot of teenage girls in the audience, presumably drawn by DiCaprio. What must they have thought of it? Even if I had been taken to my seat from an alien spacecraft, and had no knowledge of the book, I would thought this to be an unpleasant experience. I’ll steal from another critic who says the movie is “spectacle without soul.” It’s brash, loud, garish (I can only imagine how in-your-face it is in 3D) and often quite boring. The party scenes, which Luhrmann must have imagined first, seem inauthentic and an excuse for Luhrmann’s tendency to show off.

There are some good things about the film. The production design is good, especially the way they have used the oculist billboard, which Fitzgerald wrote into the story after seeing the cover design. I also liked most of the acting. Maguire has a difficult part, but he handles it with aplomb, even though Luhrmann makes a major mistake in framing the story from Carraway’s stay in an asylum–not in the book. Luhrmann seems to think that Carraway was Fitzgerald, and assigns him his alcoholism and writing ability, but this is not true. Carraway was his own character, modeled on no one.

I also like DiCaprio. His introduction, when he smiles just as Carraway describes it, is almost breathtaking, and I never didn’t believe him in the part. I was also admiring of Joel Edgerton as Tom. However, as much as I like Carey Mulligan, I didn’t care for her here. Daisy is a tough character to figure out, but certainly she’s not as vapid as Mulligan plays her. When Mulligan, in pre-release interviews, compared Daisy to a Kardashian, I cringed. Sheesh! Must everything have a contemporary comparison? She’s not like a Kardashian, she’s Daisy Buchanan, who has existed for over eighty years.

I really wanted to like this movie, and was pulling for it early, but by the twenty-minute mark a part of me wanted to leave. Luhrmann makes movies for those with ADHD, and I am not that audience. When he does take a breath, and characters talk, the pacing is deadly, and there’s a lot of watch checking. I did like one thing Luhrmann did–when Gatsby meets Daisy for tea he brings a lot of flowers. A lot of flowers.

My grade for The Great Gatsby: D.

Review: Iron Man 3

Sometimes it’s just about fun. Iron Man 3 isn’t a great film, but damn I had fun while watching it. It has some pretty good action, but mostly it has Robert Downey Jr. getting out of scrapes and making quip after quip. I watched with pure pleasure.

The film, directed by Shane Black, is really a James Bond film. We have the wealthy, brilliant, megalomaniacal villain, with an industrial lair for the finale; a secondary and tertiary villain, our hero bound as he listens to the villain’s plans, a femme fatale, lots of gadgets (though in this case Bond is his own Q), and the hero’s coolness under pressure, with a joke for every occasion.

Of course, James Bond never had a iron suit, but in this film Tony Stark, the billionaire behind the mask, is out of the suit much more than he’s in it. In fact, the suit is rendered almost superfluous, as, by my count, six different people in the course of the film wear one of them. At the end of the film there are so many of them, flown by Stark’s computer, Jarvis, that you wonder if a person even needs to be in one. These are the drones of the comic book world.

The film’s two villains: Adridge Kililan (Guy Pearce) who as a gawky and crippled young man gets dissed by Stark and then plots his revenge, in what seems to be an homage to The Incredibles, and the Mandarin, a quasi-Arab terrorist (Ben Kingsley) who is setting off bombs all over the country. Then there’s the guy with red eyes (James Badge Dale) and who’s hands get really hot.

Stark issues a challenge to the Mandarin and gets his house blown into the water. I do hope his homeowner’s insurance covers helicopter attacks. During this sequence Stark’s girlfriend (he’s monogamous now) Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), dons the iron suit for a few moments, a bit of girl power, but then at the end of the film she’s trussed up a prisoner of the villain so nothing is really new.

The overall theme of the film seems to be Stark’s struggle with his own demons. He’s suffering PSTD after the events that occurred in The Avengers. Luckily, in this film, he only has to deal with people who can breathe fire and melt things at the touch. The hot-shot playboy also is forced to team up with a kid in rural Tennessee, and the sentiment is kept a minimum. I do find it interesting that Stark, at the end of the film, doesn’t reward the fatherless boy with companionship, but with things. A lot of comic book heroes, such as Batman, Professor X, The Fantastic Four, etc., are filthy rich, but none so ostentatiously so as Stark. He’s the hero for Wall Street.

But that’s all for the college class on comic book films. For the rabble, including me, are lots of funny lines, some great action scenes (my favorite was a terrific one involving Iron Man saving 13 people that have fallen from Air Force One while name-checking the old game Barrel of Monkeys). There is probably a bit too much here–Don Cheadle is back as Rhodes, this time wearing a red, white and blue iron suit and now called The Iron Patriot, and a bland white guy president that seems quaint in the era of Obama (although they do have Miguel Ferrer as Vice-President). The finale, with all of the iron man suits at once, is too busy, but I was kind of mesmerized by the all the sound and fury. It was like watching fireworks, and I was tempted to go “ooh, ahh.”

This was my favorite of the Iron Man film,s and it’s due mostly to Downey Jr., who just grabs hold of the film and doesn’t let go. When they cast him way back when it was an atypical move, and it’s turned out to be a master stroke. Downey Jr. clearly loves playing this character: when he says, “I am Iron Man” it comes directly from the actor. He’s just so much fun to watch.

My grade for Iron Man 3: B+

Review: Mud

Mud is Jeff Nichols’ third film, and while not as overpoweringly emotional as his last, Take Shelter, it is a compelling boys’ adventure, with themes of fathers and sons (both biological and not) and the heartbreak of love.

First, the title. Matthew McConaughey plays a man known only as Mud. He is a fugitive living on an island in the Mississippi River. I took two thing from this: one, the phrase “My name is mud” comes from the plight of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg (also a fugitive) and was imprisoned for it (the debate to his innocence or guilt is still vigorous). So McConaughey may seem to be playing a character who has all the odds set against him. Two, what is more common, other than water, around a river? Mud, of course, and the title character is someone who is not only from the river, he is of the river, almost elemental.

