Marquee Marquis

Safe House

2012-02-10T11:34:00.000-05:00

You talkin' to me?

Grade: B
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 54 min.

Training Day will turn out to be the defining film in Denzel Washington’s career, but not for the reasons you might expect. Yes, the cop-gone-bad drama gave Washington his lone Best Actor Oscar win, but it also (forever?) altered his role choices/selection. Before then, Washington was playing the likes of Malcom X and “Hurricane” Carter and appearing in films such as Glory (for which he won a Supporting Actor Oscar), Courage Under Fire, and Philadelphia. There were Spike Lee joints (Mo’ Better Blues and He Got Game), social uplift films (Cry Freedom and A Soldier’s Story) and even Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing).

Since Training Day, Washington’s performances remain strong but his characters increasingly coalesce around a steady series of cop dramas and man-of-action thrillers, four of them directed by the Scott brothers (three by Tony, one from Ridley). Although Safe House is helmed by Swedish director Daniel Espinosa, it borrows not only Tony Scott’s gritty color palette but a half-dozen other genre clichés. Remarkably, it all comes together for a rather entertaining rumpus.

Washington plays Tobin Frost, a rogue ex-CIA operative who is nine years into peddling secrets for money. When a big buy goes bust in Cape Town, South Africa, Frost surprisingly takes refuge in the U.S. consulate. Needing a place to temporarily stow—and apply enhanced interrogation methods to—Frost, the C.I.A. ferry him to a local safe house manned by low-level company man Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds).

After a band of baddies raze the hideout, Weston is the only one left to deliver Frost to higher authorities, which Weston must do sans any certainty over who is really friend or foe. He keeps one eye on those giving chase and one on the crafty, ice-cold Frost, whose Lecter-like acuity proves his most lethal weapon.

Safe House is essentially Jason Bourne meets 3:10 to Yuma, down to a villain being the film’s most charismatic character (Yuma) and a group of constipating, backbiting bureaucrats (Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard) back at Langley (Bourne). Despite his treacherous past, we’re virtually preordained to like Frost, seemingly because he knows his fine wines and, well, looks like Denzel Washington.

Still, there’s a palpable, to-and-fro chemistry between Washington and Reynolds, who gives his best performance since 2010’s Buried. Despite its derivative dollops, Espinosa flashes a distinctive style, one in which fights aren’t always quick and clean and death is often slow and ugly. And who else besides a Swedish director would set one of his film’s best cat-and-mouse sequences inside a packed soccer match?

Plot holes persist, as in any film of this sort. But they are not as crippling thanks to the film’s intensity and Washington and Reynolds’ taut tête à tête. Safe House may not have the most solid foundation, but it’s a fun place to steal away for a few hours.

Neil Morris

Woman in Black

2012-02-10T11:07:00.002-05:00

Wow, Hogwarts has gone downhill fast

Grade: C +
Director: James Watkins
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer, David Burke, and Shaun Dooley
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hr. 34 min.

The epochs of classic creature features and splatter fests have gradually given way to a contemporary horror film genre shaped by Asian influences and, more notably, the trappings of today’s technology. Starting with Hideo Nakata’s Ringu—a convenient, affecting marriage of these two influences—popular modern scare fare is the stuff of The Blair Witch Project and such progeny as Paranormal Activity. They’re the same chills and thrills, just filtered through the grainy prism of camcorder and surveillance monitors.

From this standpoint, The Woman in Black feels more like a musty curio than a standalone frightener. This adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 novel—already the basis for a West End theatre production now approaching a run of 23 years—pays homage to the Gothic Hammer Horror films, not coincidental as it is the first feature shot in England under the until-recently dormant production banner in over thirty years.

Director James Watkins imbues every scene with the typical tropes: creepy kids, evil apparitions, a vine-covered manse, overgrown cemeteries and an array of spooky toys and music boxes. Shadows flutter about and objects jump out of nowhere, usually accompanied by a musical flourish. It’s all a handsome showcase that taps your sense of nostalgia more intensely than your adrenal gland.

Set in Victorian England, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a widower whose wife died four years ago while giving birth to their son (Misha Handley). Now a struggling solicitor and single dad, Kipps is dispatched to the town of Crythin Gifford along England’s east coast to attend to the affairs of Mrs. Alice Drablow, a recently deceased recluse. There, Kipps finds a village of the damned as townsfolk grapple with an inexplicable epidemic of their children doing fatal harm to themselves.

Ignoring the warning of locals (natch), Kipps snakes his way down a meandering causeway to Drablow’s decrepit estate, an archetypal haunted house cut off from the mainland by the nocturnal high tide. Filmed on the 380-acre Osea Island in Essex, the evocative locale is, unfortunately, far more dynamic than its on-screen inhabitants.

After arriving, Kipps’ professional duties quickly take a backseat to wading into the mysterious death of a young boy years earlier. “Don’t go chasing shadows, Arthur,” warns Sam Dailey (Ciarán Hinds), a cynical local landowner. Of course, movies of this sort subsist off such folly, so Kipps not only chooses to stay overnight at the haunted mansion (cueing audience groans and guffaws), but he follows every sounds and opens every locked door, most notably the ghostly presence of the titular femme. There’s surprisingly little blood; the lone sight of crimson, gushing from the mouth of a doomed girl, stands out against a palette that’s as hoary as the horror precepts at play.

Radcliffe does well playing Scary Potter but is given little else to do—fans will have to make do seeing him again do battle with a pale-faced villain, visiting an ethereal rail station in the process. Hinds headlines a game supporting cast that includes Janet McTeer (Oscar-nominated for Albert Nobbs and Tumbleweeds) as Dailey’s grief-crazed wife. Their presence marks the only instances the film achieves anything approaching character complexity.

That said, Watkins crafts some striking visuals, and audiences pining for the visceral stimuli of an old-fashioned ghost story will occasionally jump out of their seats, at least until fifth or sixth time an empty rocking chair totters on its own or the WIB’s ashen visage appears in a window pane or down a long corridor. Capped by a cloying climax, The Woman in Black quickly runs out of frights…and clichés.

Neil Morris

Man on a Ledge

2012-01-29T16:21:00.001-05:00

A preferable alternative to seeing "Man on a Ledge"

Grade: C

Director: Asger Leth

Starring: Sam Worthington,Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Genesis Rodriguez, Ed Burns, Anthony Mackie and EdHarris

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 42 min.

Althoughit lifts the iconography of Wall Street calamity—a man perched atop a Manhattanhigh-rise, threatening to leap to his death—along with a New York financier-cum-bogeyman(Ed Harris), Man on a Ledge draws fromthe Occupy movement only in the same way X-Men:The Last Stand was informed by the struggle for gay rights. It’s a gimmickin search of a punch-line, much like PhoneBooth, another New York-set lone man-in-peril piffle.

NickCassidy (Sam Worthington) is an ex-cop convicted of stealing and destroying theworld’s most priceless MacGuffin, a diamond belonging to Harris’ DavidEnglander. After escaping from prison, Nick hatches a plan to threaten jumpingfrom the highest floor of the Roosevelt Hotel, gathering the attention ofliterally dozens of onlookers and an equal number of media types and their choppers.It’s all a ruse, as the audience is too quickly told, since Nick is only thediversion for his brother (Jamie Bell) and girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez, the flash of her in lingerie the only reason to see this movie), whoare across the street inside Englander’s vault pulling off an actual diamondheist in order to prove Nick’s innocence.

Gotthat? Everything else here is designed to soften the film’s fall as it slowlyplummets to its death. There’s a fallow subplot about cop corruption involvingNick ex-partner (Anthony MacKie), and the inexplicable presence of LydiaMercer, a disgraced police psychologist whose world-weary, hard-living personais instantly discredited by the fact that she’s played by the inescapablygorgeous Elizabeth Banks.

Ascontrived as it is convoluted, screenwriter Pablo Fenjves’ tall tale relies onthe absurd premise that the reappearance of a man famously convicted forstealing a precious gem will provide the perfect cover for the actual theft ofthat same jewel taking place literally across the street. It also relies onplot holes and other oddities—e.g., for reasons never explained, Nick wipes awayhis fingerprints from inside the hotel room before crawling out its window, yetlater knowingly provides a print to Lydia that reveals his identity. And, therushed, ridiculous climax is irrational on multiple levels, not the least ofwhich is its slipshod, climactic concept of legal due process.

Butbeyond the illogical narrative and character motives is the fact that Man on a Ledge isn’t nearly asexhilarating as its title suggests. Instead of high-flying fun, it’d be betteroff taking a long walk off a short perch.

Neil Morris

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

2012-01-20T01:07:00.001-05:00

You can say that again, Max

Grade: C –

Director: Stephen Daldry

Starring: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks,Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 9 min.

Iam not one of those who believe that certain tragic events should be shieldedfrom artistic examination. The acute emotions that emanate from publicly sharedgrief can be a catalyst for creative studies of the human ethos. But, while theline separating exploration from exploitation is one an artist should notshirk, it is also one that can be easily and perilously crossed.

Extremely Loud & IncrediblyClose tackles 9/11, a cinematic third-rail used as the milieufor films both brilliant (United 93) andinept (World Trade Center; Remember Me).Its bare premise is apposite and affecting – a 10-year-old boy coping with theloss of his father, who perished on the 105^th floor of the north towerof the World Trade Center. However, the problems with this pious adaptation ofJonathan Safran Foer’s Oprah-approved 2005 novel are both extreme andincredible.

Beforehis untimely death, Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks, Joe Versus the Volcano) and his son Oskar (newcomer Thomas Horn, Jeopardy! Kids Week) are an inseparableduo, mixing trips to Thomas’ jewelry shop and Central Park with their ongoing gameof “Reconnaissance Mission,” which would send Oskar out in search of clues to solvemake-believe mysteries (such as the fate of a fabled “sixth borough”). Theirinexhaustible quality time appears to have the more fundamental aim of coaxingthe socially awkward Oskar out of his shell.

Thosefamiliar with high-functioning autism and other behavioral disorders willrecognize some telltale signs of Oskar’s affect – of course, some might alsoobject to Oskar’s more caricatural tics, such as the tambourine he constantly carriesaround and rattles to calm himself. For some reason, however, director StephenDaldry (The Hours, The Reader) remains vague about Oskar’s condition– all we get, in one of the boy’s typically precocious moments, is an offhandremark that he was once tested for Asperger’s, but “the results wereinconclusive.” In so doing, Daldry squanders the opportunity for an informed,respectful look at families coping with this issue.

Therest of the audience is placed in the innocent position of recoiling, if notoutright disliking the garrulous, hyper-emotional preteen. When notself-inflicting bruises on himself or repeatedly listening to the voicemessages Thomas left once his death seemed imminent, Oskar screams at all theadults in his life and tells his mother (Sandra Bullock) that she’s “anabsentee parent” (no proof provided) and should have been the one who died inthe Twin Towers instead of dad.

Ayear after 9/11, Oskar breaks a vase while rummaging through his father’scloset and discovers a key inside a small packet with the word “Black” written onit. Believing this to be one final quest, he canvas the phone book tocategorize, map and then visit all 472 people with the surname Black in hopesof matching the key with its corresponding lock. This fairy tale of an unsupervised 10-year-old child roamingthe streets of New York City conveniently allows Daldry to foist a greetingcard cross-section of the five boroughs under the guise of communal uplift.

