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Carrie (2013)
Carrie
The story is that when Gene Wilder first heard that a remake of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was in the works, his response was something along the lines of "'why would you remake that movie?" I can see Sissy Spacek asking the same question about the latest remake of "Carrie." And if she doesn't, I will. These two filmsare cultural touchstones part of our personal history, and people can be very protective of their personal history. The scene of Carrie's first period and the "mean girls" throwing tampons at her is a piece of cultural currency, so too, the prom scene in which she exacts her revenge. We remember the first time we saw them, maybe even who we were with or where it was, and now along comes a crew with the temerity to mess with our past. I don't want anyone telling me there is a Carrie better than my Carrie anymore than I want someone telling me that my Willy Wonka needs to be improved on. Jeez, why don't you just go rewrite Moby-Dick?
Reinterpretation is one thing--Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, Scarface and Scarface- -you get the idea, but a slavish copy of the original is quite another. The new "Carrie" is the same story with the same characters, but this time the kids have cooler cars and cell phones. They're stock characters, taken from the shelf with all the one-dimensional characters that populate most movies of this type.
There is the ringleader of the mean girl posse, one Chris Hargenson, played well enough by Portia Doubleday. (It's hard to judge any of the supporting performances, given that the script does not offer much of an opportunity to show any complexity or nuance--that failure is on the writers and director, not the actors). Chris Hargenson is a "mean girl" and nothing more. There is no cleverness or subtle manipulation here, just meanness. In other words, she's no Regina George. (Speaking of another movie that probably shouldn't be remade.)There is the repentant "mean girl" with a good heart (Gabriella Wilde), who becomes Carrie's advocate and urges her nice-guy boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom. Her transformation from the queen bee's lieutenant to sympathetic ally is unexplained. Why her? What is it about this particular girl that causes her to change rather than any of the other girls? We'll never know. We're never told enough about her.
Julianne Moore, as Carrie's mother, is the only performer who gets anything to work with. She cares about her daughter and wants to save her from pain, particularly the kind that comes from the "original sin" that men and women get up to, but she does so in that Christian nutcase way, with rabid reciting of scripture and locking Carrie in a closet to pray and repent for being a woman. She refers to Carrie's breasts as "devil's pillows," for Christ's sake. But Margaret White's craziness is somewhat understandable. She calls Carrie's conception a "taking." Whether that means a forced taking or one that was thrust upon her in a marriage isn't clear. Whichever it was, by the time of Carrie's birth, Margaret is on her own, giving birth alone in her bedroom and, while in the throes of labor, calling Carrie a "cancer". The scene is shot from above, with nothing in the frame but Margaret lying on her back, covered with a white sheet, alone in a blank universe, nothing to cling to, no hand to hold except an imaginary one. The script gives short shrift to the main character, as well. Lawrence D. Cohen, credited with the original adaptation from a Stephen King novel, co-wrote with Roberto Aquirre and apparently they didn't think that a new script needs new character development, instead relying on work that was done in the original. Trust me, we'll be seeing a lot more of Chloe Grace Morets in the coming years, but in "Carrie" she has to deal with the same thin character development. Carrie comes off as exceedingly shy, but without the fragility of the original. Crossed arms and hunched shoulders don't quite convey the kind psychological pain that spawns telekinetic powers. Morets is a little too beautiful and too self-assured when dealing with her bible thumping mother (Literally- -she whacks Carrie in the head with one, ostensibly trying to knock a little Jesus into her.) Spacek's Carrie was about to snap from start to finish--she felt brittle as glass. Morets comes off merely as about to fold and whither. The vengeful mayhem she wreaks in the prom scene is too calculated, too intentional. It's brutal revenge, no doubt about that, but with her smoothly choreographed arm movement, the intention and control of her actions, it lacks the sense of unleashed, unconscious rage of the original. After the stellar "Boys Don't Cry," it's disheartening to see Kimberly Pierce wasting her obvious talent here. It's been almost fifteen years since that release and she hasn't done much since, so maybe this is what she needed to do to get back into the game. Here, she is working within a form and on a production intended for the mass market. It had to be slick, but it's too slick, with none of the edgy camera or talent direction of her signature effort, which achieved a startling intimacy with its characters. Was she phoning it in? I hope not--she doesn't have a deep enough portfolio to get away with that. This is safe filmmaking. DePalma was young and courageous when he directed the original, unhindered by expectations and willing to take risks. He was simply making a horror film, while Pierce had to go up against an icon, and it feels like she was intimidated and afraid to put her own stamp on it.