McConaughey is the title character but the eyes of the film belong to Ellis (Tye Sheridan), a 14-year-old boy who is the son of a fisherman in a houseboat right on the river. He and his buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) explore the area like modern-day Huck Finns and Tom Sawyers (Nichols was inspired by the writing of Mark Twain) and go to the island to see a boat stuck in a tree. They then learn that McConaughey is living there, and while Neckbone is cautious, Ellis instantly bonds with the vagabond Mud. The boys then help get him food, and when they learn he is wanted by police they try to help him escape with his girlfriend, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon).

This is a boys’ adventure set in a time that is vanishing. Set and filmed in Arkansas, these boys don’t have cell phones or play video games. Ellis’ father (Ray McKinnon) is a vanishing breed, and one of the subplots is when Ellis’ mother (Sarah Paulson) wants to move into town the houseboat may be destroyed. Across the river lives an old coot (Sam Shepard) who wants to be left alone, but one can sense that his way of life is coming to an end.

But the overall arc of the picture is that love hurts. There are three parallel romances in this picture, and all will come to heartbreak. McKinnon tells Sheridan that you can’t trust women, but McConaughey disagrees, and we can see that the main reason the boy looks up to the fugitive is because they are both hopeless romantics. When asked why he is helping Mud, Ellis says, “Because he loves her.”

This isn’t a perfect movie. There is almost too much plot, and a scene involving Ellis in need seems right of an old Lassie script. But there are nuggets all through out, especially from the mouth of Neckbone, who is sort of comic relief. I love the way Nichols has the boys blurting out the questions we all want to ask, but with age comes discretion. I also found it funny that Mud has only two possessions he values: his gun, and his white shirt, which magically seems to stay white, even while living on an island in the middle of a river. Either he’s got a hidden stash of Oxyclean there, or Nichols is having a little fun.

My grade for Mud: B+

Review: Greedy (1994)

In 1985 Michael J. Fox had done what very few actors had done before him – be highly successful on Television and film at the same time. Not only was he spearheading the highly successful sitcom ‘Family Ties’ but he was the star of the most successful film of that year ‘Back To The Future’, as well as having another hit with ‘Teen Wolf’. An enormously successful film career seemed his for the taking.

But instead his film career gradually lost momentum and by the mid-1990s his career was focussed largely on sitcom television. It was perceived that he lacked a certain gravitas or presence required to last on the big screen. But after viewing him in the 1994 comedy ‘Greedy’, this seems to be an unfair call.

Directed by Jonathan Lynn, ‘Greedy’ is centred on Joe (Kirk Douglas) a self-made millionaire in his twilight years surrounded by an array of slimy family relatives only interested in his inheritance. Panicked by Joe developing a close relationship with his nurse (Olivia D’Abo), the relatives draft in Daniel (Michael J. Fox) the son of an estranged relative and whom Joe took a shine to as a young child. But in multiple ways, things don’t go as planned.

Even though ‘Greedy’ was made less than 20 years ago, it feels almost refreshingly ancient in its film style. In a present era where comedies consider chaos, action, noise and freneticism as the basis for humour, ‘Greedy’ feels a refreshing contrast. It’s leisurely paced, limited background music and lengthy scenes. Clearly Lynn had the confidence in the screenplay and cast to deliver what was required without artificial manipulation and he is largely justified. In what has been an uneven career, this is one of his better efforts.

‘Greedy’ is bolstered by having a deep and talented cast. A particular standout is Phil Hartman as probably the slimiest of the relatives. Wisely he’s only in the film sparingly so he is able to go at full blast throughout, creating a gem of a comic performance. My favourite bit is when he tells the British nanny, “I didn’t like the Beatles and I don’t like you.”

Douglas clearly has a ball with the role of Joe. As portrayed in the film it’s easy to see why he’s disliked by so many but Douglas uses his charisma and charm to make him mischievously likable, even when it’s clear he’s pulling tricks on just about every other character in the movie.

But the key character and performance in the film is Fox as Daniel and he does an impressive job with it. Not only his well-known comic timing on display, but he also gives his character convincing dramatic substance in how he’s struggled through life and how Joe treats him. It enables us to empahsise and care about his plight and give added weight to the film’s more dramatic scenes. It’s a fine performance and pivotal to the film’s success.

The film is quite deft in how it develops Daniel’s character throughout the film. We are introduced to him as having a decent persona, in a good romantic relationship but dispirited by his failure as a professional tenpin bowler. Thrust into the madness of Joe and his scheming relatives, Daniel loses his bearings and becomes gradually corrupted. In a film populated by various types and caricatures, the realistic portrayl of Daniel’s characterisation is essential to maintaining one’s interest over the fairly lengthy running time.

Director Lynn also makes the wise decision to begin the film from the perspective of (relatively speaking) the least loathsome of the relatives only interested in Joe’s money. While they’re not likable, it helps one have some empathy for their plight and how they’ve been stuck for years in grovelling towards Joe at every turn in the forlorn hope for monetary assistance.

‘Greedy’ has a difficult task of balancing several contrasting styles within the one film. It has both realistic characters and comic buffoons that are basically caricatures. It has scenes largely of drama, but also scenes not only of comedy but slapstick and farce. For the most part the film maintains the balance very well, with the possible exception of a climatic scene in a legal office where drama and farce clash to a rather disconcerting effect.

Also, in the middle stages ‘Greedy’ gets somewhat bogged down in the rather convoluted and confusing nature of its plot (especially related to Joe’s scheming). A segment where Joe takes his nurse for a seemingly romantic encounter in Washington could’ve probably been excised from the film entirely.

Largely ignored upon its release and perceived as symbolic of Fox’s failure to cement a long-term film career, ‘Greedy’ can be seen now as an fine and funny film which is a good demonstration of Fox’s talents.

