Jupiter Ascending

Black Swan Reloaded

Grade: D +

Directors: Andy and Lana Wachowski

Starring: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth and Tuppence Middleton

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 7 min.

Every time I heard the character name Jupiter Jones in Jupiter Ascending, all I thought about was the youth detective of the same name from “The Three Investigators” detective book series I used read as a teenager.

Don’t fret if that reference is too obscure for you. Directors Andy and Lana Wachowski are still dining out on The Matrix, and the filmmakers brazenly ape their seminal sci-fi thriller for their latest bit of sci-fi silliness. There’s a would-be chosen one—the aforementioned Jupiter (Mila Kunis)—plucked from obscurity to save the human race. There’s an acrobatic protector/love interest in Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), a space lycan who I’m convinced is cast with half-wolf, half-human DNA in order to reel in the Twilight crowd.

And of course the human race is being unwittingly farmed for nefarious purposes. In The Matrix, we’re organic batteries. In Jupiter Ascending, people are some really potent and lucrative Soylent-style Oil of Olay for the intergalactic jetset.

Jupiter’s randomly replicated genetic structure marks her as the reincarnated matriarch to the House of Abrasax and a possible heir to Earth. It also marks her as a threat to the three Abrasax brats: vain sister Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), playboy brother Titus (Douglas Booth) and fey eldest sibling Balem, played by Eddie Redmayne in a high-camp performance that’s the most mistimed Oscar-season turn since Paramount released Norbit after Eddie Murphy was nominated for Dreamgirls.

In essence, Jupiter finds herself thrust into an estate squabble over who gets to inherit land and the family business. She almost marries one “son,” while Kalique mysteriously disappears from the story altogether. But Jupiter mostly spends the entire film getting rescued from one jam after another by Caine, whose anti-gravity boots appear to be the real power in the universe.

The Wachowskis are never short on eye-candy, and they blow their entire budget on bloated 3D special effects. Some are eye-popping, but there’s an artificiality to the CGI that renders it the visual equivalent of background noise.

There’s a clever interlude when Jupiter and Caine are escorted through the interminable galactic bureaucracy in order to certify her royal bona fides. The steampunk set design of this sequence evokes the best of Terry Gilliam—indeed, Gilliam has a cameo as a grizzled record keeper.

Otherwise, Jupiter Ascending manages to meld facile, inane dialogue—”bees are genetically engineered to recognize royalty”—with a confusing, disjointed storyline. It’s like a Disney World amusement ride stretched over two hours. It’s MoonQuake Lake, the fake movie briefly seen during the recent Annie remake. It’s a 5-dollar DVD bin knockoff of Star Wars.

One would be inclined to recommend coupling joints with the 3D glasses distributed to moviegoers braving Jupiter Ascending. But an acquaintance with some expertise in such matters informs me that would only exaggerate the already overlong running time.

So, will somebody just pass me the blue pill?

Oz the Great and Powerful

How dare you wear white...you took Dawson's virginity!

Grade: C +
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams and Zach Braff
MPAA Rating: PG
Running Time: 2 hr. 7 min.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in the Golden Age of Hollywood anymore.

Like the smoke and mirrors that two-bit magician Oscar Diggs (James Franco) uses to transform himself into Oz the Great and Powerful, director Sam Raimi employs cinematic sleight of hand to piggyback this prequel onto its venerated progenitor. But it takes more than a poppy field here and a CGI cowardly lion cameo there to take up the Wizard of Oz mantle. Indeed, almost as conspicuous are the other movie references being bandied about, from Snow White’s poison apple to Franco again playing opposite a talking monkey to the lightning that bad witch Evanora (Rachel Weisz) blasts from her fingertips at helpless good witch Glinda (Michelle Williams), a scene that recalls the Emperor’s treatment of Luke Skywalker at the end of the Stars Wars saga, another cinematic sacred cow again being fattened for avarice.

Indeed, Oz the Great and Powerful recalls the digitized, sanitized treatment of the Star Wars prequels or Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland update. In truth, Oz’s most intriguing moments are its early establishing scenes set in a sepia-soaked Kansas circa 1905, where Oscar is a carnival cad charming lasses and fooling audiences with his low-tech magic act in one dusty town after another. After his hot air balloon is swept up by a twister, Oz crash-lands into a technicolor world eagerly awaiting an almighty savior who will defeat the wicked witch and assume dominion over the realm. The overt Messianic allegory lifts with the introduction of a trio of witches, including Evanora and her naive sister Theodora (Mila Kunis), all apparently waiting to go gaga for the first normal-looking male to fall from the sky.

The convoluted storyline follows Oz’s mission to defeat the wicked witch—but without killing her—using a band of tinkers, tailors and diminutive soldiers. Their steampunk solution to victory—and Oz’s ultimate larger-than-life persona—is nifty. And, Raimi draws an especially poignant parallel between a crippled Kansas girl (Joey King) who futilely asks Oscar to help her walk again, and an animated china doll (voiced by King) in Oz whose broken porcelain legs are glued back together by the accidental wizard.