The Way Way Back (2013)
The Way Way Back
A shy, awkward teen thrown into a miserable situation with adults and peers ranging from emotionally abusive to uncaring finds acceptance and support from an unexpected and quirky source, and comes away with a new found social confidence and self-acceptance . Sound familiar? It should--it's only been done about a bazillion times. But it's not the story that counts. It's the way it's told that makes it or breaks it, and "The Way Way Back" tells it far better than most. Written and directed the team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who together won a best screenplay Oscar for "The Descendants," "The Way Way Back" is peopled with living characters, believably nuanced situations (with the exception of one somewhat awkward scene during a nighttime beach party) and smooth, seamless direction. Rest assured, we'll being seeing more of these two Relative newcomer Liam James plays Duncan, a shy and awkward teen dragged by his mother, her new boyfriend and his teenage daughter to one of those boringly generic east coast beach communities to spend what is supposed to be an idyllic summer. It doesn't work out that way for poor Duncan. His mopey sullenness smacks of passive aggression--he's the kind of kid you would rather not have around and is, naturally, shunned by the other teenage summer residents, who have apparently spent their summers together for years. The gown-ups, including his mother, don't like him much either. The mother (Toni Collette) shows some feigned concern for him when she is with him, but it's clear that she's just fine not having him around to dampen her thing with the new boyfriend and the ongoing partying that seems to be the main pastime of the neighborhood adults.
The boyfriend, a self admiring prick named Trent (Steve Carell), seems to revel in his prickishness , getting a sadistic pleasure from berating and humiliating young Duncan--going so far as to tell him that as a person he rates a three out of ten. It's hard to tell if Carell could pull off a true dramatic role, but here he does show some versatility. He plays the prick just as well as he plays the dolt--and that's pretty damn good. Toni Collette, as Pam, Duncan's mother puts in a solid performance, as do the rest of the supporting cast. But the show belongs to Sam Rockwell.
Ignored and with nothing to fill his days, Duncan commandeers an abandoned girl's bicycle he finds in the garage and cruises around town, eventually cruising into a local water park managed by a character named Owen, played to perfection by Rockwell. The Water Wizz Water Park is a place for locals (The rich summer folks have the beaches, so don't need a water park.), and Duncan, with his pale skin and bad haircut, goes relatively unnoticed and that is just fine with him--we get the sense that social interaction has never gone particularly well for him. He fits in here, if not perfectly, definitely better than he does with the tans and polo shirts of the beach crowd.
Owen is a maturity challenged man who seems to have found contentment as the manager of a water park. His management style is laissez faire, to say the least, his employees are lackadaisical and the regular patrons are a pain, but the park seems to run well enough. Although an apparently constant frustration to his assistant manager (Maya Rudolph), the park employees seem to like him and work, well, as hard as they have to, which isn't much
Every once in a while a movie is out and out stolen by an actor in a supporting role. Such is "The Way Way Back." This is Sam Rockwell's movie. The rest of it is well written, well acted and well directed, but Sam steals the show. Rockwell's Owen is cocky and has that sense of self assuredness that has more to do with not caring than it does with confidence but , as with all man-children, there is a pain and wistfulness, a sense of loss and defeat behind the sass and Rockwell plays it so subtly that it almost isn't there, which, ironically, makes it that much more affecting. Although the movies never drags, I found myself waiting for Rockwell's scenes.
There is a tender quasi-love interest involving Duncan and one of the neighborhood girls which is also played on the downlow. Unlike so many teen-centric movies, "The Way Way Back" respects the intelligence of its audience and doesn't deliver its messages with all the subtlety of a hammer blow. Generally, The script avoids the stock angsty introspection and wisdom building of most coming of age movies, which is refreshing, and, unlike another amusement park coming of age movie which shall go unnamed, it doesn't have Kristen Stewart OR Jesse Eisenberg in it. Now THAT'S refreshing.
Ender's Game (2013)
Ender's Game
Are you ready for this? "Ender's Game," written and directed by Gavin Hood, and based on a 1985 novel of the same name by Orson Scott Card (incidentally, a self-professed and obnoxiously vocal pillar of general intolerance of any person not like himself, and homosexuals especially), is set in a future when humanity comes under attack by an ant-like race of aliens and the solution is to draft a bunch of prepubescent kids (all boys and a single token girl, by the way) to use their gaming skills to command the fleet that will ultimately save nothing less than humanity itself. How's that for a storyline?