In a panoply of cloying cardboard cutouts, thelone, all-too-brief standout is Max van Sydow as an elderly, mysteriously muteneighbor who communicates using a notepad and, as Oskar somehow knows andrelays via incessant voiceovers, hails from Dresden and lived through"some really bad stuff." That description, in essence, sums up thefunction of 9/11 in ExtremelyLoud & Incredibly Close – astage prop of sorrow unbothered by context or consequences, present only tohelp personal anguish masquerade as something profound, little different thanthe love triangle in Michael Bay's PearlHarbor. As the plot threads coagulate, one of the Blacks (Jeffrey Wright)solemnly and with a straight face laments the fact that the post-9/11proliferation of missing-persons flyers hampered his search for a familyheirloom. Some really bad stuff, indeed.

NeilMorris

Haywire

2012-01-20T01:02:00.001-05:00

Uh, Mr. Fassbender, you're not still shooting "Shame"

Grade: B

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Gina Carano, EwanMcGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum and MichaelFassbender

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 33 min.

Asan action-revenge thriller rendered as cool jazz (down to David Holmes' martini-soaked score),Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire is anefficient but exhilarating hoot that simply gets the job done…no muss or fuss.With a taut narrative cast against a stylish but minimalist background, this93-minute bauble shares similarities with Soderbergh’s The Limey, not surprising since Lem Dobbs wrote both screenplays.

MMAstar Gina Carano proves an inspired choice to play Mallory Kane, an ex-Marineand a black ops private contractor globetrotting for payback after being set-upduring an overseas mission. Carano is equally credible whether she’s beingseductive or kicking butt – the film’s primary action are periodic fight scenesthat Carano and Co. stage like brutal ballets. Better still, she gets to holdher own against the likes of Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas,Channing Tatum and, in an especially well-done sequence, Michael Fassbender.

Whilethe action is often bloody, the emotions remain conspicuously bloodless. Still,Haywire is more about watching Caranoand Soderbergh flex their respective muscles.

Neil Morris

The Iron Lady

2012-01-20T00:58:00.001-05:00

Grade: B –

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Starring: Meryl Streep, JimBroadbent, Harry Lloyd, and Alexandra Roach

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

If ever it was possible for an opening scene to buoy an entire feature-length motion picture, The Iron Lady would be it. Having wandered away from her London home and past her caretakers, a senile, octogenarian Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) is shopping in a small corner mart. As loud Indian music blares over the loudspeakers, a besuited businessman pushes past her while yammering into his cell phone; a young black customer in headphones faintly rolls his eyes at the doddering old woman. There’s irony when Thatcher – a middle-class grocer’s daughter – does a double-take when told that a pint of milk costs 49 pence. No one recognizes the iconic Cold Warrior, but what’s more, it is a world she no longer recognizes. It’s a biting collage of class and culture as brilliant as anything Stephen Frears has ever filmed.

Off this lofty perch, however, falls the rest of this biopic from director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) and screenwriter Abi Morgan (co-writer of Shame). Told in flashback rote, the narrative oscillates throughout from the present-day senescent Thatcher to her early days as an ambitious Oxford grad with an eye and gut for politics. The nee Miss Roberts (portrayed by Alexandra Roach) falls for and marries Denis Thatcher (played as a young man by Harry Lloyd), but only after he agrees to abide by her political ambitions.

From there, it’s off to a whirlwind of biographical touchstones: Thatcher (now played by Streep) being elected to Parliament in 1959; unseating Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative party; her accession to England’s first female PrimeMinister in 1979; her 11-year reign, highlighted by trade union strikes, IRA terrorism and, of course, the Falkland Islands conflict; and being deposed as party head in 1990.

The film’s true iron lady is Streep. Her role is susceptible to suspicion as it blatantly contains all three ingredients of the Oscar formula – British, biographical and disability-centric (in the case of the latter-day Thatcher). However, Streep’s depiction goes well beyond mere impersonation, ably portraying Thatcher at both her most harrowing and heroic. She essentially plays two different characters and does so with trademark subtlety and sublimity. At a dinner party hosted by the elder Thatcher, a guest asks how she would handle a recent terrorist attack were she still in office. Streep pauses, the question seemingly evaporated before reaching her blank countenance, before suddenly summoning, as if by instinct, a cogent diatribe against the evil of modern-day global terrorism.

While Ms. Lloyd hits all the historical high notes, the fragmented narrative and stunted 115-minute running time doesn’t afford the opportunity to flesh out any context. We’re subjected to constant news reports about IRA bombings – including the murder of Airey Neave and the 1984 attempt on Thatcher’s life at theBrighton hotel – but little about their cause and effect on Thatcher’s policies. Her decision to engage in the Falklands is chalked up to a steadfast nationalism and adherence to principle that guided every aspect of her life. However, in a more enterprising (and perhaps honest) script, Thatcher would recognize and, indeed, shrewdly exploit the popularity that comes from being a wartime leader, particularly a female one. How Ms. Lloyd ignores any juxtaposition with Elizabeth I mounting a grey gelding to address the troops at Tilbury is beyond me.

More problematic, however, are the director’s incessant returns to the dementia-suffering Thatcher, staring into mirrors and being regularly visited by the apparition of her now-deceased husband, played by Jim Broadbent, who essentially acts as a one-man Greek chorus. Beyond the precious time squandered at the expense of Thatcher’s time in office, these scenes posit her relationship with Denis as the guiding force in her life. This belief, while in keeping with the accounts of her daughter Cathy and other confidants, is not developed throughout the rest of the film. Moreover, there’s a dissonance between Mr.Lloyd’s demure, wealthy young aristocrat and the daft Denis (both before and after his death) whom Broadbent channels – it actually took me a few minutes to figure out they were the same character.

As part of a makeover to make her appear more commanding to the public, the future Prime Minister participates in a bizarre speaking exercise straight out one of the therapy sessions in The King’s Speech. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, unfortunately, The Iron Lady never finds its true voice.

Neil Morris

Contraband

2012-01-20T00:56:00.001-05:00

Grade: C –

Director: Baltasar Kormákur

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, BenFoster, Kate Beckinsale and Giovanni Ribisi

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 49 min.

AlthoughContraband busies itself with oneplot turn after another, there’s precious little that doesn’t feel lifted fromthe One Last Job™ blueprint.

ChrisFarraday (Mark Wahlberg) is an ex-smuggler forced back into the game after hissimpleton brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) becomes indebted to a gonzo drugrunner (Giovanni Ribisi). Chris won’t traffic dope, but he’ll all too happilysneak millions in funny money from Panama to New Orleans, flashing a shammorality belied by the reality that counterfeiting alone can land you infederal prison for up to 25 years. Chris leaves his wife (Kate Beckinsale) andtwo kids back in the Big Easy under the care of best bud Sebastian, whoseduplicity seems foregone since he’s played by Ben Foster.

DirectorBaltasar Kormákur – star of the Icelandic original – cribs from the JoeCarnahan guide on filmmaking, choosing a jittery camera, washed-out canvas andcopious forced F-bombs over actual narrative complexity. There’s passing fancyin keeping track of Chris’ smuggling machinations, even if Kormákur’s executionutterly disregards any concept of time and space. This generic genre picture isthe sort of movie Redbox was invented for.

Neil Morris

The Best and Worst Films of 2011

2012-01-02T13:13:00.001-05:00

Whilecompiling my list of the best films of the past year, I was actually moststruck by the titles that didn’t make the cut. Throughout what the movieindustry commonly refers to as “awards season,” several films have frequentlypopped on many, if not most critics’ lists: Hugo,The Help, The Descendants, The Tree ofLife, Extremely Loud and IncrediblyClose, Moneyball and others. Mostof these are good solid motion pictures, a few are risible, and all of them are,in my estimation, highly overrated.

Thiswas a good but not great year for movies – frankly, there’s no further proof isneeded for this statement beyond the fact that the perennially bankable Pixaroffering was a dud (Cars 2). Therewere a plethora of above-average cinematic choices, but none that I would labelinstant classics. To that end, my Top 10 selections are well-reasoned but also abit perfunctory – there’s not a lot of daylight between most of these choices and,say, a film such as Martha Marcy MayMarlene, which did not make the list. Increasingly, whether a movie is“good” or “bad” is governed more by whether it exceeds or fails to live up toexpectations.

Top 10 Films

1. Shame: Atmospheric andaffecting, director Steve McQueen’s lays bare the secret life of a manparalyzed by sexual addiction, disrupted when his kid sister (Carey Mulligan)unexpectedly moves in. Michael Fassbender gives the performance of the yearwith a role that’s a little bit Last Tango in Paris and a little bitAmerican Psycho. This is no dark comedy, however, but instead an individualtragedy that lingers long after the closing credits.

2. A Separation: The fact thatIranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi was able to make this movie within therestrictive confines of his country’s rules on censorship is noteworthy enough.That such a seemingly simple story about family on the verge of dissolutionspawns such complex questions about gender, religion, class and justice speaksto the film’s power…and necessity.

3. Warrior: The film’s MMA tableauis incidental – the film could just as easily be about boxing, tennis or evenchess. Its real themes of betrayal, familial strife and America’s wideningstratification are universal. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, this surprisinglysmart, poignant film features a trio of awards-worthy performances from JoelEdgerton, Nick Nolte and especially Tom Hardy.

4. We Need to Talk About Kevin: “Hard to watchbut impossible to look away” describes this plaintive parable about a mother(brilliantly portrayed by Tilda Swinton) living with the grief and guilt of ahigh school killing spree committed by her disturbed/demonic teenage son. Partdeep family drama, part tragedy, and part a high-stylized horror movie, it’snot a film for the faint of heart…or expectant mothers.

5. War Horse: StevenSpielberg checks a few more things off his bucket list: a World War I movie, avisually stunning John Ford homage, and a story about a boy and his horse.Although held together by a glue of schmaltz, it’s a strikingly beautiful motionpicture in the most classic sense.

6. Win Win: A great ensemble cast, led by Paul Giamatti with his best rolein years, guides this winsome seriocomedy about a small-town lawyer and hisrelationship with a client’s wayward son. Sans thesmart-aleckiness of many Sundance-era indie comedies, writer-director TomMcCarthy (The Station Agent) fashions a subtly subversive film thatcelebrates the virtues of middle-class America while laying bare the unpleasantunderbelly of human frailties.

7. Drive: The pleasure of thisvehicle is a matter of style, not substance. It’s a hypnotic noir-ish fable told using muscle carsand a nihilistic L.A. tableau, with a Danish filmmaker channeling enoughHollywood influences – Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, William Friedkin, SteveMcQueen, Taxi Driver – to fill a film school syllabus.

8. Project Nim: Oscar-winning directorJames Marsh (Man on Wire)employs two rather ordinary documentary filmmaking devices – copious reels ofarchival footage and talking-head interviews – to assemble an extraordinaryexpose whose true, brilliant purpose is to reveal more about the flawed peopleat this story’s center than the titular real-life primate, removed from itsmother at birth and raised like a human child.

9. The Artist: French directorMichel Hazanavicius reaches back to filmmaking’s earliest format to veneratethe medium. Yes, the story itself is piffle. But, the transition from silentfilm to talkies speaks to an art form in which technological progress is bothconstructive and destructive.

10. Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows: Part 2: A suitable conclusion to the mega-popular franchise. But, whatsets this finale – which finds Harry is full Messianic bloom – apart is the utter symbiosis it both forms and acknowledges between art andaudience, underscoring the porous line between fiction and individualizedreality as insightful as François Ozon’s Swimming Pool or anything written by Charlie Kaufman.

Worst Film of the Year: Your Highness – So awful is this waste of celluloid andso misbegotten is its premise that it is barely conceivable that real studiosspent real money on it, or that real actors with real careers – James Franco,Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, even Danny McBride – wasted weeks out oftheir professional lives participating in this dumpster fire of a film.

Other Bottom Feeders– TheChange-Up; The Greatest Movie Ever Sold; I Am Number Four; Jack and Jill;Johnny English Reborn; Larry Crowne; Mr. Popper’s Penguins; One Day;Transformers: Dark of the Moon; Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1

Most Pleasant Surprises

50/50;Arthur Christmas; Captain America – The First Avenger; Crazy, Stupid, Love.;Everything Must Go; Fast Five; Horrible Bosses; Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol;Puss in Boots; Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Super 8; Warrior; Winnie thePooh

Most Disappointing

Cars2; Cowboys & Aliens; The Descendants; The Ides of March; Like Crazy; TowerHeist

War Horse

2011-12-22T22:36:00.001-05:00

A tearjerker she can't refuse

Grade: B +

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, PeterMullan, Emily Watson, Niels Arestrup, David Twewlis and Tom Hiddleston

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 26 min.

StevenSpielberg remains one of the most important and influential filmmakers inAmerican cinema. However, gone are the salad days when he redefined – nay,reinvented – the adventure and science-fiction genres before ably tackling suchweighty issues as the Holocaust, war, racism and terrorism. Spielberg hasn’tmade a feature film since Indiana Jonesand the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a dalliance with self-parody, and he hasn’tmade a good movie since 2005’s Munich.

Thisholiday season, Spielberg returns with two films that demonstrate the directionof his latter-day oeuvre. The Adventuresof Tintin resembles an over-caffeinated, animated installment of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Andthe handsome, soppy War Horse, basedon both Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel and the Tony Award-winning play ofthe same name, allows Spielberg, now in his mid-sixties, to check a few more itemsoff his cinematic bucket list. The director of Saving Private Ryan makes his World War I movie, borrowing from theantiwar works of Lewis Milestone, notably “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Hecontinues his \ John Ford worship with obvious visual homage to How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man that bookends the film.And Spielberg, ever the rank sentimentalist, saddles up his takes on Black Beauty and The Black Stallion with a story about, yes, a boy and his horse.

TedNarracott (Peter Mullan), a soddy, snockered farmer in pastoral Devonshire, England,squanders 30 guineas on the titular feisty foal, later named Joey, instead of aplow horse needed to save the family farm. Reared by the loving hand of Albert(Jeremy Irvine), Ted’s son, the half-thoroughbred eventually turns heads in thevillage by tilling the rocky farmland. When the turnip crop is washed out onthe eve of war’s outbreak, however, Ted sells Joey to the British army overAlbert’s teary objections.

Thefour-year odyssey that follows chronicles Joey’s stint on the French front,beginning as mount for a captain (Tom Hiddleston) in the English cavalry.Events lead Joey and his black stallion war buddy into a series of(mis)adventures, including the brief care of a sick French girl and her dottinggrandfather (Niels Arestrup) and harsh service in a German artillery unit whereexhausted equines are regularly and brutally put out of their misery. Accordingto most estimates, at least 6-8 million horses perished during World War I.

Spielbergadeptly captures the transitory nature of the Great War, one of the last foughtwith horses and swords. During a mounted cavalry charge through a Germanencampment, a British commander responds to the sound of rapid machine gun firefrom a nearby tree line with a look of stunned horror. Spielberg’s depiction oftrench warfare and fierce slogs across muddy battlefields is far less bloodythan Saving Private Ryan, but itstill effectively conveys the war’s sheer brutality.

Eschewingany overt nationalistic bent, War Horse remainsdistinctly neutral in its mission to demonize war, not people. After barbedwire entangles a harried, runaway Joey in the middle of no man’s land, thewarring squadrons call a temporary truce so a representative from each side canfree the wounded animal. “You speak good English,” says the British soldier; “Ispeak English well,” replies his German counterpart. When the two grunts settlea legitimate dispute over future possession of the horse by a simple coin flip,it’s a revealing distillation of the senselessness of waging war.

Therest of War Horse is held together bya glue of Spielberg schmaltz that’s easy to stick with – and sniffle through – untilit fosters a series false of endings and tidy contrivances, mostly involvingAlbert’s military service and his ceaseless search for pal Joey. However, eventhe sappy slow spots are varnished with the exquisite art direction of AndrewAckland-Snow (the Harry Potterseries) and Oscar-winner and longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski’sbrilliant cinematography. War Horse isa strikingly beautiful motion picture in the most classic sense, unaided by 3-Dor other visual accoutrements of the age. It is the work of an august artisanwho shows he still has a thing or two to teach the new generation of filmmakersonce weaned on his work.

Neil Morris

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-22T22:27:00.000-05:00

What's the OS for this strange tablet?

Grade: B –

Director: David Fincher

Starring: Daniel Craig, RooneyMara, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 38 min.

Thefirst installment in Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s posthumously publishedMillennium Trilogy is titled Mänsom hatar kvinnor, which translates to “Men Who Hate Women.” Nodescription better summarizes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, now giventhe usually dreaded “American remake” that is spared reflexive condemnationbecause it is directed by David Fincher, whose career is built upon the sort ofatmospheric examination of dark human impulses (Se7ven, Fight Club,Zodiac, etc.) that permeate every facet of Larsson’s nihilistic tome.

The enigmatic heart ofFincher’s Dragon Tattoo remains anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander (RooneyMara, fearlessly stepping into Noomi Rapace’s formidable Doc Martens), thetortured, fractured product of Sweden’s misogynistic ethos. Salander is aportrait of contrasts: emotionally disturbed yet intensely intelligent;antisocial yet longing for a genuine emotional relationship; a stunning beauty whocamouflages herself with piercings, black make-up, and body art.

Disgracedinvestigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is summoned to aprivate island owned by the Vanger clan, a dysfunctional family of wealthyindustrialists populated by ex-Nazis and sundry recluses. However, the realsecret that patriarch Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) commissions Blomkvistto solve is the disappearance of his grandniece Harriet nearly four decadesago.

The hunt for Harrietquickly expands into a whodunit involving the unsolved murders of several areawomen, a series of Biblical-based ritual killings reminiscent of the DeadlySins-themed slayings in Se7en. Salander, a surveillance specialist whoperformed Vanger’s exhaustive background check on Blomkvist, is enlisted to guidehim through the procedural paces. Their research – which comprises a lot ofstaring at computer screens, newspaper clippings and sepia-toned photos – givesrise to a relationship that slowly strips away the barriers Salander haserected to protect herself, particularly from men.

However, despite astory that still involves killers, rapists and Nazis (oh, my!), this Girl remainsas cold as its Swedish winterscape. Instead of a stylish exploration of thethemes – racism, religion, politics, social class, privacy and, of course,sexism – teeming on the plot’s tawdry surface, Fincher’s rather methodicaltreatment of Steve Zaillian’s somnolent screenplay doesn’t extend the audacity of anethereal opening credits sequence set to Trent Reznor’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s“Immigrant Song,” nor the kinkiness of a serial killer who cues up Enya’s“Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” as a prelude to slaughter. Mara is terrific, but theactors frequently appear to be mechanically hitting their marks, often inconspicuous proximity to copious product placement…unless Salander’s taste for Happy Meals™ is meant to be a metaphor for emotional infantilism.

Neil Morris

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

2011-12-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

ARC break...ARC BREAK!!

Grade: B +
Director: Brad Bird
Starring: Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, and Jeremy Renner
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hr. 13 min.

The mission at the heart of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol couldn’t be more clichéd: a race to stop a Russian megalomaniac from triggering nuclear war. However, I suspect that simplicity is by design, for it allows the audience to sit back, have fun and enjoy this action-packed ride.

The members of this edition of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) lineup are cast from an archetypal mold. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) returns as the embattled leader; Will Brandt (Jeremy Renner) is the newcomer who may be hiding secrets; Jane Carter (Paula Patton) is the feisty but sultry female seeking revenge for a murdered partner; and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), the one other holdover from the last film’s team, is the tech-head whose loquacious comic relief, initially bothersome, quickly becomes a needed respite from the sensory cacophony.

This fourth installment in the M:I franchise is directed by animation ace Brad Bird, whose work making The Incredibles showed his firm grasp of action-thriller tropes. Moreover, from Michael Giacchino’s heavy use of Lalo Schifrin’s iconic theme song – which all but disappeared during the previous two sequels – to the intricate, cloak-and-dagger undercover operations, Bird reclaims the familiar formula that made the original television series so popular.

That said, what makes Ghost Protocol the best entry yet in the film series is the dazzling, breathtaking and, yes, clever action that hits you mere seconds into the movie and never lets up (the opening sequence plus roughly 30 minutes of runtime were shot using IMAX cameras). Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team don’t just break into a building – they infiltrate the Kremlin. Ethan doesn’t just climb a skyscraper – he scales the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. There’s not just a car chase – there’s a high-speed pursuit through the middle of a sandstorm. And, all of it is accompanied by enough sleek cars and goofy gadgets to make James Bond jealous.

None of this is meant to imply that Ghost Protocol is an action movie classic. The plot is too slight and the characters too one-note, plus there’s the noticeable absence of a charismatic villain, that most essentially of actioner elements. At the same time, Bird breaks from familiarity just enough to keep the audience guessing. Things don’t always go smoothly for this IMF team – equipment breaks down and precision planning sometimes goes awry, prompting some white-knuckle improvisation. Ghost Protocol is a straightforward celebration of action, not the twisty thriller some may expect. As the Dean Martin standard asks, over a Russian prison break early in the film, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?”

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/qxZDx

The Descendants

2011-12-09T00:37:00.001-05:00

Quit ridin' my tailwind!

Grade: B –

Director: Alexander Payne

Starring: George Clooney, ShaileneWoodley, Amara Miller, Nick Krause, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Judy Greerand Robert Forster

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

Tonedoes not necessarily equate tenor. The Hawaii that the characters in AlexanderPayne’s The Descendants inhabit is acounterpoint to labored lives led by ordinary denizens of the idyllicarchipelago. Lest there be any confusion, this irony is driven home within thefirst minute of the film by the intrusive voice-over of Matt King (GeorgeClooney), a wealthy attorney who has taken up residence in the hospital room ofhis comatose wife, Elizabeth, critically injured in a boating accident.

Lessobvious, but more germane, is the contrast between Payne’s trademark breezinessand the crippling cynicism at the core of his latest portrait of middle-agedangst. Payne is a gifted writer and filmmaker, one of American cinema’s finestpurveyors of films with adults themes that are leavened with humor. His deftadaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings’ seriocomic 2007 novel makes for an entirelywatchable, sometimes poignant film that is already garnering critical praise.

