Category: Reviews

Wonder Boys

It isn’t often to see intellectual comedies this side of Woody Allen. Perhaps it’s because few actors can crack wise about other “faux intellectuals” the way Woody can. “Wonder Boys” is a clever, wry film based on Michael Chabon’s inventive novel that certainly tries.

It stars Michael Douglas as the Woody Allen surrogate, English Professor Grady Tripp. Grady is a writer who struck gold once and is now plagued not with writer’s block but an inability to stop writing. As his sophomore book grows ever longer, he finds it hard to focus and come to an ending.

Distracting Grady are his students James (Tobey Maguire) and Hannah (Katie Holmes), the boy a dark, socially awkward kid with a writing gift of his own, and the girl renting a room from Grady but not afraid to move into his. His quasi-gay publishing editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.) also pesters him, his wife has left him and his boss and lover Sarah (Frances McDormand) is pregnant.

He also has a dead dog in his trunk.

“Wonder Boys” is a movie about how a man finds his destination in life, especially when there are so many wacky, interesting people around and things going on. Continue reading “Wonder Boys”

The Fighter

David O. Russell takes the boxing movie and makes it into a rich family dramedy.

I wasn’t looking at Mark Wahlberg when he was training in the boxing ring. I wasn’t watching his gloves either, moving swiftly and smoothly from blow to blow. I was watching Christian Bale playing Wahlberg’s coked out brother as he’s training in the ring along with him. In “The Fighter,” he’s not just bobbing and weaving to block the punches.

Bale portrays Dicky Eklund, the brother of Wahlberg’s Micky Ward. Ward is the fighter, training to win a title, looking for romance and struggling with his own sense of self. Dicky already had his chance. 14 years ago, he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and became the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. Now it’s 1993, and he’s addicted to crack, but still he’s the life of the party. Continue reading “The Fighter”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II” is a film of reunion, redemption and reconciliation. The fans that have grown up with the characters of what is now the largest franchise in movie history have not come for the end, but have come to say goodbye.

In a homecoming roll call of old friends and enemies, “Harry Potter” comes to a close in this eighth and final sequel. Yes, this is the conclusion to a story already split in two, but this is more of an opportunity for everyone to reflect on the life that started nearly 10 years ago today, and how we now realize how the magic will live on.

It’s for the legendary Maggie Smith to put on one last fiery show. It’s for Robbie Coltrane to charm us one last time, the big lug. It’s for Michael Gambon to take a long-awaited final bow. It’s for Helena Bonham Carter to literally explode on screen. It’s for Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman to finally revel in their own villainy.

And it’s for Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson to show they’ve at last grown up.

The kids proved to be the best of casting choices a decade ago, and here they show maturity, not teen angst, as the fate of the wizarding world rests upon their shoulders. Continue reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II”

Horrible Bosses

Sometimes I wonder how anyone actually writes a comedy like “Horrible Bosses.” Who has the thesaurus that helps find smutty replacements for perfectly normal words? Sometimes the unrealistically raunchy factor in a movie like this serves as a disconnect from the otherwise witty and creative screenplay at hand.

At times, “Horrible Bosses” seems dirty for the sake of achieving an R-rating. Despite being about three guys plotting a way to kill their boss, the gratuitous language and casual discussion of rape make the material mature. For instance, somehow I question the ability of the word “dickswath” to come up in conversation naturally, and it makes me realize how contrived the rest of their dialogue appears.

It all subtracts from an otherwise darkly clever revenge comedy. Nick, Dale and Kurt (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) each have sadistic bosses controlling and ruining their lives. For Nick, he’s worked to the bone and denied a corner office promotion by his boss Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey). Kurt is left at the mercy of an uncaring coke addict Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell). And Dale is sexually harassed by his boss in the dentist office Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), although only Dale really sees her as a problem. Continue reading “Horrible Bosses”

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is a mind-numbing, relentless, annoying, incoherent, bloated and overall poorly made film that only surpasses the abominable first sequel to this franchise possibly for the reason that it is less racist. This series’ enduring popularity is evidence that the blockbuster crowd has become no less robotic and drone like than the monstrosities on screen.