There's really not much good to say about "Ender's Game," unless you're a 14 year old boy whose greatest fantasy is to live in a video game, and there are, apparently and unfortunately, enough of those out there to make it worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an epic piece of crap like Ender's Game." Your average comic book has better character development and plot.
Over the past decade more and more "blockbusters" have been little more than CGI porn fests and that has come to be accepted, but Ender's game takes it to a new level (and the CGI isn't even that good) by way of a scene in which the main character actually becomes a character in a video game—as in there is no real life actor, the main character himself being a product of CGI. Talk about turning it up to eleven.
Ender Wiggin is played by Asa Butterfield, a particularly wooden young actor who has apparently mastered the ability to make his eyes water at will, a fact of which Director Hood makes great use in a failed attempt to imbue his main character with some semblance of life. Young Wiggin's greatest talent seems to be spouting such insights egarding conflict and enemy management as to humble even Sun Tzu. In between dropping these profound pearls he manages to lead to victory a team of completely interchangeable characters in a type of zero gravity, three dimensional billiards table batle ground A feat which so impresses the commander of "battle"school, one Colonel Hyrum Graff(Harrison Ford), that Wiggin is given command of the entire fleet.
Ford's character is a standard issue military hard ass, yet a noble one, who has sacrificed his own humanity for the greater good, understanding that in war there must be an acceptance of collateral damage not limited to loss of life, but including loss of innocence as well. Sound familiar? Ford tries to play Graff as gruff and ruthlessly pragmatic, but comes off as Harrison Ford trying to play gruff and ruthlessly pragmatic.
For some unfathomable reason Ben Kingsley makes an appearance as a Maori warrior complete with facial tattoos and the whole bit. It's hard to know what he needed more, the money or a new agent. If he keeps doing things like this, he just may have his knighthood revoked.
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)
The Place Beyond the Pines
There is a place in the arts for audacity and The Place Beyond the Pines, the second major release of director Derek Cianfrance, fills that place admirably. The film is broken into three different stories, each with it's own full, three-act narrative—a triptych, really. Experimenting with conventional story lines is a hard thing to pull off without smacking of self-unconsciousness and film school and and when fails it comes off as, well, a ridiculous self-indulgence. Therein lies the audacity, and the pitfalls, of cinematic triptychs. Forced by the linear nature of cinema to present the three segments over a span of time, the first and, to a lesser degree, the second segments fade into the past as the third segment progresses. By intention or by good fortune, "The Place Beyond the Pines" meets the challenge by making the first segment the most engaging and elemental and the other two acts subsequently less so, achieving a balance of sorts.
The first is the story of Luke (Ryan Gosling), an itinerant motorcycle daredevil in Schenectady for a couple of days with a traveling carnival that, apparently, comes through town every year. Gosling's range isn't wide—his characters all tend to be similar—but he does what he does he does very well and this is perhaps his best characterization of the enigmatic sadness and lost humanity that seem to imbue all his roles. Our first introduction to Luke is through a very long and uncut tracking shot as he suits up and walks from his tent to the main tent where he will ride a motorcycle around and up and down inside a globe- shaped steel mesh cage. In the shot, Luke is walking away from us. It's what he does. Luke walks away. He, presumably, walks away from every town the carnival visits and the women he meets there and, in the larger picture, is walking away from a troubled past evidenced by a brief reference to a fatherless childhood and by the haphazard smattering of homemade prison tattoos adorning his torso, neck and face. He looks like the kind of person who might have cigarette burns on his arms—if you take my meaning.
But this time the visit to Schenectady takes a different turn when Luke is approached by a past fling partner, Romina (Eva Mendez), and learns that he fathered a child when last in town. Straightaway, Luke quits the carnival, makes a bid for forming a family, even though Romina is in a live-in relationship and, when that doesn't work, turns to robbing banks in order to do his part to support his son. Somehow, in the twisted narrative of Luke's life, this makes some sense to him. In spite of his larcenous nature, Luke's motivation is admirable—he wants to be a good father, even if he doesn't know how. He's earnestly doing the best he can with what he has and when it all goes sideways, and his inevitable end unfolds, we can't help but sympathize and hope against hope that things will can turn out okay for him—a sentiment just as naive as Luke's notion that robbing banks is a viable way to support his family.
