Noah

Darren Aronofsky’s Bible adaptation is ambitious but is all over the place.

Randy “The Ram” in “The Wrestler” abused himself in the ring just so that he could feel anything. In the end he brought himself to the brink of his strength. Nina Sayers in “Black Swan” tortured her body to achieve perfection and beauty and ultimately found herself battling her psyche.

Darren Aronofsky’s protagonists are conflicted souls, testing their minds, morals and beliefs in pursuit of something nobler. The biblical story of Noah finds his faith in God pit against mankind, forced to choose between innocence, justice and love.

Or at least that’s Aronofsky’s version. “Noah” is Aronofsky’s ambitious interpretation of the Bible tale, and unlike the surreal grittiness found in his previous films, his mix of fantasy and portent is a paradoxical mess. It’s a movie about beauty in which the colors have been sapped from all traces of the Earth. It’s one of human decency in which mankind is depicted as ravenous, ugly, violent, carnivorous or worse, flavorless. It’s a morality tale in which the hero is less given a moral choice as he is driven to madness. It’s a movie about faith, miracles and spirituality, but ostensibly avoids religion or even the mention of the word “God”.

Continue reading “Noah”

Divergent

Shailene Woodley and Theo James star in the adaptation of Veronica Roth’s YA novel.

“I’d like to think there’s more to a person than just one thing.” That’s a line spoken by Shailene Woodley in the indie romance “The Spectacular Now.” Now Woodley stars in “Divergent,” in which that line has been blown up into a complex metaphor and the crux of everything that happens in this dystopian sci-fi action movie based on Veronica Roth’s popular YA novel.

It’s a strong idea, but a shaky premise. “Divergent” is so devoted to the notion that an individual can have multiple personality traits, whether in its plot, dialogue or narrative fabric, it smacks as a largely strained story telling device rather than part of a fleshed out idea or story universe.

That may be a swipe at Roth’s novel more so than the film, but it would matter less if the direction by Neil Burger (“Limitless”) took a lesson from Roth and likewise displayed an individual style and personality. Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor’s script is too faithful to its source material to distinguish itself in the way that its peer “The Hunger Games” has. Continue reading “Divergent”

Rapid Response: Bottle Rocket

Wes Anderson’s first feature signals a director already in full control of his style.

Any discussion of a legendary director’s first feature is a study in scrutiny and similarity. Rarely is the film taken on its own but as a discussion of how the director’s themes and signature style have evolved over time. Did he contain that spark early in his career, and what here can provide context for what comes later?

Wes Anderson has very recently been anointed to legendary status, complete with indie royalty credibility, a Best Picture nomination, box office gold, an ability to work with any actor he damn well pleases and a cinephile approved book dedicated to his life’s work. All those early skeptics of Anderson saw “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and now “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and have come out of the woodwork to revisit and heap praise on what they might’ve missed earlier.

Whether or not this is a good way to evaluate a film is up for grabs, but “Bottle Rocket” probably gets a pass today because it is a Wes Anderson debut. As Matt Zoller Seitz writes in his essay on “Bottle Rocket” in his coffee table tome “The Wes Anderson Collection,” “Anderson didn’t make references; he had influences. And there were already signs that he had a pretty good idea who he was as a director and was comfortable in his own skin.” We see it in his first 90 degree whip pan, the “eye of God” shots, as Seitz puts it, or the affinity for color, music and whimsy. Some of the moments are so oddly beautiful and so definitely Anderson-y that you might call it brilliant, whereas someone seeing it fresh in 1996 could easily call it uneven. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Bottle Rocket”

The Grand Budapest Hotel

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” finds Wes Anderson embracing his visual style fully and showing complete control as a director.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson has been making Wes Anderson movies his entire career; no one quite does it better (though many have tried). They’re rife with perfectly precise miniatures of colorful, excrutiating detail, and over the years his set dressing has conveyed kitsch, adolescence and cartoons.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” may be the most Wes Anderson-y film yet. Its title character M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) embodies the fastidious perfectionist with an eye for fashionable excellence in a way that no other Anderson character has captured the director’s true sense of style. It’s a silly, sinister and sneaky caper that thrives on its careful construction.

Gustave is the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel in the fictional Eastern European country Zubrowska in 1932. Years later after war has forever affected the majesty of the region and the hotel itself, we meet Zero Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham) regaling his days as a young lobby boy (Tony Revolori) under Gustave’s tutelage.

Fiennes is wonderful as an eloquent and aloof manager and womanizer, quick witted in his authority and charmingly blunt to the elderly women he beds. His prize is Madame D. (an almost unrecognizable Tilda Swinton under pounds of makeup), a wealthy maiden who suddenly turns up murdered, but not before bequeathing a priceless painting to Gustave. As a result, Gustave soon finds himself on the run from Madame’s vindictive son (Adrien Brody) and the authorities (led by a hilariously out of place and without an accent Edward Norton). Continue reading “The Grand Budapest Hotel”

Side by Side: Happiness and Election

Todd Solondz and Alexander Payne’s breakout films have a lot in common in depicting suburban life.