But anytime the film threatens to gain traction, it’s undercut by the rambling narrative, Danny Elfman’s ill-fitting baroque score and, most significantly, Franco’s rank miscasting. While the rest of the cast—particularly Williams—try to stay true to their austere characters, Franco smirks his way through as if he’s on the set of Freaks and Geeks. And seriously, when (and why) did Franco start sounding like Jon Heder?

But, the fundamental flaw of Oz the Great and Powerful, like almost every other Wizard of Oz offshoot, is that it makes the mistake of positioning Oz as a place that actually exists in a separate dimension rather than its true tableau: the fever dream of an angst-ridden adolescent. Just like Dorothy Gale, doppelgangers from Oscar’s life in Kansas show up along the yellow brick road, but that device only made sense for Dorothy because she eventually “went home”/woke up.

There might not be any place like it, but Oz the Great and Powerful shows that you can’t always go home again.

Ted

Ginger Spice sure has let herself go

Grade: B –

Director: Seth MacFarlane

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane, Joel McHale and Giovanni Ribisi

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

During one of many parties speckled throughout Ted, the titular teddy bear gets into a tussle with a feisty pet duck. Beyond the scene’s obvious inanity and sidelong racism directed at the bird’s histrionic Asian owner, there’s a subtle-as-an-anvil simile between writer-director Seth MacFarlane’s animatronic plush toy and Howard the Duck, Ted’s sarcastic, humanoid forerunner. And before you scoff at the notion anyone would pay homage to one of cinema’s most notorious flops, you should first know that the ultra-campy Dino De Laurentiis film version of Flash Gordon figures prominently throughout MacFarlane’s caustic comedy, down to casting Sam Jones, the original Flash, as himself.

Indeed, Ted is about a man who can’t bring himself to let go of childish things, made by a filmmaker gripped by the same affliction. The 38-year-old MacFarlane litters the film with his trademark non sequiturs and pop culture references (often occupying the same quip). He venerates Airplane, T.J. Hooker, Octopussy, and the aforementioned Savior of the Universe, whilst working in nasty jabs at Justin Beiber, Kate Perry, Taylor Lautner and Superman Returns. MacFarlane, who recorded a jazz album last year, both sets Ted to the big band score of frequent collaborator Walter Murphy and manages to ridicule the grunting diction of 1990s pop-rock.

Playing man-child John Bennett, Mark Wahlberg revives the underrated comic timing he exhibited in The Other Guys. As a tyke, the ostracized John spends a Christmas wish to will his favorite toy Teddy to life so they can become BFFs. As a 35-year-old car rental agent, John still lives with Ted, now a profane, pot-smoking, boorish bear with a bent for broads and bongs. John’s crippling arrested development, and Ted’s massive influence on it, meets with the dismay of John’s long-suffering girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis).

Ted is essentially a stuffed variation of Peter Griffin from MacFarlane’s Family Guy with a harder R-rating and thicker Bahston brogue. While I laughed along with its exercises in Gen X-themed frivolity, Ted still suffers from a sluggish narrative that lacks momentum or true tension. John, Lori and even Ted all realize that it’s high time for Ted—essentially a stand-in for the loutish movie roommate archetype—to go his separate way. The film spends 106 long minutes watching that process slowly come full circle. A third-act bear-napping plot turn involving a creepy loner (Giovanni Ribisi, natch) and his chubby son feels like filler, and by this time you’ve become so in tune to the pop power chords that you see an Aliens allusion coming about 30 seconds beforehand.

The ultimate irony of Ted, however, comes when it takes an otherwise deserved dig at the movie Jack and Jill, since an inordinate amount of MacFarlane’s gags tap the same scatological vein as Adam Sandler’s cruddy comedies, including plenty of race- and sex-baiting guffaws. Am I so fickle that I’ll favor one lowbrow laugher over another simply because it contains reverent references to James Bond and Star Wars? Perhaps, although that doesn’t make Ted very good…just more accessible.

Neil Morris

Black Swan

This Avengers movie is really getting out of hand

Grade: A –

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

“We open…with Swan Lake. Done to death, I know. But not like this.”

In a film steeped in doppelgangers, ballet director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) may as well be channeling film director Darren Aronofsky as he makes this introductory – and slyly foreshadowing – pronouncement to his company in Black Swan. Indeed, the contentious relationship between Leroy and his new prima ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), embodies the symbiotic, sometimes parasitic bond between artist and muse…or a filmmaker and his leading actress.

Yet, that allegory is but the amuse-bouche to a thematic feast. Set against the backdrop of a New York City production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Black Swan recounts the ballet’s plot through a contemporary idiom using the same “story within a story” format found in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. The film opens with a literal rendering of the ballet’s prologue, during which Rothbart casts a spell that turns a princess into a virtuous white swan.

The scene cuts directly to Nina waking in the apartment she shares with her domineering mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey). Nina is one of several ballerinas auditioning for the role of the Swan Queen, but while Leroy is confident Nina can capture the innocence and grace of the White Swan, he worries she cannot exude the sensuality needed to perform her carnal twin, the Black Swan.