Luke's story segues elegantly into the second segment, having to do with a rookie cop named Avery, played by Bradley Cooper in one of his more impressive efforts, who becomes tangentially involved with Luke and his little fractured semblance of a family. Avery, a morally conflicted man and would be politician (Imagine that, a morally conflicted politician. Too much, I say.), taints himself with a spur of the moment untruth and subsequent participation, albeit reluctantly, in a bit of police corruption engineered by no other than that most perfect of sinister dirty cops—Ray Liotta, who at this point in his career has perfected the role to the point of transcendence. Avery, calculating political animal that he is, does show humanity and compassion and agonizes over the future of Luke's son, but still, it's hard to like him—especially when we see how he treats his own son.
Which brings us to the third of the three stories, curiously the weakest, yet most essential of the three in that it deals most directly with the central theme—fathers and sons. The transition into the final segment, is a bit contrived, as is the rest of it, but does do a workmanlike job of tying the first two together and the contrivance can be overlooked as a necessary device to bring the narrative together thematically. To go into it too deeply here would be to give away perhaps the most essential relationship of the story.
In spite of the awkwardness toward the end, and its 220 minute running time, "The Place Beyond the Pines" is engaging throughout, mostly due to the extremely well established narrative arc and character development of the first segment and, to a lesser degree, the second. But the best thing about the film is that it breaks the mold of the conventional, and safe, dramatic narratives out there and hails a courageous and talented new filmmaker willing to move beyond the conventional, and safe, single arc narratives that have dominated feature films for, well, forever.
Captain Phillips (2013)
Captain Phillips
Swashbuckling pirates, the kind with gold earrings, long hair and parrots, possessed of some of the greatest names in history—names like Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and Black Bart—are a staple of moviedom. Savage murderers and thieves though they were, what with cutting off people's parts and all, we love to watch them and like to think of them as living by some code of pirate honor. After all, it is the movies.
"Captain Phillips" the story of a real life hijacking by Somali pirates, this time toting AK-47's rather than sabers and without the flashy nicknames, of a cargo ship plying the waters off East Africa. Captain Richard Phillips, (Tom Hanks) is a competent and conscientious captain who knows his ship well and runs it tight. Hanks is, as always, Hanks. He's just not a transformative actor. Competent and usually engaging, not hard to watch, but never impressive—more of a star than an actor. But here Hanks should be given some leeway—his character just isn't very interesting and some of the dialogue is notably awkward. (Scriptwriting credit goes to relative newcomer Billy Ray, whose only other credit is "Hunger Games." Draw from that what you will.) One of the more blatant instances of this comes in one of the establishing scenes, in which Phillips and his wife are driving to the airport, where he will board a plane to Oman to pick up his ship. It's a transparent effort to write that particular type of random, streaming, conversation between a husband and wife—and it doesn't work. That type of casual dialogue, the most common in real life and yet the hardest to write, almost never (outside the hands of Robert Altman) works—and Billy Ray ain't no Robert Altman. However, awkward as the dialogue is, we do get some sense of Captain Phillips. He's hard working, loves his wife, is concerned about his kids finding jobs after college And once the action starts it becomes apparent that he is a resilient and resourceful man, remaining resolute in the face of a very real threat. And that's about it. We never see anything of the interior of the man. What makes him who he is. What are his weaknesses? His foibles? What is his internal conflict? It's not there.
The real star of "Captain Phillips" is the camera of director Paul Greengrass. Best known for The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, this is just the type of production that Greengrass does best. Most of the action takes place in confined spaces with lots of steel ladders, stairwells and places to fall from—things that could give you anything from a nasty bump on the head to a broken femur. He teams up again with editor Christopher Rouse and, like the Bourne movies, the action is non-stop and the pacing is spot-on. The camera is frenetic and close, the editing is fast and sharp, and the tension never wanes.
The problem is that it's not much of a story, rather; it's a sequence of events. Expertly filmed and edited events, yes, but not much more than that. It is, essentially, a good guy/bad guy movie, with Phillips squaring off against the leader of the pirate band. Like all movies of the type, the two principles butt heads and match wits, first one on top and then the other, until one of them prevails. But, although the captain and the pirate leader are the primary characters, at least some of the supporting cast needs to be developed and brought to the forefront, for at least a moment or two, in order for any movie to work. "Captain Phillips fails miserably in this department. Nary a one of the crew stands out from the rest. They all perform admirably. There are no backsliders or hysterical cowards. Nobody gets angry. There is no conflict about course of action. Nobody is even a diabetic whose insulin has been made unavailable, for crying out loud. They are absolutely interchangeable. Same goes for the Navy Seals, the other three pirates, the naval officers—not a single memorable character among them.