Michael Bay’s second “Transformers” film, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” left me immensely angry, with myself for having sat through it, with so many others for having enjoyed it and with Bay for having ever made it. I had never seen a film as long or as overstuffed, and it earned a place in bad movie history since.

Now here we are two years later. “Dark of the Moon” was not enraging but depressing in its repetition of the same scatterbrained sense of humor, inconceivable plot, cinematography that blatantly defied cinematic staples and worst of all, tedious, unmemorable, bombastic and endlessly long battle sequences. Continue reading “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”

Larry Crowne

Tom Hanks’ “Larry Crowne” is a harmless film that will offend no one. This is a luxury if you don’t mind your films so tepid and tame lest anything more surprise you.

Hanks directs himself as the title character, a loveable lug who was just fired from his long time job at the superstore UMart. This bothers him, slightly, but he soon realizes that if he wants to get back on his feet and start working again, he’ll need to get a college degree.

“Oh No! I lost my job at UMart,” I thought as Larry returned to his comfy suburban home. The film naturally addresses the economic crisis and does so simply and directly. This is not a difficult film. Continue reading “Larry Crowne”

Beginners

In a smattering of close-up pictures and jump cuts, Mike Mills accelerates us through time and history during his film “Beginners.” He points out the sun, the stars, the president and what emotions look like. These symbols have come to define us, but they’re endowed by someone else, by society. His story is about three people learning to communicate their own personalities and embrace the idea and feeling of happiness, not just the image.

Few films are truly about communication. Even “The Social Network” merely analyzes speech patterns, internal coding and societal trends. “Beginners” understands that the words and symbols themselves have no meaning except the meaning we assign to them. Society has branded Hal (Christopher Plummer) as the member of a happy American family, complete with a job, wife, child and home in the suburbs. But after his wife dies, Hal, at the age of 75, confesses to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) that he’s gay.

This comes months before Hal’s death, yet in the time before and after Hal’s death, Oliver is just as confused with the symbols of success and friendship he’s been presented with. He does not begin to change until he meets the lovely Anna (“Inglourious Basterds’” Melanie Laurent) and she asks him, “Why are you at a party if you’re so sad?”

The beauty of that question is twofold. Firstly, why would anyone even think to ask a question like that? Aren’t their emotions simply implied by the people around them? But secondly, she asks this question with a pad and pencil. She has laryngitis, but not by accident, and not for the filmmaker to be cute. Look at how clearly Anna learns how to communicate with Oliver without words and even without expression behind makeup at a costume party.

“Beginners” speaks without speaking at all, and it is eloquent and beautiful in its quiet. Continue reading “Beginners”

The Trip

“All you can do is do something else that’s already been done but do it different or better.” This is Rob Brydon’s advice to Steve Coogan, both of whom are British comedians and talented voice impersonators. “The Trip” is their clever attempt to re-imagine the cheap laughs we usually get from impressions.

By saying we get cheap laughs from impressions, I do not mean to belittle the talents of Coogan and Brydon. In fact, they’ve shown in “The Trip” great versatility at convincingly portraying themselves in this quasi-mockumentary.

The question really is, how do you center a film around impressions? We all enjoy impressions, but they must be taken in doses, and they have little ability to convey actual storytelling. The genius thing about “The Trip” is how it is hardly a conventional narrative and yet does not seem completely aimless in its attempts to showcase these two comedians’ talents. Continue reading “The Trip”

127 Hours

Danny Boyle is a chameleon of a director. He’s never made a remotely similar film in terms of genre, and yet each one is undeniably his own. They can be brutal and visceral throughout and yet find a way to be inspirational and exciting in the end. “127 Hours” is one of Boyle’s greatest challenges and greatest achievements.