There’sthe temptation to view The Descendants asa companion piece to Sideways,Payne’s last film. However, Paul Giamatti’s wine-sipping schlub was a divorcéstill desperately pining for true love. In Matt King, Payne – who haspersonally lived through marriage and divorce since making Sideways – presents a character who enjoys redemption only once hiswife is brain-dead and on a ventilator.

Thewobbly plot finds Matt, his two daughters, 17-year-old Alex (Shailene Woodley)and 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), and Alex’s slacker boyfriend Sid (NickKrause) on an island-hopping tour to inform Elizabeth’s friends and family theyshould bid their goodbyes before her doctors pull the plug. This mission makesa detour, however, once Matt learns that Elizabeth has been cheating on himwith a local real estate agent named Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard).

Thispersonal drama plays out against the backdrop of a larger family dilemma. Matt– whose grandmother was Hawaiian royalty and grandfather a white missionary – alsofaces a choice over the future of 25,000 acres of pristine land Kauai, passeddown to Matt and his flock of cousins by their native ancestors. Matt is soletrustee of the land but posed to accede to his family’s wishes to cash out toan out-of-state developer.

Theclosest comparison to The Descendants inPayne’s catalogue is actually AboutSchmidt, another film about an aging man confronting the loss of his wifeand trying to reconcile with an estranged daughter. However, Warren Schmidt’sfaults were so discernible and acute that they vindicate his late wife’sinfidelity and his daughter’s daffy search for emotional companionship.

Onthe other hand, Matt remains as unspoiled as his family’s noble acreage, a man withoutcontext whose problems are the product of strictly external sources. He remainsblameless for Elizabeth’s adultery largely because no explanation is providedbeyond her own selfish desires. He describes himself as “a backup parent,” butthis label isn’t self-critical so much as Payne’s way to insulate Matt fromfault for Alex’s misbehavior and substance abuse and Scottie’s potty mouth. Eventhe decision to take Elizabeth off life support isn’t a difficult decision forcedupon Matt, but instead one dictated by her living will, a choice Payne contortsinto her final, selfish act.

Meanwhile,the mute and vegetative Elizabeth is not given any credible advocate to speakon her behalf. Her friends were complicit in her affair, her dementia-sufferingmother can’t tell the difference between her daughter and “Queen Elizabeth,” andher father (Robert Forster) is a surly cuss whose harangue against Matt forbeing a bad husband is undercut the moment he ignorantly refers to Elizabeth asa “faithful wife.”

Throughout,a parade of the aggrieved – from Matt to Alex to Speer’s wife (Judy Greer) –take their respective turn at Elizabeth’s bedside hurling invective at her atrophyingcorpse. Although their insults are tinged with genuine pain, it’s still a spectaclethat witty banter and Hawaiian folk music can’t make less macabre. In The Descendants, the only thing standingin the way of domestic healing – and a family night spent snuggling on the sofato watch movies and eat ice cream – is a dead materfamilias. Call it the Houseof Payne.

Neil Morris

The Skin I Live In

2011-12-09T00:31:00.001-05:00

Silence of the Lambda

Grade: B –

Direcotor: Pedro Almodóvar

Starring: Antonio Banderas, ElenaAnaya, Marisa Paredes, Blanca Suarez and Jan Cornet

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr.

Likemost films by Pedro Almodóvar, the meaning behind The Skin I Live In has little to do with its actual plot. Perhaps harkeningsomewhat back to his more macabre early cinema, the 62-year-old directorpresents a rather mannered specimen of body horror, grafting what amounts to anantiseptic approximation of Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face – or an art-house version of The Human Centipede – onto a story thatis, in the end, All About Almodóvar.

InThe Skin I Live In, former castregular Antonio Banderas reteams with Almodóvar after a 21-year hiatus for a moviethat shares themes with their last collaboration, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, a plastic surgeonwho, after his wife’s fiery disfigurement and subsequent suicide, creates asynthetic skin derived from pig flesh that is resistant to heat, infection andother maladies. Although the scientific community shuns Ledgard’s discovery,the doctor has been secretly testing his developmental dermis on Vera (ElenaAnaya), a dainty brunette locked behind the gates of Ledgard’s Toledo manse. Vera,clad in a flesh-colored body stocking, wiles away her days by reading,practicing yoga and scrawling on the walls of her well-furnished but sterileone-room home, visible only via video surveillance monitored by Marilia (MarisaParedes), the doctor’s longtime housekeeper, and a two-way mirror separatingVera from Ledgard’s bedroom.

IsVera a patient or prisoner, a convalescing medical marvel or bride ofFrankenstein? Almodóvar caps the careful contrived mystery enveloping thefilm’s first act with the sudden arrival of Marilia’s fugitive son, a snarlingreprobate camouflaged in a carnival tiger costume who ravishes a helpless Vera.

Theseevents – including Ledgard’s reaction – segue into an extended flashback thatweaves the doctor’s traumatized daughter (Blanca Suarez) and her own (wrongfully-accused)rapist (Jan Cornet) into the narrative. This jarring background and the campyclimax that eventually follows provide explication, but at the expense ofnuance.

The Skin I Live In ishyper-realized illustration of Almodóvar’s fondness for sheer audiencemanipulation. It’s the only viable explanation for an erratic story that wouldhave more impact – and clarity – if its timeline was more linear. Instead,Almodóvar has other aims, toying with the viewers’ emotions and sexual mores. Actionsin the film’s first half that are teeming with titillation soon become objectsof repulsion, a metamorphosis triggered simply by storytelling and not anychange in onscreen personnel.

But,while the film is partly a mirror reflecting the audience’s psyche, it is morea window into Almodóvar’s. The director transforms this adaptation of TheirryJonquet’s novel Tarantula into aGrand Guignol film à clef. We learn offhandedlythat Vera’s last name is Cruz – indeed, the longer the film goes the more Anayaconspicuously resembles Almodóvar’s erstwhile muse Penelope (who was onceslated to play Vera).

ThroughLedgard, Almodóvar projects his own creative complexities, an exercise thatmanages to be both self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. Viewed cynically, heessentially equates actors with livestock – swine, if you will – that onlymature through the guidance of his nurturing hands. At the same time, Almodóvarjuxtaposes the chaos of creation with the beauty it can yield. For Ledgard(and, by extension, Almodóvar), Vera is no mere muse. She – like the recurrentmembers of the filmmaker’s renowned acting stable – is an objet d'art, a work ofsplendor born out of brilliance, obsession and, yes, madness.

Still,none of this makes The Skin I Live morethan a bizarre but surprisingly bloodless curio in its auteur’s oeuvre. Absentits distinctive tableau and knotty plot twists, the film is a must-see only forAlmodóvar diehards. Everyone else will be left wondering whether Javier Bardemhas ever gone by the nickname El Tigre.

Neil Morris

Hugo

2011-11-24T00:14:00.001-05:00

How are we supposed to watch this

without tinted glasses?

Grade: B
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen and Jude Law
MPAA Rating: PG
Running Time: 2 hr. 7 min.

Like a codger lecturing his grandson about the way things were “back in my day,” Martin Scorsese's first film for children (and 3-D) is a journey traversing cinema’s early history. The ironic brilliance of Hugo is that Scorsese appropriates the en vogue visual technology of today’s movies to preserve that history and venerate pioneers of the medium.

Adapted from Brian Selznick’s 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the eponymous orphan (played by Asa Butterfield) lives in secret behind the walls of a 1930s Paris train station (the Gare Montparnasse, although nameless in the film). After the death of his horologist father (Jude Law in flashback), Hugo is adopted by his drunkard uncle and conscripted into a life spent tending the station’s intricate system of clocks, a job Hugo alone eventually assumes under the nose of the station’s fastidious inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Along the way, Scorsese peruses the relationships between the station’s denizens with Altmanesque flair, the camera drifting amongst the assortment of artisans, merchants and musicians.

One such trader is Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), a cantankerous toy salesman who discovers Hugo has been stealing parts in order to complete an unfinished clockwork automaton left to the boy by his father. With the help of Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), Méliès’ goddaughter and a bookworm with a proclivity for big words, Hugo discovers that the old toymaker is actually the renowned, real-life French filmmaker famous for his early use of special effects and one of the first to marry cinema with fantasy. However, most of Méliès’ films would be lost or destroyed in the wake of World War I. Now a broken, bitter man, Méliès fights to forget his past at the same time Hugo discovers the wonders of film, starting when he and Isabelle sneak into a screening of 1923’s Safety Last, with its iconic shot of Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock.

Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson craft a vivid universe and employ cutting-edge visuals to illuminate a couple of rail sequences: a dreamscape re-creation of the famous 1895 derailment at Gare Montparnasse, and a rendering of the Lumiere brothers’ 1897 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat that exploits 3-D to produce the sensation of audiences of the era who, according to legend, felt the train coming straight at them.

The symbolism is heavy throughout – the incessant clock motif juxtaposes mortality with art’s timelessness, while the automaton embodies man’s impulse to, like God, create in his own image. Hugo succeeds most, however, as an advert for cinephilia and Scorsese’s important film preservation effort. It springs life when recounting Méliès’ salad days of blazing cinematic trails on makeshift sets, celebrating the joy of moviemaking and its rightful place as a true art form.

Otherwise, there’s a mechanical feel to the tableau, as if it’s missing a few key components needed to complete the enchanting kids movie it augurs to be. Hugo forgets the fact that a youngster’s first love of cinema is sparked by thrills and wonderment, not a dissertation. After all, despite Scorsese’s beatification, Méliès’ movies were nonetheless the stuff of mermaids, space aliens and fire-breathing dragons.

Neil Morris

Arthur Christmas

2011-11-24T00:12:00.001-05:00

Gullible's Travels

Grade: B +

Director: Sarah Smith

Starring the voices of: JamesMcAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy and Hugh Laurie

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 37 min.

Awinterscape of wit and winsomeness, Aardman Animations' Arthur Christmas careens into the well-populated yuletide moviegenre but manages to cordon off its own corner of the Santa mythos. The mostbrilliant stroke of Peter Baynham (Borat)and director Sarah Smith’s screenplay is reimagining the title of Santa Clausas a royal lineage, an ancestral birthright passed from father to son overgenerations.

Thecurrent Kris Kringle (voiced by Jim Broadbent) is a detached old elf on theverge passing the crown to Steve (Hugh Laurie), his eldest heir and already thede facto Santa. Steve, sporting aChristmas-tree groomed goatee and Versace camouflaged tights, has modernizedthe gift assembly and distribution process with military-type precision,including elves who rappel commando-style into kid’s homes and parking the woodsleigh and reindeer in lieu of a mammoth hovercraft named the “S-1.”

Whenmechanization fails to deliver a new bike to Gwen in the tiny hamlet of Trelaw,England (not Mexico, as several characters will discover), Steve chalks up themishap as an acceptable margin of error. This does not sit well with Arthur(James McAvoy), Santa’s goofy, diffident son, whose throwaway job of correspondingwith “Dear Santa” letter writers coincides nicely with his idealistic notionsof Christmas.

So,Arthur and his crotchety Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) dust off the old, leadpaint-covered sleigh and embark on a trip to Cornwall deliver Gwen’s giftbefore sun-up and the child’s disappointment. The journey routes them throughCanada – “Nobody lives there,” explains the eldest Claus – and as manyunintentional detours as their faulty GPS suggests. While a seeminglyimpossible task, Grandsanta reminds Arthur “They used to say it was impossibleto teach women to read!”