The standout here is Barkhad Abdi as the leader of the pirate gang, a sinister, erratic and sleep deprived Somali named Musé. He is, by far, the most interesting character in the film. Ordered to do what he does by the local warlord, Musé is not a pirate by choice. One of the best scenes in the film is a brief conversation between him and the Captain in which Musé spits out that if there were still fish in the ocean and Somalia was still what it was generations ago, he would be a fisherman in a fishing village, which his home used to be. Musé was not born a pirate.He was made into one, and he knows it and he laments it. Captain Phillips suggests at one point that Musé release him and take the thirty thousand dollars in cash that had been in the ship's safe. Musé replies that he has gone too far to turn back—an observation that could be applied to his home as well as himself. Has Somalia been broken too badly to be repaired, to ever return to what it once was? Suddenly, this chillingly dangerous man shifts from villain to victim. However, other than that subtle comment by Musé, the script sticks to the action, never waxing blatantly allegorical and, in this pivotal scene, Abdi plays Musé as a resigned and very young man faced with a life without prospect, deftly avoiding preachiness or martyrdom—a refreshing change from so much of what is out there. He is not a swashbuckling and proud pirate captain. He is a broken man with not so much as a parrot on his shoulder.
Everything Must Go (2010)
Everything Must Go
Raymond Carver did not write happy stories. Typically, his characters, usually middle-aged men, are beaten men and locked in a desperate melancholy as they wrestle with the existential questions: Where did I come from, how did I get here, and where am I going. The answer they find is that there is no answer. Bleak stuff. But that's not to say it is without humor—Carver will make you laugh out loud with the maudlin accuracy and randomness of his character's observations, and observe is mostly what they do, as they passively watch their world and relationships slowly and inevitably whither. It's a slow death—not much happens outside the interior worlds of the characters—and not the sort of thing that lends itself to cinema.
"Everything Must Go" is a retelling of the Carver story "Why Don't You Dance?" It's a small movie that takes a big risk—the risk that it will be able to tell such a quiet story without being dull and inconsequential. It's the story of Nicholas Halsey (Will Ferre, after receiving the bad news at work, to find the locks on the house changed and all "his" stuff tossed into the front yard of his upper middle-class suburban home. Apparently, Nick did his job well enough, but wasn't so good at staying sober. And that's how he ended up living in his front yard—with plenty of time on his hands to drink beer and confront the thing his life has become. But it's not legal to live on your front lawn, at least not in Acadia, Arizona, and, naturally, a nosy neighbor rats him out. Nick gets somewhat of a reprieve from a friend at the police department in the form of a five-day permit for a yard sale. He's not at all enthused about getting rid of all his stuff, but he really has no choice and is faced with a forced self-inventory of his life.
Adapted for the screen and directed by newcomer Dan Rush, "Everything Must Go" finds the thin line between situational absurdity and realism (an essential element in almost all of Carver's work.), and treads it well. Seriously, living in your front yard? Borrowing a neighbor kid's bike to get around because you don't have a car? Blackmailing your neighbor into allowing you to run an extension cord to your front yard to power a cooler full of beer and a toaster oven? This stuff is absurd. This sounds a lot like a Will Ferrell movie. To say that Ferrell has more depth and is more capable of serious acting than he has been given credit for would be too easy. Yes, it's true, but it's so obviously true here that it would be little more than observing that it's raining hard when it's raining hard. What impresses most about Ferrell's performance is that, in spite of the fact the story is tailor made for the Will Ferrell that we know too well, he manages to find the line between comedy and pathos and maintains it consistently throughout. He plays Halsey as having an ironically wry wit and only half serious in much that he says—and knowing it. We aren't laughing at this Will Ferrell, we are quietly, and sympathetically, chuckling along with him. Until Ferrell does more roles like this it will be hard to watch him without waiting for him, at any moment, to wax Ron Burgundy. That is a bit of a distraction throughout the movie, but it's not Ferrell's fault—he's just so good at his other self that it's hard to take him at face value in this type of roll. Hmm, Will Ferrell playing a Raymond Carver character— who'd have thought it?