Boyle took the story of Aron Ralston, a reckless mountain climber who went deep into Utah and got himself trapped in a crevasse underneath a boulder for 127 hours, and made it an exciting, visually stimulating film. We know Ralston survived because his book “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” serves as the basis for this film. The way he escaped is almost just as much common knowledge, and the buildup to his eventual escape builds a wonderful tension throughout the film. Boyle feeds us small teases of Ralston weighing his options before making that decision, and in an amazingly nauseating climactic scene, he floors us.

Such is the power of the rest of “127 Hours,” which finds ways to be simultaneously adrenaline fueled and heart stopping, intense and desolate or revealing and claustrophobic. Enrique Chediak’s cinematography is the best of the year because he wonderfully blends the handheld queasy cam with the panoramic HD cam to create those dual emotions. Watch some of the early shots inside the cliff’s cracks looking up at Ralston, and notice how as buried as the camera remains, how much it still seems to capture. Continue reading “127 Hours”

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Julian Schnabel was nominated for Best Director for his work on this foreign film about a unique disability.

Julian Schnabel has an extreme fascination with the eye. This is necessary for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” because it becomes the sole tool of Jean Dominique Bauby. But it is an important correlation, the eye being a source of emotion and that which makes us human.

This is a brilliantly directed film, and it’s evident from the first frame. We look out the eyes of a man. The image is blurred, but we can see he is in a hospital. The doctors bend down to speak with him at eye level, but he looks not at their mouths or faces but directly into their eyes as if to say, “I couldn’t care less what your opinion is, but who the hell are you and where am I?” We can hear the man’s internal thoughts, and we can tell he is cynical, impatient, but within moments, both he and the audience will discover he has reason to be.

Jean Dominique Bouby (Mathieu Amalric), or Jean-Do, was the real life editor of Elle fashion magazine when in 1995 he suffered from a stroke that left his entire body, with the exception of his left eye, completely paralyzed. His mind was perfectly intact, but he became trapped in this vegetated state. Within time, Jean-Do learned to communicate by blinking his eye as the alphabet was read to him. Using this process, Jean-Do dictates his memoirs in what is an inspirational beauty each time he begins to communicate.

I was so touched by Jean-Do’s sudden change of heart about his situation and his commitment to preserve his life in the only way he can. In the beginning of the film, Jean-Do is pessimistic, and who wouldn’t be? But Henrietta (Marie Josee Croze), his speech therapist, is such a warming presence, demonstrating care and love for this hopeless man. She serves as a catalyst to his communication, making life possible for him. His other motivation is an old friend that was taken hostage in Beirut for four years. He tells Jean-Do, “Don’t lose what it is that makes you human.” Jean-Do lives by this mantra, but it is his own inner strength that allows him to accomplish such a feat.

And that is the ultimate question “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” proves: What makes a man? As Jean-Do says, he still possesses his imagination and his memories. Only the human mind can accomplish a feat such as Jean-Do’s, but the boundaries of Jean-Do’s mind are no different than an able person. Perhaps a film like this answers the questions for many who live in a vegetated state. Even a man who cannot communicate still possesses the abilities of his mind. So does that make him any less of a man?

The performances are truly something special. Amalric can demonstrate emotion and expression with just a shift of his eye. But similar characters have been portrayed better. The reason behind such a powerful connection to the protagonist is the internal perspective Schnabel provides the audience. We are given a window into the mind of an ordinary man, and the attachment that brews inside you for this person is unlike any other. We see the people he sees, the objects he gazes upon and the brief moment of darkness when he blinks his eye. We don’t just understand this man; we are this man. We admire the same subtleties in his nurses’ facial expressions, like Henrietta’s soft skin or her quaint smile.

Admittedly, Schnabel was given good material. There aren’t many stories that are this heartbreaking and heroic at the same time. But in using the full stretch of his imagination, Schnabel allows us to better understand ourselves.

4 stars