Indeed,the presence of the pure-hearted yet daft and out-of-date Grandsanta alludes tothe male-centricity of the Santa lore and the traditional holiday stories thathave sprung around it. The lesson of ArthurChristmas is not progress is bad, but that progress that forsakes one’score values isn’t progressive.

Thecelebrity voice-work is terrific throughout, particularly McAvoy, Broadbent andNighy, who all adapt splendidly to the animated medium. The story speeds alongat an over-caffeinated pace, which nearly makes for sensory overload whencoupled with the 3-D visuals. But, it also knows when to slow down and balancethe silliness with sentimentality. Clever enough to support repeat viewings, Arthur Christmas is a cinematic giftthat keeps on giving.

Neil Morris

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

2011-11-19T21:49:00.001-05:00

T-minus 10 nanoseconds to shirt jettison

Grade: D

Director: Bill Condon

Starring: Kristen Stewart, RobertPattinson and Taylor Lautner

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 57 min.

Newad posters for the upcoming Muppets movie picture Kermit and Co. in sendups ofthe Twilight films – e.g., Miss Piggyas “Bella Swine.” And, a recent episode of the new Beavis and Butt-Head opens with the slackers watching Twilight in a movie theater – “Is Bellaa zombie?” Beavis asks. “She’s always standing there with her mouth open.”

Intruth, nothing about these lampoons is half as parodical as the alreadyhaughtily titled The Twilight Saga:Breaking Dawn – Part 1. I write this knowing full well that nothing in thisreview will affect whether or not anyone plunks down their hard-earned cash tocatch the fourth installment in what feels like a never-ending franchise. Fansof the popular book series still literally squeal with delight at any cinematicappearance by Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson)and the habitually shirtless Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

Ihave never read any of the Twilightnovels, but far from making me somehow unqualified to assess their filmadaptations, it actually affords me an objectivity needed to grade the movieson their own merit. And, objectively speaking, Breaking Dawn – Part 1 stinks. It is a languid mess on virtuallyevery account – plot, acting, script, set design, special effects and a bloatedscore from Carter Burwell that sounds as if it was written for another movieentirely, intruding on every scene and sometimes drowning out the dialogue.

Thefilm opens with the long-awaited wedding between Edward and Bella, a woodlandoccasion that director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls,Gods and Monsters) clearly spent mostof his budget and attention designing. Jacob stops by to dance and pout beforethe newlyweds are whisked away for their honeymoon on a small island off thecoast of Brazil.

Afraidhe will literally ravish Bella to death during lovemaking, Edward channels his vampireimpulses into turning the four-poster martial bed into nothing but feathers andsplinters while consummating their marriage. His seed isn’t so restrained, however,and Bella quickly finds herself with a bloodsucker in the oven, much to thesurprise of Edward, who over his century of existence apparently missed out onsex education. It’s hard to decide what is more antiquated – Edward’s Victoriansexual repression or the fact that he still uses Yahoo as his internet searchengine.

WithBella soon barricaded inside the Cullen compound, forces align over the fate ofher rapidly gestating baby. The flea-bitten Quileutes conspire to destroy thesatanic spawn, while Jacob – surprise – breaks with his pack and forms anotheruneasy alliance with Edward for the sake of saving Bella.

Breaking Dawn – Part 1 notonly completes morphing the story’s virginal angst subtext from themetaphorical to the literal, but it takes up a radically pro-life mantle –Bella refuses to abort her baby, even though her life may depend on it. In oneof many episodes of high camp, Bella starts sating her fetus’ parasiticappetite by sucking blood decanted into a Styrofoam cup.

Thefilm continues the Twilight saga’s tedioustouchstones of vapid brooding, meaningless reaction shots and blurry CGskirmishes – the werewolves speak in some garbled, digitized baritone thatsounds like Michael Clarke Duncan in Planetsof the Apes. What’s different is the sheer silliness of it all, as if thistime around the filmmakers decided to double-down on the inherent self-parody.Jacob rips his shirt off in the prologue, Bella’s dad (Billy Burke) is evenmore clueless than usual and the Cullens’ white face makeup resembles NormaDesmond in Sunset Boulevard.

Andthe good news is that we get to do it all again next year. A mid-credits teaserhints at the plot turn at the heart of BreakingDawn – Part 2. No matter – you can already count me as a member of TeamTiresome.

Neil Morris

*Originallypublished at www.indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/tdQ69

Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011-11-19T21:44:00.001-05:00

If a murderous, mind-controlled rapist threatens you,

use this gun to...uh, never mind...

Grade: B

Director: Sean Durkin

Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, JohnHawkes, Maria Dizzia and Hugh Dancy

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

Theunsettling soul of Martha Marcy MayMarlene is best captured by its enigmatic bookends. A seemingly inscrutabletitle effectively conveys the absolute loss of identity suffered by its femaleprotagonist, followed by an open-ended denouement that – while certain tofrustrate audiences – nonetheless leaveslittle doubt about the young girl’s ultimate fate.

Inbetween is a haunting, harrowing tale that shares parallels with Winter’s Bone, last year’s indie awardsdarling, beyond their shared Sundance Institute genesis and the common castingof John Hawkes. Both films use rural settings and anxious atmospherics to tellthe tales of young women grappling with a loss of family and innocence, alongwith the sinister forces that fill the void.

Writer-directorSean Durkin rotates between two timelines, at times cutting away within scenesand even single shots, in the life of Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), a young womanwho flees a controlling cult located in the Catskill Mountains during thefilm’s opening scene. A desperate Martha telephones Katie (Maria Dizzia), herolder sister, who brings Martha to live with her and newlywed husband Ted (HughDancy) at the couple’s lakeside Connecticut vacation home.

Thenarrative swings between Martha’s attempt to assimilate into her sister’s lifeafter a two-year absence and flashbacks to Martha’s introduction and eventualindoctrination into the cruel cult run by Patrick (Hawkes), the group’s Mansonicleader. Durkin’s depiction of life at the commune is both clever anddisconcerting, a slow immersion that emulates Patrick’s hold over his cadre of subservientwomen. When Martha is introduced to Patrick, his seemingly harmless salutation– “You look like a Marcy May.” – is the deliberate first step in a gradual brainwashingprocess. Durkin’s portrayal is so measured that the audience soon becomes asnumb as Martha / Marcy May to the cult’s horrors.

Durkinwisely places more value on a dread of the unseen. When Patrick coaxes MarcyMay into shooting a sickly cat, we never see the kitty but only hear itsplaintive meow. “He only has boys,” Marcy May casually responds to a new convert’sobservation that all of Patrick’s infant children are male, leaving it to theaudience’s imagination to decipher an awful truth.

What’squite clear, however, is that while Katie holds a natural concern for hersister, she also exudes a chronic self-absorption that betrays the domesticstrife that once drove Martha to consider a cloistered cult as a surrogatefamily. Still, that insight is obvious during Martha’s first breakfast withKatie and Ted – the rest of the time is filled with so many repetitive demonstrationsof Martha’s fractured psyche and Katie’s insensitivity that you eventually feelcompelled to scream, “Somebody call a shrink!”

Olsen’sperformance throughout is somber and self-assured, a promising debut encouragedperhaps by her own efforts to escape the suffocating shadow – and cult ofpersonality – of older siblings. Olsen was busy attending the Tisch School ofthe Arts and Atlantic Theater Company in New York while sisters Mary-Kate andAshley were making bad movies, gaudy fashion and tabloid headlines. If nothingelse, Martha Marcy May Marlene carvesout Elizabeth’s own identity – here’s hoping her story has a happy ending.

Neil Morris

*Originallypublished at www.indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/7QYZ5

Like Crazy

2011-11-19T21:41:00.001-05:00

Maybe they'll let us live together in international waters

Grade: B –

Director: Drake Doremus

Starring: Anton Yelchin, FelicityJones, Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Bewley

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Themutual affection for the music of Paul Simon that Jacob (Anton Yelchin) andAnna (Felicity Jones) share in Like Crazyis an ironic giveaway about this post-Graduatetale of the power of love – for better and for worse.

Thetwo college kids meet while Anna is a British exchange student studying in LosAngeles. As visa entanglements and other circumstances conspire to keep themapart, it eventually becomes clear that both Jacob and Anna thrive more,personally and professionally, while separated from each other and, indeed, in thearms of substitute lovers (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Bewley,respectively).

Still,each are like moths drawn to the other’s flame, locked in a quest to recapture theinextricable and elusive je ne said quoi ofunbridled love, to both exhilarating and corrosive effect. Nevertheless, writer-directorDrake Doremus’ Sundance-winning drama moves at a turgid pace, with Jacob andAnna remaining more an intriguing concept than fully realized characters.Eventually, the sounds of silence drown out the interest we’re meant to hold inthis self-interested duo.

Neil Morris

Jack and Jill

2011-11-12T15:54:00.003-05:00

Xenu said there'd be days like this

Grade: D –

Director: Dennis Dugan

Starring: Adam Sandler, Al Pacino,Katie Holmes, Nick Swardson and Eugenio Derbez

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

At the heart of Adam Sandler’s latest comedic romp, Jack and Jill, are lessons about the extricable bonds of family and the existential duality of the human soul, encapsulated under the guise of…oh, who the heck am I kidding?

The degree of celebrity and financial success that Sandler continues to amass as aresult of films that are increasingly and resoundingly putrid is fascinating only if one day we learn that the entirety of Sandler’s career was one big lampoon of Hollywood: a marginally talented star spoon-feeds producers and moviegoers a steady diet of clichéd scripts, awful actors, lazy filmmaking and offensive material,and they keep coming back for more.

If this were somehow true, then Jack and Jill would represent Sandler’s attempt to see just how low his fans will go. The cross-dressing comedy hasn’t truly worked since Tootsie, but that doesn’t stop Sandler and the indefensible Dennis Dugan from slapping on a dress and foisting this affront to the medium. Set around the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah seasons, Los Angeles ad exec Jack Sadelstein (Sandler) ruefully awaits the annual arrival of Jill (Sandler in a wig, makeup, fat suit and grating accent), his identical twin sister. Jill is loud, needy, embarrassing and obnoxious – frankly, a scene in which she talks loudly on her cell phone in a movie theater make her fair game for ridicule. But, she’s still preferable to Jack, who is regularly and inexplicably cruel to Jill, giddy when his adopted son punches her in the face and when she crash-lands a jet ski outside his pool.

In other words, the audience isn’t given a reason to like either sibling or, for that matter, anyone else in this dumpster fire of a movie. Jack’s throwaway family includes dim bulb wife Erin (Katie Holmes, grinning mindlessly) and an adopted moppet from India who has a bizarre but pointless fetish for Scotch-taping objects, including animals, to his body.

The first fart joke comes during the opening credits, eventually metastasizing into a full-blown diarrhea gag after Jill scarfs down some chimichangas. And Sandler trots out his usual unholy triumvirate: choppy editing, useless celebrity cameos and casual racism. Famed Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez is ethnically emasculated, playing a gardener who cracks wise about crossing the border inside a car trunk and takes Jill to a gathering of la familia that features piñatas and an one-toothed old woman revived from unconsciousness by shoving red chili peppers in her mouth.