Rush keeps his camera passive throughout with a lot of long takes and not many close-ups. It holds the audience away from the characters and allows them to exist in their own context—we don't identify with Nick so much as we empathize with him. In one particularly poignant scene Nick sets up a projector in the yard and watches home movies, drinking beer and staring at his father, who gestures rudely and waves the camera away while himself drinking beer—incidentally, the same brand Nick drinks. He does not stare passively. To Ferrell's credit, all but the shadow of an internal self-flagellation drains from Nick's face as he realizes that his father is in him. It, and the scene immediately following, are perhaps the essential scenes in the film and played so subtly as to be almost unnoticeable.
Rebecca Hall puts in a nice turn as Samantha, Nick's just-moved-in across the street neighbor, whose life and marriage are in an uncertain transitional period, as well, and becomes a sympathetic shoulder for Nick. And it's always a treat to see Laura Dern, here playing a high school class mate of Nick's, pop up in the small and unassuming roles that she does so well. But the real stand-out supporting actor is Christopher Jordan Wallace. Most child actors, no matter how "good" they are hailed to be, aren't really very good. Wallace is an exception and we can expect to see a lot more of him. This is only his second role (His first was as an adolescent The Notorious B.I.G., his real life father.) and he is as comfortable and unhurried in front of the camera as if he had been doing this his whole life, easing into his lines so as to come off as an observant and thoughtful kid, without the precociousness that it seems all child roles must be imbued with.
"Everything Must Go" is a good and film and speaks the truth, but it's not a happy movie. It doesn't even promise much chance of redemption. The best you can get out of Carver is a hint at the possibility of rebirth, the possibility that casting out everything is actually the first step toward something new.
Rush (2013)
Rush
Sure, cutting edge is sexy and gets a lot of attention from both critics and casual movie goers—it's easy to recognize and even easier to talk about. However, there is a place for supreme competence and Ron Howard is one of the most supremely competent. But just because he isn't pushing the limits of style or technique—which can sometimes be little too calculated and self conscious—doesn't mean he's not versatile. Consider the impressive Frost/Nixon and his latest effort, Rush—about as far from each other in style and scale as you can get—even if they do share a common theme. Both films are, essentially, about two men, rivals, who need each other in order to reach their full potential and self awareness.
Rush is the story of one of the greatest sports rivalries of all time— the battle for title of the best Formula 1 racer in the world. The sometimes friendly, and often bitter, rivalry between Britain James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian Nikki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl), captivated the racing world through much of the seventies, reaching a dramatic peak in 1976. Note here that in Europe, where Formula1 racers are accorded rock star status (something Hunt's overactive libido takes full advantage of), it captivated far more than the racing world—it captivated an entire continent. One of the best scenes in the film shows, in amusing fashion, that for Italian men the only things in the world more exciting than a beautiful woman are a fast car and Formula 1 driver.
Jame Hunt, a brash and sometimes offensively arrogant playboy, navigates his McLaren "bomb on wheels" by instinct and guts; Nikki Lauda, a calculating and sometimes offensively arrogant technician, drives his Ferrari by the book, assessing risk and reward like a bond trading statistician. When the car isn't what he wants it to be, Hunt berates his mechanics to make it better; Lauda tells his mechanics precisely what is wrong and how to fix it. Hunt is the charming bon vivant, comfortable in any social situation because he makes it his own; Lauda is an acerbic social misfit with no idea that he repels almost everyone he meets.
Daniel Bruhl's portrayal of Lauda transcends the genre, elevating the film to more than just an action-filled biopic. He plays Lauda as humorless, but with a subtle, squashed wryness behind the eyes. It's a nomination quality performance. Chris Hemsworth proves himself to be better than the pretty boy roles he's had until now—much better. This guy can really act. One problem throughout the film is that Hemsworth is just too damn good-looking, distractingly so. The casting smacks of manipulation. It feels as if the film uses every angle to make us like Hunt as much as we dislike Lauda , to the extent of making Hunt overly attractive and Lauda, well, not so much, in order to set us up for self- chagrin when, later in the film, Lauda faces a personal disaster that can invoke only the most profound sympathy. But in retrospect it makes sense—actual footage of the two runs behind the final credits and it turns out that Hunt was strikingly handsome and Lauda.....