Rating: B

Review: The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines, co-written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, is an ambitious if flawed film that manages to be the definitive film about Schenectady, New York (the title is the Mohawk translation of the name of the city) and a reminder of the old saying, “The sins of the father are visited upon the son.”

I say that with some trepidation, because discussing the plot is difficult without spoiling the hell out of it. I’ll give it a try, but be wary.

The film consists of three distinct acts, but are connected. It reminded me of a common thing in literature now–the book of short stories that share characters. The first act is about Ryan Gosling as a motorcyclist who does stunts for a traveling carnival. When he’s back in Schenectady, he runs into an old girlfriend (Eva Mendes) and learns that she has had his son. He quits the carnival to stay nearby, and gets a job with a shady mechanic (a wonderful Ben Mendelsohn). This mechanic suggests a solution to Gosling’s money woes would be robbing banks. Gosling finally agrees, and gets hooked on it, but we all know this won’t end well.

The second act concerns police corruption, a kind of suburban Serpico. Bradley Cooper is a laywer who has idealistically joined the police force, and becomes a public hero. But he finds that the cops who befriend him are dirty, all the way up to the chief of police. Cooper struggles with what to do, and consults his father (Harris Yulin), a judge.

The third act concerns two teenagers fifteen years later after the first two acts. They are the sons of Gosling and Cooper, but don’t know the past connection. Cooper’s son is an absolute zilch, even though he has grown up in wealth. Gosling’s son (a very good Dane DeHaan) tries to find out about his father, and we can feel the building tragedy.

There’s a lot to like here, and it’s definitely worth seeing, with some caveats: this is a depressing film, keeping with Cianfrance’s previous film, Blue Valentine (but it’s much better than that film). There’s little in the way of levity here, and one can’t help that the use of Schenectady is kind of back-handed compliment (I believe it was shot there), since the place is so important to the story that it feels as if Cianfrance is condemning the place. Or at least the kind of city it is–a once thriving industrial city, now rusting away.

Also, though the three acts are connected by characters, I just didn’t feel the connection until the third act. Maybe that was Cianfrance’s bit of misdirection, but I don’t really want to be fooled in a movie like this. The swerve that happens between Gosling and Cooper’s sections is dizzying, and it’s a while before we can let the first go and focus on the second.

Gosling is not one of my favorite actors but he’s fine here–this is the kind of role that suits him. The very first shot of him is his six-pack abs, which may be his best acting feature. Cooper is excellent.

My grade for The Place Beyond the Pines: B.

Review: To the Wonder

There were a lot of viewers who had a “the emperor has no clothes” attitude about Terrence Malick’s last film, The Tree of Life. I disagreed. Malick has gone back to the well for his latest film, To the Wonder, and this time the emperor is buck naked.

Malick, as with The Tree of Life, has teamed with his cinematographer, Emmanuel Luzbecki, to create a poem of images, and To the Wonder is a beautiful film, with several striking images. But the narrative, if you could consider it a narrative, is almost nonexistent, and I was bored and counting the minutes until it was over.

The plot, such as it is, can be summed in this sentence from Wikipedia. The writer should be congratulated for their succinct prose: “A romantic drama centered on an American man who reconnects with a woman
from his hometown after his relationship with a European woman falls
apart. The European woman later returns, but finally leaves again.”

I can add a bit to this. The man is Ben Affleck, who appears to be a representation of some sort of masculine ideal. We hardly ever see his face–I can only remember a few closeups, one of which highlighted his regal chin. We don’t hear him talk much, either. He has a job–he’s some sort of chemist investigating a toxic dump’s effect on local citizens, but this is not amplified upon.

Most of the film is about Olga Kurylenko. She is a Russian living in Paris (I’m surmising on a lot of this–nothing is spelled out) who is in love with Affleck. They enjoy touring the city, and making a visit to Mont St. Michel, and this all looks like a perfume commercial. He asks her to come back to the U.S. with him, along with her ten-year-old daughter.

That turns out to be the wide-open spaces of a small town in Oklahoma. Neither Kurylenko or her daughter are thrilled to be there, and it’s kind of a loaded situation–who would like small-town Oklahoma after living in Paris? Kurylenko leaves, and and Affleck takes up with a local girl (perhaps a previous girlfriend) Rachel McAdams. Again, we get perfume-commercial scenes, this time in the dusty Oklahoma sites. But they have a fight, and she’s gone from the movie, completely.

Kurylenko comes back, sans daughter, and she and Affleck marry. There’s some confusion over whether she has a child or not–I think she does–but things don’t work out. She has an affair, and there’s a striking scene in which she leaves the chain motel with guilt written all over her face.

I should add that all through this there are scenes involving Javier Bardem as the parish priest of the town. I’m not quite sure what he’s doing there, and most of his lines are voiced over in Spanish (Kurylenko also has numerous voiceovers, in French) and seem to indicate he’s not happy with things in general. I can’t say much more, because it’s absolutely incomprehensible.

Malick seems to have targeted the topic of romance, but I have no idea what he means to say. This is a movie that could we watched with the sound off, and perhaps should be.

The acting is mostly the kind that has the actors staring out windows while the narration runs on the soundtrack. I wonder what kind of direction the actors got–were they told what they should be thinking, or were they merely contemplating the banal like what they will have for lunch. Malick is obviously enthralled with how Kurylenko looks, and I’m on board with that, but she doesn’t have the kind of presence that makes up for the little she has to do. What she does most is frolic–either in the streets of Paris or her big backyard in Oklahoma. I think this movie has more frolicking that any movie I’ve ever seen.

To the Wonder is also notable for being the last movie reviewed by Roger Ebert before his death. He was generous and gave it three-and-a-half stars, noting the lack of narrative and giving Malick credit for approaching it that way. Fair enough, but if you’re going to make a movie like this there has to be a reason for watching it other than its poetic images.