Playing himself, Al Pacino becomes infatuating with Jill after spying her at a Lakers basketball game and embarks on an extended, fanatical courtship. Rehashing lines from The Godfather and donning Tony Montana’s black suit from Scarface eventually devolves into watching the acting legend tickle-fight with the cross-dressing Sandler inside a medieval castle and perform a rap routine in a commercial for flavored coffee.

While Pacino’s presence here seemingly represents a new nadir in his career, he manages to turn this utter rubbish into something oddly satirical. He tackles each scene with such gusto that you soon realize that while Sandler is paying slapdash homage, Pacino has something more cunning in mind. He turns the film’s inanity to his advantage, spoofing his onscreen personas as a means toward skewering the entire Hollywood system. Jill consoles Pacino after smashing his Oscar statuette by reminding him that “you must have others.” “You’d think it,”he deadpans. “But no.” Later, Pacino longingly recalls his native New York City, lamenting L.A. as a place “where all the palm trees look the same” and productions of Richard III feature Bruce Jenner as Lord Hastings.

In spite of itself, Jack and Jill will likely fetch Sandler another big payday. Still, when Pacino appears in a NYC bar at film’s end dressed as Don Quixote and starts tilting a ceiling fan, it’s a joke that’s too smart for the room and more self-aware than a movie that’s (literally) full of shit deserves.

Neil Morris

Anonymous

2011-11-04T00:26:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth: The Olden Age

Grade: C +

Director: Roland Emmerich

Starring: Rhys Ifans, VanessaRedgrave, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, David Thewlis, and Edward Hogg

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

Thead tagline for Anonymous – “WasShakespeare a Fraud?” – conveys both the substance and problem with this campyhistorical dramatization. Rehashing a decades-old conspiracy over the trueauthor of the works attributed to actor and playwright William Shakespeare, directorRoland Emmerich foists a distended viewpoint of the so-called Oxfordians, a vocalminority who argue that Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford, wrotethe plays and poems attributed to the Bard of Avon.

WhileEmmerich, the longtime doyen of bombastic end-of-the-world disaster flicks, mightseem inapposite to such literary designs, the premise of “Anonymous” is no lessabsurd than 2012, Independence Day, or The Day After Tomorrow. Emmerich’simplicit contention is that the factual license and tawdry palace intrigue atthe heart of this film is no different than the liberties Shakespeare (orwhoever) took with historical events for the sake of such seminal dramas as Henry VIII, Richard III, and JuliusCaesar. Emmerich establishes his perspective in Anonymous’ opening scene, when Derek Jacobi steps onto acontemporary stage to deliver a prologue as actors busy themselves behind thecurtain to launch the rest of the story. [It’s ironic – and a bit sad – to seeJacobi, who owes much of his acting career to the Bard, smear Shakespeare’sname by claiming he never advanced beyond a grade school education and asking,“What if I told you that Shakespeare never wrote a single word?”]

Intruth, historical slavishness should not be art’s critique. The problem, ofcourse, is that while Shakespeare regales us with the St. Crispin’s Day speechfrom Henry V and Marc Antony’s eulogyin Julius Caesar, Emmerich andscreenwriter John Orloff (A Mighty Heart)has Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans) whining that “I’d go mad if I didn’t write downthe voices.”

Becauseof his royal station and proper society’s taboo against writers, de Vere keepshis predilection secret. He also recruits playwright Ben Jonson (SebastianArmesto) to publish de Vere’s works under Jonson’s name. However, the audience’sexhortation following the debut of HenryV impulsively prompts William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a middling actorand cad, to dip his fingers in ink and take a bow. The rest is Emmerich’sversion of history.

Emmerich’sbranding of Shakespeare as an illiterate commoner not worthy or capable ofpenning words that could only have been wrought by aristocracy is elitist enough.However, the true transgression of Anonymousis not its shaky verisimilitude but the convoluted vehicle is uses to tell itskitschy tale. Shakespeare’s emergence takes place against the backdrop of apower struggle over the court of Queen Elizabeth I (played in her later yearsby Vanessa Redgrave). De Vere’s true motivation for revealing his plays to thepublic is the subtle promotion of Robert Devereux (Sam Reid) as Elizabeth’swould-be successor in lieu of a candidate preferred by the queen’s ministers, WilliamCecil (David Thewlis) and, after William’s death, his hunchback son Robert(Edward Hogg).

DeVere, whose relationship with Elizabeth figures prominently, is portrayed bythree different actors as the film oscillates across as many time periods.There are betrayals, blackmails, intricate plots, illegitimacy, incest and evena bit of bear-baiting for good measure. Monitoring who is friend or foe isdifficult enough – keeping track of their machinations proves an exercise infutility.

Thecostumes and computer-enhanced rendering of 16^th-century London are suitablyrealistic – the opulence is lavish, and at times you can practically smell thegrim. However, Anonymous reaches itszenith during Emmerich’s productions of Shakespeare’s plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night – using actors that include Royal Shakespeare Companyveteran Mark Rylance. These brief glimpses ably capture the beauty and grandeurof Shakespeare in a way that, ironically, makes any debate over his identityfeel trivial by comparison. Shakespeare belongs to the ages; Anonymous belongs in a tabloid.

Neil Morris

Tower Heist

2011-11-04T00:20:00.000-04:00

From 48 Hrs. to 15 Mins.

Grade: C –

Director: Brett Ratner
Starring: Ben Stiller, EddieMurphy, Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena and GaboureySidibe

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

Theacting nebbish populating the comedy caper TowerHeist are ill-equipped for director Brett Ratner’s persistent butever-inadequate action movie propensities. At the same time, Ratner and (count‘em) four credited writers extract comic ore from their cast with the precisionof a dragline. The result is a movie with an identity crisis whose edgiesttrait is its stupefying dullness.

JoshKovacs (Ben Stiller) is building manager for a Manhattan high-rise whoseemployees lose their pension to a Ponzi scheme run by Madoff doppelgangerArthur Shaw (Alan Alda), the tower’s penthouse occupant. Once the fed’s caseagainst Shaw starts crumbling, Josh and four coworkers (Matthew Broderick,Casey Affleck, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe), aided by a motor-mouthedex-con (Eddie Murphy), conspire to rob Shaw’s condo of ill-gotten loot.

Asthe hole-ridden plot staggers from one half-baked scene to another, its starsare left to yammer and mug for the camera in a desperate group salvageoperation. The biggest heist here happens whenever someone buys a ticket towatch millionaire performers make a meager movie about stealing other people’smoney.

Neil Morris

Puss in Boots

2011-10-30T11:14:00.006-04:00

Hard Boiled or A Good Egg: The Humpty Dumpty Story

Grade: B

Director: Chris Miller

Starring the voices of: AntonioBanderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Amy Sedaris

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

With its conspicuous dearth of inside jokes, gross-out gags and pop culture references, there’s little in the long-gestating Shrek spinoff Puss in Boots to link it to its animated antecedent. No Donkey, no Gingerbread Man, or certainly no oafish green ogre pops in for a cheeky cameo, leaving it to the titular swashbuckling feline to carry Dreamworks Animation’s latest fractured fairy tale on his furry hindpaws. Given Shrek’s latest lackluster sequels, perhaps a bit of distance isn’t such a bad idea.

What’s surprising is that Puss in Boots, once conceived as a straight-to-video money grab following Shrek 2, is entertaining and technically proficient, a tale of friendship and betrayal rendered with luminous visuals that make effective use of today’s pervasive – and sometimes intrusive – 3D technology.

Director Chris Miller, last seen helming the woeful Shrek the Third, redeems himself with this origin story about Puss (voiced brilliantly by Antonio Banderas), a castoff reared in a Mexican orphanage with his childhood best friend Humpty Dumpty (an equally vivacious Zach Galifianakis). The two scamps eventually part ways after Puss wins the praise of townsfolk for saving an old woman from a rampaging bull, leading an envious Humpty to betray Puss by tricking him into taking part in a local bank robbery that lands Humpty in jail and sends the wanted Puss into a life of Zorro-esque escapades.

The two set aside their animosity to team up with a sultry cat burglar named Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and steal three neon-green magic beans from Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris, respectively), here a burly, surly couple who bicker over Jill’s ticking biological clock. The trio plan to plantthe beans and climb the legendary beanstalk to a castle in the clouds in order to snatch the aurum-laying golden goose from its colossal Mother.

Catlovers will appreciate the sight gags designed to juxtapose Puss’ preening mojo with his innate feline tendencies – he involuntarily chases a flashlight spot, perfects a dance called The Litterbox, and laps his milk from a shot glass. Meanwhile,the dynamic visuals work on every level, from the detailed close-ups of Puss’ auburn coat to cleverly-choreographed rooftop and canyon chases and an ascentup the high-rising beanstalk.

The plot itself is a by-the-numbers trifle that bears the additional burden of being already bloated by the time Mother Goose starts marauding Puss’ hometown. It doesn’t approach even a middling Pixar effort or, for that matter, such Dreamworks’recent entrées as How to Train YourDragon and Kung Fu Panda. Still, thanks to a breezy pace, stunning palette, and Banderas and Galifianakis’ vocal energy, Puss in Boots is better than you’d have any right to expect it to be. And in today’s animated filmmaking landscape, that passes for purr-fect.

Neil Morris

enm007@gmail.com

Johnny English Reborn

2011-10-30T11:11:00.000-04:00

No, you can't put lipstick on a pig

Grade: D

Starring: Rowan Atkinson, DominicWest, Rosamund Pike, Gillian Anderson, and Daniel Kaluuya

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

Souseless is Johnny English Reborn thatit is unnecessary to rehash how the kitschy iconography of the James Bondmovies is beyond parody (the same thing could be said about James Bond spoofs,for that matter).

RowanAtkinson’s titular Clouseau clone is recalled from Asian exile to crack a plotto kill the Chinese premier. Director Oliver Parker once cut his teeth adaptingShakespeare and Oscar Wilde for the silver screen. Here, aside from asemi-watchable set piece or two, he foists a steady series of groin kicks,animal gags and reaction shots. Frankly, any actor’s presence in thisunoriginal, utterly unfunny rubbish is a sign of their shaky career status –I’m looking at you, Gillian Anderson.

Whilethe ineptness is expected, what’s surprising is the low-grade xenophobia thatperiodically rears its nasty head. A female Asian assassin masquerades as acleaning lady – the sound of a vacuum cleaner precedes her recurringentrée – while Johnny brands Tucker, anAfrican immigrant and the spy’s new sidekick, a “clever boy” and, the firsttime they meet, “someone to carry my bag.”

As a spysendup the film is unnecessary; as a comedy it’s the equivalent of beingrepeatedly kicked in the gonads, which is, not coincidentally, one of itsfrequent go-to gags. Simply put, JohnnyEnglish Reborn should have stayed dead and buried.

Neil Morris

Footloose

2011-10-17T22:11:00.001-04:00

Coming soon: The Dukes of Hazzard 2

Grade: B -
Director: Craig Brewer
Starring: Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell and Miles Teller
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hr. 53 min.

The opening moments of Craig Brewer’s Footloose gives something old and something new. It begins with a static close-up of sneakers stomping on a beer-smeared dance floor strewn with crushed Dixie cups, gettin’ footloose to the familiar strains of Kenny Loggins’ smash title track. The nostalgic mood is abruptly interrupted, however, when a carload of teenagers leaving the dance party are killed in a head-on collision.