Howard brings together his standing team of Anthony Dod Mantle, cinematographer, and Daniel P. Hanley as editor—and to good effect—the three work together seamlessly. The colors are bright and saturated (A red Ferrari is a damn red Ferrari) with with almost garish seventies style banners flashing on the screen announcing the location of every race—and there are a lot of races. The film does not want for road action. One of the reasons for going to a race movie is to see racing. Rush delivers, and delivers well. To the credit of Hanley, the scenes on the track are exciting and tense in just the right proportion and show in visceral detail how these machines work and just what they and their drivers are capable of—truly awesome, and not in the pop sense of the word.
It's hard to come up with a criticism of Rush. After all, it is a racing movie and a story of a spirited rivalry between two of the best in their field—each a time-worn genre and somewhat limiting in their strict forms —so it gets a little room for having a few clichés, which it does. But, having said that, it is one of the absolute best of both types. It's fun, it's exciting, there are no slow spots and it's got some really cool cars in it. (Maybe the Italians have their priorities in line, after all.) It's definitely worth seeing, and worth seeing on the big screen—the racing scenes deserve far more than a small screen can deliver.
Gravity (2013)
"Gravity"
Gravity" is the story of two people who find themselves marooned on that most desolate of desert isles—outer space.Alfonso Cuaron, who wrote (along with his son, Jonas Cuaron)and directed "Gravity," is unarguably one of the best in the business and, by adding "Gravity" to a list including the impressive "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Children of Men," shows himself to be one of the most versatile, as well. Unlike the other two, which deal with relationships between, in one case humans and in the other societal forces. "Gravity" is about the interaction between one person and the void of outer space—in other words, nothing.
Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), a medical researcher and space newbie, is visiting the ISS for the purpose of some experiment or other. We're never told what it is, but that doesn't matter. Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), is a veteran space man and, apparently, Stone's minder and affable tour guide on this seemingly routine mission. Other than a voice from "Houston," they are the only characters in the film--but make no mistake about it, this is Bullock's show, and, in large part, a one- person show. It's a risky place for an actor, or a director, to go--if it fails, it fails miserably. The dialogue must be authentic, the pacing needs to be spot on, and action sequences must be perfectly placed to keep the audience's attention and break up the monologue in the right places, and Cuaron, with the exception of a few lines of dialogue, gets it right. There are no draggy bits begging to be over with. There is no voice-over interior monologue in "Gravity"--all of Ryan Stone's thoughts are spoken and that can be heavy burden to bear.
It's always exciting to see an actor successfully step out of their comfort zone and that's what Bullock does in "Gravity." She's frequently played fish-out-of-water characters before—an alcoholic in "28 Days," an undercover cop/beauty queen in "Miss Congeniality" and an inspiring, rebellious Dallas suburbanite in "Blind Side." But here she is not only outside societal norms (It appears she is a wounded loner back on earth and, besides that, not many people go to outer space), but outside the realm of humanity generally.
What there is of unspoken introspection is provided by Matt Kowalski's dialogue. Clooney plays Kowalski perhaps a bit over the top. Although we expect supreme competence from an astronaut, he is at times too calm, too chatty, coming off as comfortable and cheerful floating around in space, untethered to the space station, as he would be at a backyard barbecue. But that's okay—he's there mostly as a foil against which Bullock works. Not to mention, Clooney is an exceedingly likable actor and listening to his, for the most part, one-sided banter provides some much needed subtle comic relief from the tension and sense of chilling helplessness
"Gravity" is essentially a thriller and, like most thrillers, everything is going along just fine until something goes terribly awry and the protagonist is called upon, against dread and self-doubt, to rise to the occasion. In this case, Stone and Kowalski find themselves stranded in outer space—not in the space station, mind you, but floating around in space suits—without any communication with "Houston" and a good distance from the space station.
One of the most refreshing things about "Gravity" is Cuaron's use CGI. It's unnoticeable, seamless, and he avoids falling into the pit of a CGI fest, like almost every other director who has access to a computer seems to do. He strives for an accurate portrayal of the space environment, and does it elegantly. Even the casual science geek could fine some implausibilities and downright violations of the laws of physics, but they are minor and more than made up for by what the film gets right and it's feel of authenticity. It truly seems like these two are in outer space. (Besides, much of what Jason Bourne could pull of with a broken cell phone and candy wrapper stretches notions of possibility, as well, and that doesn't seem to bother us too much.)