My review for To the Wonder: D+

Review: Spring Breakers

It’s been over 24 hours since I’ve seen Spring Breakers, and I’m still at something of a loss to put into words how wondrous this film is. It’s not exactly a classic, but in it’s own way it’s a minor masterpiece, a film that takes a completely negligible genre, written and directed by an enfant terrible, and turns it into something marvelous. It’s as if Martin Scorsese made a Girls Gone Wild video.

The writer and director is Harmony Korine, who made a name as a very young man when he wrote the screenplay for Kids some twenty years ago. His last film was called Trash Humpers, which had homeless people having sex with trash cans. So it’s something of a miracle that this film is actually playing multiplexes (for how long, I don’t know–I was the sole viewer in the showing I went to).

The stars are young women who made their name on shows for teens: Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens on Disney Channel properties, and Ashley Benson on a show called Pretty Little Liars. But this film is distinctly not for teens, and credit must be given to these young ladies for stretching themselves. I would also like to personally thank them for appearing mostly in bikinis.

Those who have followed my reviews know I am partial to young, scantily clad women, and that is certainly a plus of Spring Breakers. But Korine has taken that and run with it, creating a beautiful and haunting film about a search for spiritual awakening. Yes, I said that right. At one point, Gomez says in a call to her grandmother that St. Petersburg at spring break is the most spiritual place she’s ever been. That sounds like a laugh line, and to some extent it its, but it’s also a truth of sorts, for Korine has created a spring break that is the site of a religious pilgrimage, an idyll that is roughly equivalent to Nirvana.

The film opens with a montage of shots of a Bacchanalia on the beach. Young, attractive people, drinking from funnels, frolicking like nymphs, the women bare-breasted, the men with six-pack abs. There are no frowns, no troubles, no worries, just unadulterated bliss.

Back at their college, four girls (the fourth is Rachel Korine, the wife of the director) are at college, sitting in a darkened lecture hall, the glow of laptops in front of every student. They want to go to spring break, but don’t have the money. Three of the girls are kind of loose–Hudgens and Benson share penis drawings in class, while Gomez is a girl of faith (her name, clumsily is Faith). She is warned about the other girls by her Jesus-freak friends (“they have demon blood”) but Gomez has known them all since kindergarten.

The three non-Christians decide on a bold plan: they rob a Chicken Shack with water pistols (normally used for squirting shots of spirits into their mouth) and use the cash to take a bus to St. Pete. I think the use of such a mundane city as St. Pete as the place that is over the rainbow for these girls is both funny and poignant. Gomez, though not participating in the robbery, goes along with them.

They party hard. I’ve never been on spring break, but I imagine it’s like this–copious drinking and smoking dope (one fellow has fashioned a babydoll into a bong). One party gets raided, and the four girls, still in bikinis, are locked up, since they can’t pay a fine. Enter Alien.

As bad as James Franco was in Oz the Great and Powerful he is genius here. Alien is a corn-rowed, gold-grilled drug dealer and rapper and pays the girl’s fine. Gomez is immediately suspicious of his intentions, and bolts back home. But the remaining three become his molls, as he asserts himself against the drug lord of the city, Big Arch (Gucci Mane) and they become a crew of home invasion artists. The robberies are done in a montage set to “Everytime,” by Britney Spears, whom Franco unironically claims is the greatest singer of all time.

Alien is such a great character. In a wonderful scene he shows the girls all his “shit,” which includes machine guns, nunchakus, Calvin Klein fragrances, and Scarface on repeated on the TV, 24/7. The girls and Franco form a bond when, showing them the guns, they take them away, loaded, and make him fellate the barrels. This is what makes him fall in love with them.

When one of the girls is wounded in a drive-by, Franco and the remaining girls plan on vengeance. The girls wear bikinis, sneakers, and pink ski-masks, their girlish backpacks strapped on. The ending is a balletic bit of gunplay that recalls The Wild Bunch.

I really dug this film. I loved the hallucinatory nature of it. Visually it’s stunning, with candy-colored photography by Benoit Debie. At times we just see images of spring break, with Franco intoning those two words as if they were a mantra. And yes, the film is sexy, with a Franco, Hudgens, and Benson engaging in a menage a trois in a swimming pool. Eroticism is a very difficult thing to pull off in movies anymore without seeming gratuitous, but this scene is both erotic, romantic, and tasteful.

The acting by the girls is adequate, without any of them distinguishing herself. I would have liked to know a little bit more about the characters other than Gomez. But I’m quibbling. This is a major achievement by a least likely director with a least likely cast in a least likely plot.

My grade for Spring Breakers: A-.

Review: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)

(Warning: contains some spoilers)

In my opinion the genre that’s declined in quality more than any other in films in recent decades (with mainstream Hollywood films at least) is the comedy. Year after year, I see comedies that fall almost completely flat. Too often it they’ve been made for a trailer as opposed to an entire film. A sense of rhythm, timing and texture seems to have been lost. Sure, it’s great if the script has funny gags in them but if you don’t utilise them right, they can just die when seen by an audience.

A good example of this is ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’, a film that has a lot of good elements and potential (and does have some occasional laughs), but overall just doesn’t work.

The film begins in 1982 showing how young Burt Wonderstone developed his love of magic and met Anton Marvelton, forming a magic act. The film flashes forward to the present (now played by Steve Carell & Steve Buscemi) where they are highly successful Vegas stage magicians. But they’ve jaded and complacent (especially Burt) and challenged by radical street magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) they break up and Burt’s life spirals out of control. Can he get back to the top?

The biggest problem this film has is that its tone and timing are so erratic. Sometimes it’s a farcical comedy with non-realistic gags flying everywhere. Sometimes it’s a ‘realistic’, sentimental film, such as in the by-the-numbers unconvincing relationship and romance between Burt and Jane (Olivia Wilde).