In response, the city council of sleepy Bomont, Ga., led by Presbyterian minister Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid), whose son was killed in the crash, passes a series of ordinances intended to prevent the teen revelry town elders blame for the tragedy. Restrictions include a curfew and prohibitions against loud music, public alcohol consumption and, most of all, lewd and lascivious dancing.

Brewer (Hustle & Flow; Black Snake Moan) places his affinity for Southern settings front and center. He transplants the original film’s fictional Utah locale to a Georgia burg perched, like so many cities in the Deep South, on transcending its traditional race, class and religious divisions.

The impetus for Bomont, GA’s prohibitions are more believable than the sheer fundamentalist bent at the heart of the 1984 film. And, while Brewer goes to great lengths to incorporate the original soundtrack throughout - sometimes in their original form, sometimes rerecorded with new artists - he also mixes in a contemporary blend of country, rock and hip-hop, backed by performers ranging from Blake Shelton to Smashing Pumpkins to Wiz Khalifa. The hoofing itself now runs the gambit from parking lot krumping to country line. Even the memorable tractor battle is changed to a school bus demolition derby.

Still, despite this tinkering around the edges as well as Brewer’s distinctive gritty palette, Footloose’s basic plot remains otherwise unchanged and just as hokey. Boston boy Ren McCormick (Kenny Wormald) moves to town sporting shades, a 21 Jump Street hairdo and a big-city attitude. Trouble comes his way after he plays his music too loud and, more precariously, dances too close with Ariel (Julianne Hough), the preacher’s flamboyant daughter who fancies halter tops and red cowboy boots.

It falls to this rebel without to rumba to woo Ariel, beat back her roughneck boyfriend and try to convince the council to rescind its bans via a speech that finds Ren quoting Psalms and Ecclesiastes. As in his previous features, Brewer’s characters often veer into caricature, especially Ren’s new friend Willard (Miles Teller) and the rest of the hayseeds in Bomont, a place where folks still work at the cotton gin and call each other “darlin.” And, for all the director’s heightened attention to verisimilitude, the town is some alternate Southern universe where there is no hint of racial tension.

Wormald and Hough make an alluring pair, and while their acting won’t wow audiences, their energetic bump-and-grinding will titillate viewers of both sexes. Is it all corny? Yes, but Brewer makes it OK for everybody to cut Footloose...just fight that feeling of deja vu.

Neil Morris

The Thing

2011-10-17T22:08:00.003-04:00

Who ya gonna call? E.T.-busters!

Grade: C -
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 43 min.

Considering it pits its heroine against a ravenous space alien whose man-eating orifice resembles a vagina dentata, you’d be forgiven for believing The Thing actually contains a thing or two to think about. Or at the very least, something substantive to differentiate itself from John Carpenter’s 1982 identically titled film (which itself was a remake of the 1951 horror classic, The Thing from Another World).

This Thing is a prequel in name only, with just a time stamp at the beginning and a closing credits kicker to let you know it precedes by three days the events in Carpenter’s picture. Otherwise, the film, directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., is pointless for the polar opposite reasons the Carpenter remake was so frightening and successful. The 1982 movie was made during the height of Carpenter’s heyday and benefited from the director’s once-deft suspenseful touch, a terrific cast, Ennio Morricone’s haunting score and Rob Bottin’s truly cringe-inducing makeup effects.

The “prequel” features direction that’s as cold as its Antarctic setting, unremarkable actors, and a forgettable soundtrack except whenever it incorporates Morricone’s pulsating bass chords. Moreover, gooey prosthetics are replaced by computer effects that, while competent, lack any requisite ickiness.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (well-played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited by snarky scientist Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) to drop everything on a day’s notice and fly to Antarctica to rendezvous with a Norwegian scientific team. Given Kate’s thin resume and Sander’s clear contempt for her, it’s never clear why she is invited. Nevertheless, the expedition’s purpose is to inspect a major discovery: a buried spaceship that crashed to Earth thousands of years ago and, more importantly, the corpse of its alien pilot encased in ice.

Once the team, joined Carter (Joel Edgerton), their American pilot, exhumes the frozen E.T. and transports its glacial sarcophagus back to base, you know bad things are bound to happen. Once awoken, it turns out the carnivorous creature has an appetite for ingesting its prey and then replicating itself to look like any life form it assimilates.

Like the shape-shifting alien, The Thing absorbs its predecessor and spits out a pale carbon copy. The plot remains the same creature feature version of And Then There Were None. Sequences are conspicuously lifted wholesale from Carpenter’s film, survivors still wield flamethrowers that fizzle at the most inopportune times and the friend-or-foe conceit lacks much emotional punch when the humans aren’t particularly interesting to begin with.

What’s especially discouraging is that the film flounders even more the few times it fancies a notion to break away from its predecessor’s moorings, such as a meaningless late-film foray to the alien mother ship. That said, kudos to the filmmakers for making Kate the smartest person in the room and not turning her into a sniveling scream queen. As The Thing demonstrates, if you’re going to make a copycat sci-fi movie, there are far worse ideas than including an imitation Ellen Ripley.

Neil Morris

The Ides of March

2011-10-08T13:40:00.000-04:00

A Pretty Face in the Crowd

The Ides of March
Grade: B -
Starring: Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

Despite the implication of its title, George Clooney's new film, The Ides of March, is only obliquely connected to the mother of all tales of political skulduggery, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It does have a Brutus, however, a 30-year-old political operative named Stephen Myers, the media adviser to the presidential primary campaign of Mike Morris, ultra-liberal governor of Pennsylvania.

Buoyed by populist positions on the environment and America's oil dependency, Morris (played by Clooney) is the front-runner for the Democratic Party's nomination heading into the crucial Ohio primary in the month of March. Morris is also an avowed atheist, setting the film sometime around the year, I dunno, Not in My Lifetime A.D.

We're constantly told that Stephen (played by the suddenly ubiquitous Ryan Gosling) is a political wunderkind. Still, the only proof provided of his genius is a cynical national service scheme, breakable since those impacted by Morris’ failure to implement the program aren’t old enough to vote. Of course, this ignores the fact that both they and the parents left footing the bill will be able to vote in four years during President Morris’ reelection.

In the midst of the Ohio campaign, Stephen succumbs to the advances of Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), a fetching 20-year-old intern and daughter of the DNC's chairman. It is also around this time that he makes the ludicrously naive mistake of agreeing to a clandestine meeting with Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the campaign manager for Morris' opponent, a fact Stephen fails to promptly reveal to his boss and mentor, Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The series of betrayals and recriminations that follow push the film through its suspenseful paces.

The Ides of March is an adaptation of Beau Willimon's 2008 play Farragut North, loosely based on the 2004 campaign of Howard Dean. Directed by Clooney from a screenplay he wrote with his Good Night, and Good Luck collaborator Grant Heslov, the film is a polished potboiler that produces moments of brilliance—a scene in which Morris receives a call from a deceased character's cellphone during the press conference assembled to announce that person's death is a sequence that would do Hitchcock proud.

Otherwise, Clooney's films still have a tendency to lurch and discount nuance in a trite, often ham-fisted hunt for the big twist or big metaphor. Characters rendezvous at public park benches for top-secret meetings. Air turbulence during a plane flight is conjoined with the onset of trouble in the Morris campaign. At the conclusion of one scene, Clooney holds the image of Stephen's silhouette cast against the backdrop of a giant American flag a beat too long, to the point that any symbolism of the moment starts giving way to parody.

Nevertheless, Clooney's main asset as a director is his power to recruit a crackerjack cast. Hoffman and Giamatti are utterly at ease playing wily but burned-out politicos—I left wanting a movie that focused on them. Wood gives her best performance since The Wrestler, even if Molly is written as a two-note character who morphs from sassy, feckless sexpot into tortured innocent, despite the fact that the events that propel her character had already occurred when she meets Stephen. Meaty if underwritten roles are ably filled by Marisa Tomei, as a hard-bitten New York Times reporter, and Jeffrey Wright, playing an ambitious Southern senator with enough delegates in his back pocket to sway the election. Clooney himself wisely underplays his screen time, which heightens the impact of his bountiful charisma whenever he appears.

Gosling is capable as always, yet his performance is also undercut by the screenplay. Shakespeare's treatment of Julius Ceasar's trusted confidant-turned-assassin is a complex portrait of altruism tinged with naïveté. By contrast, Stephen proves an opportunist of jarring, disjointed absolutes, a loyal idealist who too easily casts aside his principles to keep his seat in the political game and, yes, further the filmmakers' agenda.

The Ides of March is part of a long lineage of behind-the-scenes political dramas, including State of the Union, All the King's Men, The Candidate and especially Primary Colors, Mike Nichols' adaptation of a roman à clef about Bill Clinton's 1992 run for the White House. However, Clooney's movie is intended for interpretation through a more contemporary prism. Three years into the Obama presidency, Clooney, long a poster child for limousine liberalism, makes a movie about a Democratic candidate whose high-minded oratory belies someone who, when pressed, surrenders his ideals for the sake of political expedience and self-preservation. It seems that leveling cynicism toward the current administration has become as fashionable for progressives as when they used to heap indignation onto the previous one. Beware The Ides of March, for scorned liberals, as Marc Antony might say, are all "honourable men."

Neil Morris

50/50

2011-09-29T22:53:00.000-04:00

"As president of the Michael Stipe fan club, I promise...

I'm sorry, you were saying something about a break-up?"

Grade: B

Director: JonathanLevine

Starring: JosephGordon-Levitt, Seth Rogan, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, and AnjelicaHuston

Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr.39 min.

After his critically ballyhooed turn in the 2007 dramaticthriller The Lookout, it seemed as ifstardom was right around the corner for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, previously bestknown as a regular on TV’s Third Rockfrom the Sun. Unfortunately, aside from his lead in the criminally unheralded(500) Days of Summer, his mostexciting performance since was an acrobatic song-and-dance rendition of “Make‘Em Laugh” while hosting Saturday NightLive two years ago.

Gordon-Levitt’s greatest strength as an actor is also hislargest impediment to celebrity. He prefers to inhabit a role rather thaninflate it, plying an acting style that is unpretentious and nuanced. Theseattributes serve him well in 50/50, adramatic-comedy about a 27-year-old’s grueling struggle with cancer.

The film’s title holds dual meaning. It represents the oddsa cold, impersonal oncologist gives Adam Lerner (Gordon-Levitt), a Seattle NPRstaffer and aspiring documentary filmmaker, to survive the malignant tumorsfound along his spine. Moreover, it’s the approximate division between dramaand bawdy humor employed by screenwriter Will Reiser’s semiautobiographical script.

In the hands of less capable filmmakers and cast, thisbalancing act between somber sentimentality and Apatow-esque comedy couldnosedive into something ill-advised and even offensive. The greatest testamentto 50/50 is that director JonathanLevine (The Wackness) integrates its twohalves in a way that elevates the whole.

The film is as much about the way Adam’s intimates react tohis illness as the impact it has on him. The key players are Kyle (Seth Rogan, ablyplaying Seth Rogan), Adam’s oafish, heart-of-gold best friend; Rachael (BryceDallas Howard), Adam’s live-in girlfriend and as aspiring artist; Diane(Anjelica Huston), his overbearing mother; and Katherine (the equallyundervalued Anna Kendrick), Adam’s perky, inexperienced therapist whoeventually takes a shine to her new patient.

