Cinderella

The coal never bothered me anyway

Cinderella

Grade: B -

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Starring: Lily James, Cate Blanchett, Richard Madden, Helena Bonham Carter, Nonso Anozie, Stellen Skarsgård and Derek Jacobi

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time 1 hr. 52 min.

When Kenneth Branagh makes a movie, he makes a MOVIE, complete with the classical gestures of grand visual flourishes and accessible themes. Beyond his Shakespeare adaptations, he hasn’t directed anything that approaches knotty narrative complexity since 1991’s Dead Again.

Cinderella is almost rebellious in its traditionalism. Unlike the devices employed for many recent fairy tale reimaginings, Branagh and screenwriter Chris Weitz don’t rework the story for contemporary cultural considerations or update the setting to some modern-day metropolis. And don’t expect a live-action musical—the iconic songs from the 1950 Walt Disney Animation classic are jettisoned, too, save for the briefest of references. [For your daughter’s animated musical fix, arrive early for the new Frozen Fever short that precedes the feature film.]

What remains are the basic contours of Charles Perrault’s original tale, written under the name “Cendrillon” in 1697, melded with a few new twists. After the death of her mother, Ella (Lily James of Downton Abbey) whiles away her bucolic days with her dotting father (Ben Chaplain). Trepidation arrives once dad remarries to Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett), a preening dragon lady dragging her two noxious, nattering daughters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) in tow. Once Ella’s father abruptly dies, her stepmom banishes her to the drafty attic and makes Ella wait hand-and-foot on her stepsisters, who take to derisively calling her “Cinderella” after the soot smearing her face from having to sleep so close to the warmth of a fireplace.

While riding through the forest one day, Cinderella happens upon the Prince (Richard Madden)—both conceal their true identities but are nonetheless instantly smitten. Besotted with this unknown girl, the Prince invites all the maidens in the kingdom to a ball where he will choose his future bride. Lady Tremaine sees opportunity for her daughters but none for Cinderella, who is forbidden from attending.

The rest of the story is well-trod: there’s a Fairy Godmother (a dizzyingly daft Helena Bonham Carter) and her pumpkin carriage, goose driver,  lizard footmen and mice equines. There’s an electric blue gossamer dress seemingly patterned after Elsa in Frozen, and, of course, the glass slippers. And all of it still expires at midnight.

Besides Cinderella, loss is the theme that permeates most of the key characters, including the Prince, who is coping with the death of his own mother and the impending death of his father, the King (Derek Jacobi). And while Cinderella's stepsisters are one-dimensional brats, Branagh and Blanchett imbue the stepmother with something approaching empathy. She’s inexcusably cruel to Cinderella, but not inexplicably. She, too, has suffered the death of her first husband, the love of her life, and even after marrying Cinderella’s father she perceives herself as an outsider in someone else’s home.

Blanchett toes the line between vamp and camp quite ably—even her mesmerizing, angular visage is a portrait of cinema classicism. But other than Bonham Carter’s idiosyncratic turn, the other performances are merely adequate. James is pretty and suitably sweet, but she brings little to her character beyond the requisite poise and kindness under duress.

Indeed, the cinematography of Haris Zambarloukos and production design by Oscar-winner Dante Ferretti are the real stars of this show. The baroque grandeur is immersive, from the spired ascent to Cinderella’s attic prison to the country estate stylings of her home to the opulence of the royal palace. This Cinderella won’t introduce you to any untold stories, but you’ll feel like the belle of the ball.

The Monuments Men

Does anybody know when Brad Pitt's

supposed to get here?

Grade: C +

Director: George Clooney

Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.

Originally slated for release in the heart of the December movie awards season, The Monuments Men was suddenly pushed into the February dump zone mere weeks before its scheduled opening. Considering the pedigree of its filmmakers and cast, the change was jarring and foreboding. The good news is that writer, director and star George Clooney’s latest vanity project is not the unadulterated disaster its release date portends. The bad news? The impetus for shifting that release date is patently clear.

Adapted by Clooney and longtime collaborator Grant Heslov from a book by Robert M. Edsel, the film tells the little-known true story of an Allied task force assigned to traverse the European theatre and save millions of pieces of art and other culturally significant items from the Nazis near the end of World War II, especially before their destruction on orders from Adolf Hitler.

Frank Stokes (Clooney), the leader of the squad, recruits a band of past-their-prime art experts. However, instead of an earnest, dramatic rendering of their mission and the motives of their adversaries, the breezy screenplay pairs its protagonists off in order to conjure subplots and kill screentime. So, John Goodman and Jean Dujardin play the ugly American and sophisticated Frenchman. Bill Murray and Bob Balaban carry on a dull Mutt & Jeff routine. And, George Clooney and Brit Hugh Bonneville are full of charm and charisma. Meanwhile, Matt Damon travels to Paris to woo information out of a wary former museum curator, played by Cate Blanchett.

Yes, it’s Ocean’s WWII, except that amid the wise-cracking homage to the homespun Hollywood war pictures of yesteryear, there are deaths and other deadly serious subject matter at hand that lend the film a tonal inconsistency. Clooney and Damon are charming enough, but Murray is virtually neutered. Meanwhile, Blanchett’s role is fatally uneven—one moment she’s aiding the French resistance, the next she’s inexplicably jailed for being a Nazi collaborator; she goes to tremendous lengths (including the offscreen death of her brother) to keep artwork from being removed by the Nazis, yet she tarries when the Americans ask for her help in retrieving it (presumably to chew up even more screentime).