As well the plot is a tedious mix of unbelievable and contrived events to get to its predictable conclusion. For example towards the latter stages of the film Burt appears at a child’s birthday party (that of his former boss) to do a magic show and for no good reason Steve Gray is an attendee, only so the a confrontation between the two can occur and the film can wheeze it’s way another step towards its conclusion.

The problem with the film’s tone are reflected in Carell’s performance as Burt. In the first half he portrays (reasonably amusingly) Burt as thoroughly narcissistic, jaded, sexist and obnoxious. And after a brief period of introspection, in the second half of the film Burt becomes considerate, thoughtful and well-meaning (more or less the stock Carell type). One can understand the character going through a character change but it’s done in such a perfunctory, lazy manner it distances one’s interest in the film.

It’s not surprising that the writers of this film also wrote 2011’s ‘Horrible Bosses’ as they have a similar tone – a smattering of good moments amongst an array of shock gags, perfunctory plotting and weak characterisation.

The film does have compensations, especially in the performance of Carrey. In his most enjoyable work in years, he’s very amusing as Gray. He creates a compelling persona where one can see why he garners such wide public appeal but also see his limitations and likely downfall through his egotism. To be frank, if the film had been centred around Gray, it would probably have been a better one.

Alan Arkin is also enjoyable as Rance Holloway (Burt’s inspiration for getting into magic). It’s been pleasing to see Arkin have a late-career renaissance since his Oscar for ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ as he shows that after all these decades, he’s always good to watch. However, his fairly realistic and enjoyable portrayal of an elderly, long-retired magician is jarring compared with the almost cartoon-like characters and farcical events elsewhere in the film. At no stage of the film does the tone properly mesh.

‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ does have its positive aspects and funny moments but put simply this isn’t a very good film. It’s just yet another example of the inability of present-day filmmakers to properly construct a comedy film.

Rating: C

Review: Oz the Great and Powerful

In the 1930s, Walt Disney planned on making L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, into an animated film. MGM beat him to the punch, though, and made a film in 1939 that you may have seen a time or two. Disney, probably pissed off (even though the 1939 film was not a box office hit) bought the rights to all of the remaining Oz books. But try as they might, Disney has not hit pay dirt on an Oz film. The Return to Oz from 1985 was a thundering dud, and the latest attempt, Oz the Great and Powerful, while it looks to be a hit, is a hollow and cynical film that seems to have no purpose but to make money.

Despite mediocre reviews, I wanted to see it if only because I was intrigued by the visuals in the trailer and it has the most attractive female cast in quite a while, at least until Spring Breakers opens later this month. And I was pleased with the opening credit sequence, which has a sense of history. And the film, which for copyright reasons couldn’t make any direct references to the 1939 film, does pay homage to it, by opening with a square screen and black and white, switching to brilliant color upon the protagonist’s arrival in Oz.

That protagonist is Oscar Diggs, a third-rate carnival magician. It is Kansas, 1905, and Diggs (James Franco) is scraping by, a self-absorbed Casanova who has no friends. While attempting to escape the clutches of the cuckolded strongman, Diggs hops into a hot air balloon, which is promptly sucked into a tornado. He crash lands in Oz, where he meets a beautiful young woman (Mila Kunis), who is a witch but looks great in tight leather black pants. He has fulfilled a prophecy that a wizard will arrive, become king, and make peace. Diggs likes this, especially when he hears there’s treasure.

Diggs will later meet two other witches–Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams–and it’s a bit of a guessing game as to which one will turn pickle-green and become the Wicked Witch of the West. Diggs will have to overcome his selfishness and discover the good man inside.

It may not seem fair to compare this film to The Wizard of Oz, which is one of the most enchanting films ever made, and is firmly ingrained in almost every filmgoer’s subconscious, but if you’re going to have the onions to make a prequel to that film, you’ve got to take the lumps when your film comes up woefully short in the charm department. There’s lots of blame to go around. Director Sam Raimi doesn’t add much to a simple-minded script, and while the script avoids most references to the original (I liked that Diggs’ old girlfriend is marrying John Gale, which means she just may be Dorothy’s mother) it does adopt a similar structure. Diggs has only two sidekicks rather than Dorothy’s three–a talking winged monkey dressed like a bellhop, and a doll made of China. As with the original, both have human counterpoints in the Kansas sequence, but unlike the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion, these characters aren’t very interesting and offer nothing of distinction.

But perhaps the biggest problem is the acting. Franco and Kunis are the biggest problems. Both are so contemporary that they strike me as amateurs playing dress up. While Kunis has the classic look of a silent-film actress (George Hurrell would have made a wonderful portrait of her), neither she nor Franco has the chops to play such iconic characters, nor the diction. Diggs should have been played by someone far more silver-tongued. Rachel Weisz fares much better, while Williams is blandly pretty as Glinda, who still travels by bubble.

The film also is a little risque for a children’s film. Not only is the womanizing of Diggs inappropriate, but the Wicked Witch’s decolletage would have shocked Margaret Hamilton. The last shot is the Wizard in lip lock with Glinda, which makes me think uncomfortably back to the original. Billie Burke and Frank Morgan, together? Ewww.

Mostly this film, while it has some interesting production design, is just flat and uninspired. My brother, who has small children that love The Wizard of Oz, asked me if it was kid-friendly. I guess it is, but I’d hate for them to see this film. They should just watch the original again and again.

My grade for Oz the Great and Powerful: C-

 

Review: Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

The 1992 film ‘Memoirs of an Invisible Man’ was directed by John Carpenter and starred Chevy Chase, which surely has to be one of the most unusual director/star combos to appear in a mainstream Hollywood film during the mid-1990s. There seems no common ground between Chase (a popular leading mainstream comedy man during the 1980s) and Carpenter (creator of many individualistic sci-fi/horror films) so therefore the question arises: is MOAIM more of a typical Chase or Carpenter film?