Reiser treads familiar territory, like the physical ravagesof chemotherapy. But, he also shares stories only a survivor could tell, suchas the complex dynamics of a support group of fellow suffers, new friends whomight pass on as quickly as you get to know them.

The most glaring misdiagnosis 50/50 makes is its treatment of the women in Adam’s life. Mostnotable is Rachael, whose indefensible response to the sudden pressure ofcoping and caring for a terminally sick boyfriend is nevertheless grounded ingenuine and complex emotions worth exploring in an intelligent fashion.Instead, she gets called the c-word and ridiculed as a personal andprofessional failure.

Diane’s histrionics barely subside long enough for a late,fleeting expression of motherly concern. And Reiser seems oblivious thatKatherine, the story’s ostensible heroine, oversteps the ethnical lineseparating doctor and patient.

The tonal duality of 50/50is more than a mere gimmick. It’s the language of ironic distance spoken byGen-Y moviegoers who largely have not faced their mortality. When Adam, on theeve of a make-or-break surgical procedure, locks himself in Kyle’s car andfinally unleashes some pent-up primal therapy, all the cackles that precede it– along with Gordon-Levitt’s talent – make the moment feel all the more real.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at www.indyweek.com – http://goo.gl/1z64n

Moneyball

2011-09-22T22:37:00.003-04:00

Ah, this is the interesting life

Grade: B

Director: Bennett Miller

Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, PhilipSeymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt, and Kerris Dorsey

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 6 min.

Moneyball may be about an old pastime, baseball,but it's reminiscent of a film about a more contemporary activity: The Social Network. Both areabout Gen-Y whiz kids rising up and training their trumpets on the wallssafeguarding venerable Jerichos—in SocialNetwork it was Madison Avenue, while Moneyball looks at how detailed statisticalanalysis shook up the tradition-laden world of major league baseball.

As it happens, Aaron Sorkin,last seen accepting a screenplay Oscar for TheSocial Network, also revised writer Steve Zaillian's treatment of Moneyball. The long-gestating Moneyball film project, directed by Bennett Miller(Capote), adapts Michael Lewis' 2003 book about the Oakland Athleticsand its general manager Billy Beane, who adopted the principles of"sabermetrics" in identifying undervalued baseball players as a meansfor cash-strapped clubs to compete with rich rivals like the New York Yankeesand Boston Red Sox.

Along the way, Beane (played by Brad Pitt) challenges thesport’s sacred cows, including his own scouts and head coach (Philip SeymourHoffman, giving little to do besides scowl a lot), who resent the radicalredefinition of an archaic system of player evaluation foisted by Beane and hisYale-educated assistant, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill).

Moneyball is anenjoyable, entertaining movie thanks to breezy dialogue (Sorkin’s unmistakablecontribution) and the performances by Pitt and Hill. Their contemporary Abbott& Costello act guide the film, with Beane as the competitive, jocularex-jock and a Brand as the portly egghead. Hill, best known for his Judd Apatowcomedies, impresses in his first high-profile dramatic role. And while thosewho contend age has finally turned Pitt into a good actor didn’t pay attentionto his mid-90s turns in 12 Monkeys, Fight Club and Kalifornia, what has changed is that the 47-year-old actor nowsports a more weathered visage for the camera to exploit.

Still, that recommendation remains equivocal, as Moneyball is also a flawed work thatfails to emulate the moxie of its protagonists. The film focuses primarily onBeane, a divorcé whose teenage daughter periodically pops up to strum a dittyshe composed about dad that sounds like a B-side off the Juno soundtrack. Beane’s own playing career was a washout, and themost intriguing moments of Moneyball arethose that wonder whether his embrace of computer statistical analysis is hisway of exacting revenge on the stodgy scouts who once imprudently advised himto turn down a college scholarship in favor of a pro contract.

However, it’s Brand who is the purveyor of this new system,making the script’s failure to develop his backstory an egregious omission.This is particularly puzzling since Brand is fictitious character (PaulDePodesta, Beane real-life right-hand man, figures in Lewis’ book but askedthat his name not be used in the film), leaving the filmmakers free to explorewhy a nerdy, seemingly nonathletic Ivy Leaguer would apply his gifts tobaseball analysis. Was it to get back at the jocks who teased him as a child,his way of fitting into a long inaccessible world, or something else? Thepossibilities are rich, but unfortunately the payoff is miserly.

The climax to Moneyballboils down to a will-he-or-won’t-he affair over whether Beane would accepta lucrative offer from the Red Sox and their owner John Henry (Arliss Howard), whosesoliloquy on the sea change brought by sabermetrics is a highpoint. Thesequence is meant to call-back the last time Beane had to decide whether or notto take the money. A more skillful treatment, however, would have turned hisconversation with Henry into a tragic arc, the moment Beane realizes this newmethod developed to level the playing field for the have-nots is destined to beco-opted as yet another weapon for the benefit of wealthy haves.

Like a batter checking his swing, Miller seems torn betweenthe crowd-pleasing tropes of the baseball movie genre – the Big Hit in the BigGame – and a commitment to distilling the sport down to a binary essence.Indeed, the film teaches us little about the particulars of sabermetrics (theterm itself is never uttered), leaving the viewer to sometimes wonder what allthe fuss is about.

There’s nothing in Moneyballas metaphorically audacious as the dueling frat parties in The Social Network – one a stereotypical bash where girls are busedin to serve as objects of drunken revelry, the other an online gathering wherethe coeds’ digitized images are uploaded and ranked by participants accordingto their relative attractiveness.

The most subversive Miller ever gets in Moneyball are slow-motion montages of batters taking a base onballs. In the end, the film is much like a sporting event – a lot of fun butultimately a finite distraction.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at www.indyweek.com – http://goo.gl/lxDe7

Drive

2011-09-16T00:23:00.000-04:00

That's okay...I'll just use the one downstairs

Grade: B +

Director: NicolasWinding Refn

Starring: RyanGosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, ChristinaHendricks and Oscar Isaac

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr.40 min.

The narrative chassis supporting Driveis the sort of heist-gone-wrong story that Hollywood has made and remade a thousandtimes. As a parable about greed and its unintended, even violent consequences,there’s not a lot of daylight between it and the typical Coen brothers film – aSophie’s choice offered near the end of Drive closely mirrors the oneAnton Chigurh extends to Llewelyn in No Country for Old Men.

The pleasure of this vehicle is a matter of style,not substance. Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (Valhalla Rising)fills his noir-ish fable with muscle cars and a nihilistic L.A. tableau, playing tothe European penchant for stylized cinematic renderings of American culture. Inthis context, it is little surprise that Refn won the Best Director Award atthis year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Based on James Sallis’ 2005 novel, the plot revolvesaround a taciturn Stuntman with No Name (Ryan Gosling) who also exploits hisskill behind the wheel at night as a hired getaway driver. Credited as“Driver,” the part-time auto mechanic takes a shine to Irene (Carey Mulligan),a lonely mom living with her son Benicio in an apartment two doors down.

When Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) isreleased from prison, he carries home a debt still owed to mob-connected consback in the big house. This triggers a series of increasingly harrowing eventsas Driver battles to protect Irene and her moppet from reprisal.

Picking out the cinematic influences becomes its ownparlor game during Drive’s more meditative moments – the film feels muchlonger than its 100-minute running time. Refn marries the ironic action stylingof Luc Besson’s early work with the bloody ultra-violence of Sam Peckinpah,although Driver is less emblematic of David Sumner in Straw Dogs than asteely-eyed, slightly unhinged Steve McQueen. Indeed, Refn credits the McQueenclassic Bullitt as an inspiration, along with the works of AlejandroJodorowsky. Discerning viewers will also spy sidelong references to WilliamsFriedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., Walter Hill and the sort of kitschy‘80s action films that Bernie Ross (Albert Brooks), a film producer turnedcold-blooded gangster, says he used to make.

The ultimate engine propelling Drive beyondits visual and aural stylings is Gosling’s portrayal. The young actor takes whatin lesser hands would be a typical movie tough-guy role and, (blessed) withminimal dialogue, transforms it into a character full of charm, complexitiesand contradictions reminiscent of De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

That same surreal, contradictory air extends to Driveas a whole, making it a film that may not appeal to the movie-going masses.However, those willing to go along for the ride will like where they end up.

Neil Morris

Warrior

2011-09-08T20:43:00.000-04:00

A Street Kid Named Desire

Grade:A -

Director:Gavin O’Connor

Starring:Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte and Jennifer Morrison

MPAARating: PG-13

RunningTime: 2 hr. 19 min.

Whether because ofits generic title, the stale tropes of the sports drama genre or a seeminglybarefaced effort to tap the rabid legion of mixed martial arts fans, I wastotally unprepared for the quality and gritty emotional depth of Warrior.In truth, the film’s MMA tableau is incidental – the film could just as easilybe about boxing, tennis or even chess. Its real lessons about betrayal,familial strife and America’s widening stratification are universal andtimeless.

The Shakespeareanstory revolves around the fractured Conlon clan, a Pittsburgh family rippedapart years ago by its alcoholic patriarch, Paddy (Nick Nolte). The detailsbehind why Paddy’s dying wife and estranged son Tom (Tom Hardy) left town, Tomand his older brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton) don’t speak or Brendan doesn’teven let Paddy see his grandchildren remain largely unexplained. But, as with BlueValentine, the consequences are achingly apparent even if the reasons forthem are not.

On the eve ofPaddy’s 1,000th day of newfound sobriety, Tom, a former amateur wrestlingchampion and U.S. Marine, appears on his father’s stoop, still angry but askingfor the former pancratiast’s guidance to train for an upcoming MMA tournament.On the other side of town, Brendan, an ex-MMA fighter, steps back into theoctagon after he’s suspended from his job as a high school physics teacher andfaces the foreclosure of his home.

Thispath puts the brothers on a collision course fed by the crowd-pleasing knackthat writer-director Gavin O’Connor employed for Miracle, his pom-pom waving melodrama about the 1980 U.S. Olympichockey team. Unchained by the shackles of Disneyfication, however, O’Connorcreates something more genuine...more informed. Against the backdrop of afull-realized family drama, Warrior critiques predatory lending and thewar in Iraq while also managing to incorporate references to Beethoven, Moby-Dickand the ancient Greek athlete Theogenes.

O’Connor’sexpert pace and execution papers over the film’s few missteps, including aneedless, hole-riddled subplot involving Tom’s recent military service. Andalthough well-produced, the glitzy Atlantic City tournament that forms thefilm’s finale distracts from Warrior’s quieter, more affecting moments.

The film’sunquestioned revelation is Hardy, whose performance is – dare I say –Brando-esque, both physically and stylistically. Backed by a script blessedwith authentic and breezy dialogue, Hardy’s scenes opposite the equallywondrous Edgerton and Nolte are sublime and heart-wrenching. Tom is bothunwilling and unable to conjure a modicum of compassion for a contrite, soberPaddy until the old man falls off the wagon, the only state in which Tom hasever really known his father. And, the climactic contest is an exercise ofemotional catharsis by means of physical brutality.

Comparisonsbetween Warrior and Rocky are as misguided as they areinevitable. Instead, the film is a hard-edged story of loss, redemption andforgiveness, the cinematic contender that the massively overrated TheFighter should have been.

Neil Morris