Indeed, there are extended sequences that exist for seemingly no reason other than eating up the nearly two hour running time—other examples include Murray and Balaban’s nocturnal encounter with a young German soldier, and the squad’s slaphappy response after Damon’s character accidently stands on a landmine.

Ultimately, the actual race to retrieve the works of Rembrandt, Rubens and Rodin before the Nazis can torch them or the Ruskies can pilfer for themselves occupies the final act of the film. By then, The Monuments Men has mustered all the heft of a History Channel docudrama. That’s not all bad, especially if it awakens viewers young and old to the importance of classical art. But, a stroll through a gallery might accomplish the same thing and be twice as exciting.

Hanna

Cate, have you seen the script?

Grade: B –

Director: Joe Wright

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, and Jessica Barden

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 51 min.

Hanna isn’t merely a departure from director Joe Wright’s mannered filmography. It feels more like his antidote for it.

A stylized fable whose substance does not fully measure up to its resounding razzmatazz. Hanna blends a breathless chase thriller with a fairy tale conceit. It’s as if Wright is trading in his high-lit reputation from Pride and Prejudice and Atonement for the sake of proving his mettle as an action director.

The result is not without success. For all its Grimm allegory, the film is like an alt-universe continuum of Luc Besson’s The Professional filtered into the visual stylings of Run Lola Run. (Hanna’s final act is also set in Berlin.)

The first 16 years of Hanna’s hardscrabble life take place in the wintery woods of Finland. There, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, whom Wright directed in Atonement) and her father, Erik (Eric Bana), live in a spartan shack devoid of modern creature comforts. Erik has taught his daughter the fine art of bow hunting, hand-to-hand combat, multilingualism, and a virtual memorization of the encyclopedia.

All this preparation is a prelude for a nebulous mission targeting Marissa (Cate Blanchett, doing her best Tilda Swinton impersonation), a fastidious, hard-edged CIA operative who shares an unpleasant past with Erik and a mysterious connection with Hanna. Once Hanna decides she is ready to leave the roost, it triggers a chase to kill Marissa before she can return the favor.

For all Hanna’s superhuman fighting skills, her sheltered upbringing makes her ill-prepared for life outside the forest, or even basic human interaction. She flees her first night in a hotel room in terror, petrified by the technological cacophony sounded by whirling ceiling fans, showers, televisions, and an electric teakettle.

And, although the film couches Hanna’s affinity for Sophie (Jessica Barden) – a glib Brit teen traveling through Morocco with her hippy parents – as vaguely sexual, it is actually the awkward reactions of a pubescent girl struggling to understand, much less cope with, an unfamiliar rush of feelings.

Hanna ends up with a chase through Berlin’s now-defunct Spreepark, notably its replica Grimm Haus. Indeed, all the metaphor-making quickly elbows out any emotional grace notes. Hanna is the fairy-tale princess, Goldilocks, and Red Riding Hood rolled up into one pint-sized Nikita. Meanwhile, Blanchett’s Marissa is a mash-up of the wicked stepmother/witch and Big Bad Wolf – there’s an unfortunate trip to grandma’s house and other delicious kitsch like the row of electric toothbrushes Marissa uses to scrub her incisors until the gums bleed. The better to eat you with, my dear?

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://goo.gl/8nAdO

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Don't rise up too fast, son, or that

latex is liable to fall off.

Grade: C +

Director: David Fincher

Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, and Jared Harris

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours, 39 minutes

For all its highbrow aspirations, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button remains a gimmick in search of a message.

Brad Pitt plays the titular orphan, born near the end of World War I as an osteophytic infant abandoned by his father (Jason Flemyng) on the stoop of a New Orleans old-folks home run by a black woman called Queenie (Taraji P. Henson). As death envelopes those around him (including his biological mother, who died during childbirth), Benjamin slowly improves until it becomes apparent that he is growing younger physically as he ages.

So, while the audience sits around waiting to see the youthful, golden Pitt circa A River Runs Through It, Benjamin sets out for a life of adventure, much of it as first mate aboard a tugboat helmed by an irascible captain (Jared Harris). He carries on a summer tryst in Russia with a well-heeled Englishwoman (Tilda Swinton). But, his heart ultimately belongs to his childhood friend Daisy, who as an adult becomes a world-renowned ballet dancer (played by Cate Blanchett) cavorting in the New York bohemian scene before tragedy forces her to move back to Orleans.

If this all sounds a bit like Forrest Gump, it is no coincidence since Gump scribe Eric Roth also adapts this film from a 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.

Benjamin Button offers an inverted view of life and loss, particularly as it applies to Benjamin’s star-crossed relationship with Daisy. Blanchett gives a sturdy performance that would be hailed as Oscar-worthy if it was rendered by an actress blessed with lower expectations. However, Pitt fails to make the most of a meaty role, spending most of the film channeling a lazy Southern accent and staring off into space from beneath a patina of wigs and aging make-up.

The only thing that ameliorates the excruciating 167-minute running time is director David Fincher (Se7en; Zodiac), who paints a lush, imaginative canvas, beginning with a sublime prologue about a blind artisan who, after losing his son in the Great War, builds a giant clock that runs backwards for the New Orleans train station. On the other hand, time seems to stand still during the film’s many dull sections, particularly the present-day framing device of an elderly Daisy laying in her hospital death bed as her daughter (Julia Ormond) reads Benjamin’s story aloud from his diary, all against the backdrop of an encroaching Hurricane Katrina. Curious, indeed.

Neil Morris