The answer surprisingly, is none of the above; it feels like a unconventional movie for both men. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons why the film is more interesting and enjoyable than expected (or its reputation suggests).

Chevy Chase plays Nick Halloway (he also narrates the story), a fairly non-descript businessman who one day is unfortunately caught in the middle of a scientific accident that renders him invisible. Not only does he have to deal with the horrors of his situation, but is endlessly on the run from a ruthless government agents, led by the increasingly irrational David Jenkins (Sam Neill). His only hope appears to be a woman he just met the night before, Alice (Darryl Hannah).

Considering Chase is in the lead, one would expected a light-hearted, goofy comedy based around all the possibilities of invisibility. And yet while there are comic bits, the tone of the film is surprisingly downbeat and sombre. Indeed the tone of Halloway’s narration feels like that of a struggling private eye in a film noir. Invisibility is seen as a nightmarish curse with Halloway’s life a living hell where the ability to even sleep (he can see through his eyelids) is almost impossible.

Chase’s performance is an interesting one. He largely eschews his comic persona for a more serious, intense tone. He really makes the viewer feel the despair of his character’s predicament in a convincing manner. His romantic scenes with Hannah are also appealingly done, bringing to mind his similar efforts with Goldie Hawn in his breakthrough 1978 film ‘Foul Play’. It’s a shame that Chase hasn’t attempted more roles like this during his career. In fact, he hasn’t had as interesting movie role since.

The character of Halloway is interestingly devised. We learn in the early scenes that he’s basically a non-entity pre-invisibility. He cruises through his job without much interest, has no family and not many genuine friends. In fact it’s through his invisibility and the struggles he encompasses that Halloway develops passion, intensity, romance and a genuine identity.

Probably the film’s biggest weakness is the performance of Sam Neill as Halloway’s adversary David Jenkins. Neill is way over the top in his role – it almost feels like he should have a moustache to twirl. In contrast to the more realistic style of the film and performances of Chase and Hannah, Neill’s performance seems especially ill-suited and jarring.

Carpenter’s direction is competent but impersonal – he clearly enjoys displaying the special effects demonstrating Halloway’s predicament – and he helps create a downbeat, even sour tone. But Carpenter fans would probably be hard-pressed to find many of the touches that usually define his work.

As for the special effects, they deserve particular mention. In the film’s critically lukewarm response they were the only aspect to get significant praise and it’s easy to see why. Convincingly displayed are aspects of the invisible man like seeing smoke go through his lungs and even him digesting food. They’re of almost as high a standard as the groundbreaking special effects from Terminator 2 (released almost at the same time) and stand up very well today.

MOAIM doesn’t mark a high point in the careers of either Carpenter or Chase but it is an interesting and often entertaining work that is better than its reputation.

Rating: B-

Review: Beautiful Creatures

There’s a glut of books out there for teens into the supernatural. If you walk into a Barnes and Noble you’ll find a section called “Teen Paranormal Romance.” This was all started by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, but as these books are made into movies they shouldn’t be lumped together. Some are clearly better than others.

Beautiful Creatures is a teen paranormal romance that has been adapted and directed by Richard LaGravenese. The smartest thing he did was populating his film with very good actors. Watching Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, and Emma Thompson flex their muscles is very entertaining. And as for his two unknown leads, they are both very good. Aiden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert, if you squint a bit, will remind you of Leonard DiCaprio and Ellen Page.

Ehrenreich is a smart and popular high school student in a one-horse town in South Carolina. All he wants to do is get out, and reads books banned from the local library. He’s been dreaming about a girl, but he can’t see her face, and he compulsively sketches her.

Turns out the girl is the new girl in town, played by Englert. She’s moved into the creepy Ravenwood mansion. Irons is her uncle, and he lives in the house but hardly ever comes out. The locals think his family is a bunch of Satanists. Ehrenreich is intrigued by Englert, but she is aloof. Finally he wins her over, and they start dating. But there’s some nastiness involving a Civil War era locket.

Englert isn’t a Satanist, but she isn’t normal, as evidenced by the windows in a classroom shattering when she’s being teased by other girls. She’s a “caster” (witch is such a pejorative, like geek). She’s facing a crisis. In just a few days she’ll turn 16, and it will be decided whether she’s “light” or “dark.” Irons is trying to keep her dark mother (Thompson) from influencing the decision.

A lot of this is very silly. Some of it plays like a Tim Burton film of Bewitched. There’s a scene in the middle of the film when Ehrenreich comes to dinner, and the members of the Ravenwood family are all a bunch of oddballs. I expected Uncle Arthur to show up. Some of it is like Harry Potter, what with the rules and curses. Some of it is like True Blood, in that there is this war between casters and mortals, and the whole town seems to be draped in spanish moss. But most of it works and has a sense of originality to it.

Most of the credit goes to the dialogue, and Ehrenreich’s sparkling performance. A lot of it is genuinely funny, such as when he dissects the ending of Titanic. Englert avoids playing the standard sullen girl, and Emmy Rossum shows up as the sexy witch cousin and steals some scenes.

That being said, the film does have some drawbacks. I found the pacing erratic and choppy. And perhaps the book goes deeper into the role of casters in society–if they’re so powerful, why aren’t they running things? And there’s a tunnel running underneath the entire United States that only the casters know about? Riiiiight.

But overall I give Beautiful Creatures a thumbs up, mostly for the acting by the three established stars. Thompson gets to play two roles–her evil witch inhabits the body of the local bible-thumper. Davis, as the town’s librarian, gives a very subtle performance, and is there anybody better at chewing scenery than Jeremy Irons? Maybe Ian McKellen, but it’s close. Watching Irons dress down the locals in a church while wearing an outfit that defies description was worth the price of admission.

My grade for Beautiful Creatures: C+.