"Gravity" is so much more than hyper-drive spaceships, photon torpedoes and Death Stars. It examines the depths of what it means to human and just where our place in the universe may, or may not, be. In spite of its plot-driven structure, it deserves a place right up there with some of the best, and smartest, outer space films, films like "2001: A Space Odyssey," and "Moon" Films like these are not science fiction—they are human truth, plumbing the human soul rather merely telling a fantastical story. Perhaps it is something about being so far removed from the home where we evolved that causes us to wax existential. The distinction is that whereas those two ask the basic existential question "who are we," on behalf of all humanity; "Gravity" is about one person asking herself the question, "who am I, and do I want to persist in this human life in a world so far beyond human scale?"--and answers it. But perhaps that distinction between the films is not valid—-maybe they are the same question.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Meet the Gang
One of the more difficult things to get right in a movie is full and rich character development. Unlike books, movies are shorter, the plot comes faster and the elements are more immediate. A film maker has only a short time to get the characters right before the audience wants to get the plot going--about twenty minutes, certainly no more than thirty. Many films get by with only two or three fully fleshed out character and the others done in broad strokes, using the shorthand of either stock or, in some cases, downright cliché players.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is one of the great exceptions. One of the standout brilliant scenes, in this film of many, takes place in the first few minutes when McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is forced to sit in a group session with all the other residents of the ward. This is where the cast of characters are introduced to the audience. With Nurse Rached (Louise Fletcher) as mediator, the personalities and quirks of all "the crazies," as McMurphy refers to them, come to the surface in efficient, yet subtle, fashion. Not only are the characters fully drawn, but the relationships between them are apparent.
Part of this is due to Forman's ingenious camera work. By, for the most part, avoiding long shots, which tend to lend a "third person" quality to the narrative, and placing the camera inside the circle of chairs, the audience is drawn into the action and placed in a "second person" position and, at one point or another, occupying the place of every one of the characters.
In this way, the "second person" viewer not only sees and experiences the interrelationships of the ward, but is also called upon to form his own relationship with each character--like them or not. The audience "investment" in the narrative is established and from there the plot takes off.
Yi dai zong shi (2013)
Good enough--for a Kungfu movie
Here's the thing: some genres, when it comes to criticism, are allowed more latitude than others and Kunfu movies would rank high on that list- -right up there with slasher, grindhouse and any movie with Seth Rogan in it. We just don't expect these movies to meet the same criteria as other movies. Talkking about them calls for a caveat--if not expressed, at least implied. Having said that, "The Grandmaster" is not too bad--FOR A KUNGFU MOVIE.
The main character is Ip Man, an historical figure and purported trainer of Bruce Lee. The story has it that Ip Man was the original amalgamater of the many different schools of martial arts floating around China and Hong-Kong at the beginning of the twentieth century. Forced by the invading Japanese to migrate from Northern to Southern China, Ip Man ultimately ends up in Hong Kong, where he encounters resistance to him and his particular school of hybrid martial arts. (Embedded in the story is a romantic sub-plot which is just as unimportant here as it is to the movie, so we needn't go into that.)Repeatedly called upon to defend, in the ring (so to speak), the legitimacy of his particular style, Ip Man, in workmanlike manner, punches, flips and kicks his way through dozens of opponents in a series of brilliantly choreographed and filmed fight sequences. The fights are made even better by the smoothest photography and direction of any Kungfu movie out there.
Where the movie fails is in delivering a compelling plot and fully developed characters. "The Grandmaster" seems to never find its way to the end of its story. Several times it feels as if a clear plot is beginning to emerge, but then it dissipates. The characters and their motivations are equally muddled and inaccessible. In fact, other than the love interest, they all seem to be fairly interchangeable.
As good as the fight scenes are in "The Grandmaster," enough is enough, especially when there are long stretches of non-narrative separating them. The movie is overly long for what it is. Its more than two hour length is about forty-five minutes too long.
There is a formalism to narrowly specific genre movies, like Kungfu. In some ways they are all the same--like ballet, based in the same strict set of moves and poses. Like ballet, it's how they are put together that makes any particular one stand out from the others, but they are allunmistakably ballet as opposed to swing or hip-hop or any other style of dance. So when we go to a Kungfu movie, we expect it to follow certain forms and one of them is plenty of Kungfu action. Plot and character are secondary. "The Grandmaster" spends too much time on a plot that isn't really there and making the wait between action scenes a little too long. Having said all that, "The Grandmaster" isn't too bad--for a Kungfu movie.