An uneasy relationship develops between the seemingly chaste Nina and her licentious understudy, Lily (Mila Kunis). Their rivalry expands into a twisted acquaintance as Nina – prodded by Leroy, curiosity, and internal demons – taps into her dark side and confronts the duality of her damaged psyche.

Black Swan exhibits the physical and emotional toll performers often suffer in pursuit of their art, a trait it shares with Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and one undoubtedly endured by Portman, who trained for months in preparation for this Oscar-worthy tour de force.

This concept of destruction as a necessary precursor to creation is revisited throughout the film, whether it’s Nina’s ascension at the expense of boozy, aging marquee ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder, her very presence symbolic) or her forceful defiance of her maternal figure in order to unlock the sexual awakening needed along her path to artistic achievement.

Moreover, implications of Nina’s sexual abuse and self-mutilation serve as the backdrop for her compulsion to attain creative perfection. Aronofsky juxtaposes sexual maturation, particularly in a male-dominated culture, with ballet’s concurrent idealization and objectification of femininity. Shadows of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion are cast throughout: the insinuation that Nina fornicated with strange men in a bar draws a violent rebuke from her mother, and when Nina finally awakens her inner Black Swan, it comes only with the aid of sapphic stimulation.

There are parallels between Erica and Piper Laurie’s mommy dearest in Carrie, also a film about menstrual angst. As Nina prepares for the final pas de deux, a wound in the shape of a blossoming, crimson flower forms conspicuously near her lower abdomen. “I felt it,” she whispers as the final chord sounds, a smile of ecstasy creeping across her face. The crowd roars its approval as they – like we – demand more, no matter the price.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/a-thematic-feast-in-black-swan/Content?oid=1884498

Extract

Uhh, you were in "Teen Wolf Too." Uh hu hu hu...uh hu hu hu...

Grade: B

Director: Mike Judge

Starring: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins Jr., Dustin Milligan, David Koechner

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Mike Judge will never be confused with Woody Allen. However, each shares an affinity for satirical comedy drawn from the nuances of their respective habitats. For Allen, his voluminous filmography is usually set in America’s artistic epicenter, New York City, a fact that has also undoubtedly afforded Allen much critical leeway.

Whereas Allen wallows in the Upper East Side, Judge lives in the lower west side: Texas, in the workaday malaise of the American heartland. In contrast to the prolific Woodster, Judge’s sparse resume is a product of his renowned, sometimes inhibiting perfectionism. The creator of Beavis & Butthead and King of the Hill has directed only three live-action feature films; one of those, the star-crossed Idiocracy, is seen by some as Judge’s attempt to revisit Allen’s Sleeper.

In Extract, Judge’s talent for toeing the line of caricature without stooping to condescension is again on display. The film’s sardonic look at the workplace milieu immediately recalls Judge’s cult fave, Office Space. Jason Bateman plays Joel Reynold, the owner of a flavored extract factory beset by professional and personal woes. Joel yearns to sell his company and cash out for an early retirement, but a proposed deal with General Mills is threatened when an employee (Clifton Collins Jr.) sues after losing a gonad during a workplace accident.

At home, Joel is trapped in a sexless marriage, always arriving home just beyond the eight o’clock deadline after which his frosty wife, Suzie (Kristen Wiig), cinches up her sweatpants for the evening and settles in to watch Dancing with the Stars. Joel whiles away his nights at the local watering hole, where Dean (Ben Affleck) serves up drinks, half-baked-if-well-meaning advice, and assorted pharmacological remedies.

Within this inanity, there is a grifter named Cindy (Mila Kunis), who is looking to drain whichever poor sap into whom she can sink her comely claws. And, there’s a lunkheaded gigolo named Brad (Dustin Milligan) who takes his charge of seducing Suzie way too enthusiastically.

Bateman proves a worthy foil for scene-stealers Affleck, Koechner, and Gene Simmons (yep, that Gene Simmons) as a slimy, ambulance-chasing lawyer with the suitably reptilian name Joe Adler. However, the talents of Kunis and Wiig are underused, while Collins, J.K. Simmons, and the rest of the supporting cast fill flat, one-note characters.

Allusions to America’s eroding manufacturing base, attitudes toward Hispanic laborers, and the tenuous institution of marriage free-float throughout Judge’s screenplay. Still, too much significance need not be assigned to the genial, sometimes sketchy humor. There’s enough social commentary simply in our recognition of the cliques that drive the assembly-line setting, or the annoying, nosey neighbor (David Koechner) who seems to always flag Joel down just as he arrives home from work, never stops talking, and pesters him to accompany he and his wife to a local Rotary dinner with $55 tickets Joel will have to buy.

More intriguingly, while Extract revolves around a white-collar lead who drives a Beemer and lives in a gated community, he represented as ultimately more dysfunctional than the redneck who swills Pepsi out of a 2-litter bottle while watching The American Outdoorsman on his giant rear-projection TV.

With this film, Mike Judge comes off as a working man’s Woody Allen … or a kindler, gentler Judd Apatow. Too bad he doesn’t make nearly as many movies.

Neil Morris