Review: Side Effects

Supposedly Side Effects is Steven Soderbergh’s last feature film before retirement. I think his retirement will last as long as Brett Favre’s first two retirements, if only because Side Effects, while a reasonably entertaining time at the movies, isn’t exactly worthy of his legacy.

I had been led to believe that the film, written by Scott Z. Burns, was an indictment of our over-medicated society, especially those commercials that advertise a pill for almost every malady, that end with a breathless recitation of the side effects, which can include everything from constipation to suicidal thoughts. Indeed, that is what the first third or so of the film is about, but then it takes a sharp turn that leads into a different film entirely, Soderbergh’s take on Diabolique.

Since I had no idea what to expect from the film, I won’t spoil it here. I can say that the film stars Rooney Mara, cleaned up after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, as a young woman who is welcoming her husband (Channing Tatum) back to freedom after a four-year stint in prison for insider trading. But though she is happy to have him back, she suffers from depression, going so far as to drive her car full speed into parking garage wall. She has only a concussion, though, but a psychiatrist (Jude Law) is brought onto her case. He prescribes a variety of anti-depressants, but eventually, after consulting with her previous shrink (Catherine Zeta-Jones), he gives her a new drug, Ablixa. It has a nasty side effect of inducing sleepwalking.

The rest of the film, after the big moment at the end of act one, has Law becoming an amateur sleuth as he strives to clear his name. The twist is pretty well handled (gasps went up in the audience that I attended with), and the conclusion is full of turns that are pretty clever. But I couldn’t help but feel that the film was just an exercise in style. Soderbergh, who shoots his own camera under the pseudonym of Peter Andrews, has given the film a cozy feel, no doubt hearkening back to those commercials that have depressed people happy again after popping a pill. But the pace is very choppy and disorienting.

Law is the focus of the film, and I found the performance distracting. His motivation is at first to help Mara, and then to save himself, but many of his actions are inscrutable. The character is serving the script, instead of the other way around. Mara is much more interesting, and it’s good to see that he turn as Lisbeth Salander is not just a one-off. Her role requires some duplicitous actions, and she must fool the audience as well as others in the film. I’ll admit she fooled me.

Side Effects is really just an above-average TV movie, the kind of thing you might stop on while channel surfing. If this is Soderbergh’s last film, he didn’t exactly go out with a bang.

My grade for Side Effects: B-.

Review: The Guilt Trip (2012)

(warning: this review contains mild spoilers)

The Guilt Trip didn’t hold much promise when it was released in Australia recently. A critical and commercial flop in America and one of the co-leads was an actor (Seth Rogen) who’d I never really rated. But it was still of interest to me as it also co-starred Barbra Streisand in a fairly rare screen appearance. As I wrote in my recent review of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ in her early films at least she displayed a genuine talent for flair and comic timing. I was curious to see several decades later whether she still displayed this talent.

The story concerns a struggling inventor in his mid-30s (Seth Rogen) who has created a potentially wondrous cleaning product. But as we see from the opening scene, he’s a lousy salesman of it. He has a somewhat strained relationship with his well-meaning but interfering mother (Barbra Streisand) but when he locates a man she loved but hasn’t seen for decades, he decides to take her on a road trip where he hopes to finally sell his product, as well as help her meet her lost love.

One of the most interesting aspects of TGR is how the relative lack of raunchy language, shock humour and toilet gags – which are prevalent in so many mainstream comedies these days – give it a relatively old-fashioned feel. It’s feels like a film that was made in the early 1990s more than the present.

This is not a negative observation; in fact the relative lack of crude humour is quite refreshing and gives TGT a genial feel.

But while there is absence of low-brow content in TGT, what is in its place? As it turns out, not much. While the film is setup for some funny situations and good mother/son character conflict, very little of note occurs. While TGT is easy to take, its geniality borders on the bland at times.

And this perhaps provides a clue as to why so many film comedies rely so excessively on raunchy humour these days – the art of comic timing, genuinely witty lines and funny situations has declined so rapidly in films in the last few decades that crudeness and vulgarity are all many filmmakers have to fall back on.

And this trend is also reflected at an individual level with the performance of Seth Rogen as the son. Rogen is someone I’ve never really rated as an actor (notwithstanding a good ‘serious’ performance in ‘Take This Waltz’); he’s always seemed to me someone who relies on lazily having something confrontational and shocking to say in his fast-paced verbal style for laughs, instead of the harder work of developing comic timing or amusing characterisation.

And this is fully illustrated in TGT. Saddled with material that has very little low-brow content, he is all at sea creating anything of interest, let alone humour. For most of the film he is boringly one-note in his sulky persona, and he is unable to convince when his character suddenly changes to a more positive outlook in the film’s latter stages. As a result, Rogen’s character is much less sympathetic than the film probably intends.

But what about Streisand? While she has thin material to work with, the spark and talent she showed at the start of her career is still on display here. She is far more entertaining than her co-star and the mild amusement the film generates is largely through her work. And during a serious confrontation scene halfway through the film she shows she has the dramatic skill to make the scene work.

Apart from Streisand’s enjoyable performance, the best that can be said about the TGT is that it’s fairly easy to take and has some nice moments here and there; the concluding scene where the mother meets a person she loved for the first time in decades (or does she?) is tactfully done.

But overall there isn’t enough in TGT to recommend it. It’s too slight and bland and a week or so after seeing it, it’s largely faded from the memory. It’s a bit of an inditement on the standard of modern comedies that this puts it above a lot of other comedies I see at the cinema.

Rating: C

Review: Amour

Michael Haneke’s Amour is a detailed, almost minimalist look at a married couple in their eighties after the wife has had a stroke. It is superbly acted and almost excruciating in its intensity. But after leaving the theater I had to wonder–why was I supposed to watch this?

Haneke, of course, is known for films that are not easy to stomach. I still won’t see either version of Funny Games because that sort of thing just would disturb me too much. This film is much more pedestrian–Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are upper middle class Parisians in their comfortable retirement. We don’t know much about them, other than that she was a piano teacher. The film begins with the two attending a concert by an ex-pupil. The camera focuses on the audience from the point of view of the stage. If you knew nothing about the stars you wouldn’t know who the film was going to be about.

One morning Riva is sitting at the kitchen table and goes into a trance. Trintingnant things she’s joking around, but she has no memory of the incident. We flash forward to her coming back from the hospital partially paralyzed, an operation on her carotid has failed. She is defiant in her attempts to be able to take care of herself, but she can not. She dreads a visit by her daughter (Isabelle Huppert) because she doesn’t want to be seen this way.

After another stroke Riva is reduced to an invalid, and there is no hope of recovery. We understand what Haneke means by the title, the French word for “love”–this is what love is. It means after decades of togetherness, dealing with the infirmities of age. Trintignant is patient and unyielding in his devotion to her, chiding her for suggesting she is a burden to him. True love is sticking with someone through illness, and changing their diaper. I was struck by the way he must pick her up out of the wheelchair, with her arm around his neck and her arms around her waist–a lover’s embrace.

While this is strong stuff, I found it a bit too excruciating. I can’t remember any moment of comedy or lightheartedness, and surely even in situations like this there can be something to laugh at. Some scenes are very well written, particular a scene late in the film when Trintignant tells Huppert he doesn’t have time to think about his daughter’s concern. But in the long run, what does this film say? That it’s tough getting old? That love can last past death? I’m not quite sure.

It’s not the usual film that gets Oscar nominations, and Riva, in particular, gives an unglamorous but scintillating performance (not many octogenarian women would agree to nude scenes) and Trintignant, while his part doesn’t have the sickness quotient, is essential to make this film work–the movie really is about how he handles the crisis. Haneke’s direction is also effective–he favors long takes (the average time between cuts may be longer than thirty seconds) and a static camera. With only a few exceptions, the camera does not move, and characters move in and out of view, making the viewer seem more like a voyeur. In one scene, the ex-pupil visits, and while Trintingnant goes to get Riva the camera simply focuses on the young pianist, waiting in the living room. At one point there is a ten-or-so-second shot of the landlady vacuuming the rug.

But there are moments that are a bit heavy handed. A pigeon makes two appearances, and if one knows that a dove is a sign of death than it’s a bit obvious. I would have liked to know more about the characters, other than that they like classical music. Watching the movie is like being in a pressure cooker–it needs to breathe a bit. There is no score, and as I said, no moments of levity. Even MacBeth had a comic scene.

This is a very good film, but not a great one. My grade for Amour: B+.

Review: Les Miserables

In the parking lot after coming out of the theater after seeing Les Miserables, I thought of a Seinfeld episode when Jerry catches George crying while watching Home Alone. “The old man got to me!” George responds defensively. Well, Les Miserables is not a great film–it’s often not very good at all–but it got to me. I’m not made of stone.

An adaptation of the stage musical which in turn was based on Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables tells the story of Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread. He is paroled, but is treated badly by everyone he meets because he is a convict. A priest is kind to him, and Valjean takes a new identity and ends up a prosperous businessman and even mayor of the town. But he is tracked by a resolute policeman, Javert.

Along the way, Valjean will take adopt a young girl, Cosette, the daughter of one of his employees. She will fall in love with a young man, Marius, who gets involved in the June 1832 rebellion in Paris, an anti-monarchist revolt. Valjean, torn between his love for Cosette but realizing he must let her go, saves Marius from death and unites the couple. He dies, happy that they are together. I admit, I teared up. The old man got to me.

But Les Miserables doesn’t always hit those heights, and in fact the only reason I give this film a thumbs up is that Hugo’s story shines through. A tale of redemption and doing the right thing, it makes one feel very good to see justice and humanity victorious.

There are problems, though. First of all, I’m not a big fan of the music, written by Alain Boublil and
Claude-Michel Schönberg. There’s one big song, sung by Fantine (Anne Hathaway), the doomed mother of Cosette, that’s pretty good, “I Dreamed a Dream.” But it seemed like that tune was repeated over and over again. Another character, Eponine (Samantha Barks), who loves Marius unrequitedly, has a big number, and it sounded suspiciously like the first song. Javert’s music (sung gamely by Russell Crowe) is a recitative that sounds amateurish.

A couple of the musical moments work, such as Valjean (a wonderful Hugh Jackman) sings “Bring Him Home,” hoping that Marius will survive the revolt, and Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter tackle “Master of the House” (in another Seinfeld episode, George can’t get the song out of his head). Cohen and Bonham Carter seem to have wandered in from a Tim Burton film, but they give a welcome comic jolt to all the depressing goings-on.

The direction, by Tom Hooper, is downright bad. Too often he relies on closeups, so much so that I felt like a dentist peering into the actor’s mouths. It works with Hathaway’s big number, which is performed in one take and in a tight closeup, but elsewhere it just made me want to move back. The photography works for the most part, in washed out colors will occasional splashes of red and blue (the colors of the French flag), but Hooper throws everything at the screen, hoping it will stick.

The performances are mostly of a high order, especially Jackman and Hathaway. I’m no expert on singing voices, so it didn’t bother me that Jackman, a baritone, sings a part written for a tenor. Hathaway, though her screen time is brief, is luminous. Less impressive is Amanda Seyfried as Cosette and Eddie Redmayne as Marius (though by mother says that Redmayne’s voice is the best). As for Crowe, he certainly looks the part, but maybe they should have gone with someone with a better singing voice.

While I was underwhelmed by the film, there are those who will love it–those who are predisposed to Broadway. If you don’t like Broadway musicals, Les Miserables may well be torture. I’m not a big fan of musicals, but I don’t have a knee-jerk hate for them, so I was okay with the film, despite its faults.

My grade for Les Miserables: B-.