Of all the depressing, pitiable people in “Happiness,” Todd Solondz’s absolutely disturbed black comedy of suburbia, sex, sickness and sadness, the one I feel the worst for is Trish Maplewood.

Wait, which one is Trish (Cynthia Stevenson)? Is she the sister caught in arrested development, the smug, narcissistic poet who secretly suspects she’s talentless or the woman who described a case of rape and murder over an ice cream sundae?

No, Trish is perhaps the only one in “Happiness” without a crippling sex addiction, perversion, loneliness or self-destructive tendency. Her fatal flaw seems to be that she’s too normal, and worse yet that she managed to fall in love with a monstrous creep.

Trish is like the control group in Solondz’s examination of twisted individuals, the least interesting and noticeable figure of the bunch. We arguably identify with her the least because there’s the least to latch onto. Part of what makes “Happiness” so affecting though is that there’s a little bit of something we can relate to in each of the other dark characters because each has a little bit of normalcy.

She’s not unlike Jim McAllister’s wife Diane (Molly Hagan) in Alexander Payne’s “Election,” a simple house wife who exists in the background. We learn some about her, her desires, her sex drive and what she loves about her fairly awful husband. But for all intensive purposes, she’s nobody.

Released a year apart in 1998 and 1999, “Happiness” and “Election” are both complex satires of those nobodies, simple people in ordinary middle American neighborhoods, people who in their own strange ways feel universally relatable. For those who have levied claims that Payne is mocking and trivializing the simpleton schmucks in his films, that’s absolutely accurate, and it feels no less honest.

Continue reading “Side by Side: Happiness and Election”

A Spoiler-filled discussion of Oblivion

“Oblivion” feels criminally underdeveloped with some serious plot holes. Here’s a ranting exploration of all of them.

The Tom Cruise sci-fi “Oblivion” came out almost a year ago now, but somehow it came up on our DVR viewing this past weekend. It’s a post-apocalyptic action movie about two scientists responsible for securing Earth’s surface and repairing drones and resource harvesting equipment after a war between the humans and aliens left the planet inhospitable. The humans won the war, as Cruise helpfully reminds us a number of times. His existence and his mission is called into question when he discovers humans in hypersleep being attacked by the drones he felt were intended to protect them.

It’s a gorgeous film, with just as strong of an aesthetic appeal as Joseph Kosinski’s first film “Tron: Legacy,” and yet it never resembles that film at all. It’s a distinctly modern vision of the future that’s also of its own creation, amplified by the sharp costuming and M83 score.

And yet I see no more point in writing an actual review than you do in reading one at this point. But while this film is not uninteresting on its own, it becomes problematically uninteresting by relying on a number of sci-fi cliches, plot lapses and reliance on visuals rather than substance.

So here are some spoiler-riffic thoughts on “Oblivion.” Spoilers ahead…obviously. Continue reading “A Spoiler-filled discussion of Oblivion”

Rapid Response: The Battle of Algiers

The influential doc-realism film “The Battle of Algiers” actually feels more like an ancestor of New Hollywood.

The Battle of Algiers

Part way through “The Battle of Algiers” is a sequence in which Algerian locals perform quick, targeted assassinations on French officers throughout the region. One boy nonchalantly follows behind a policeman who suspects he’s up to no good. It’s a coincidence, the boy assures him, but the officer frisks him anyway. Satisfied to find nothing, he gets into a car, and the boy fishes a gun out of a nearby trash can and shoots him dead.

Resistance comes in many forms in “The Battle of Algiers,” and the interconnected methodology to each killing in this sequence seems like a precursor of the baptism montage at the end of “The Godfather.” Much has been made about Gillo Pontecorvo’s documentarian roots and this film’s modeling off news reels and ’60s doc realism, but that thread to New Hollywood makes it seem so much more modern.

Pontecorvo is constantly playing with intense close-ups, quick camera darts, rapid zooms and of course a stapled together editing style in which weeks pass by in a smash cut or the tides of war turn on a dime. To call it documentary realistic is accurate in the sense that it resembles news reels more than Old Hollywood, but the documentarians and found footage makers of today don’t credit as much to Pontecorvo’s political masterpiece. We see this film’s breadcrumbs on modern action movies and social cause movies all the way up to “Argo.” Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Battle of Algiers”

Oscars 2014 Recap: A strong end to a long awards season

The 2014 Oscars were a wild success and made for one of the best shows in recent memory.

Ellen DeGeneres

“It’s Time,” read the posters for “12 Years A Slave’s” For Your Consideration ads. The Academy did ultimately anoint Steve McQueen’s masterpiece the Oscar for Best Picture of the year, but the statement could honestly refer to the very end of this long-winded Awards season.

Who could have known that at the end of it all, this year’s Oscars could not only be good, but could arguably be called great?

Perhaps “great” is a strong word, and perhaps this ceremony wasn’t as well received as I imagined. This morning I awoke to a decent helping of snark and disappointment as though the media had to meet some sort of quota. But if John Travolta butchering a name or a somewhat long ceremony as a result of some shrug worthy montages about heroes were the worst of it, can’t we call this year’s Oscars a success?  Continue reading “Oscars 2014 Recap: A strong end to a long awards season”

2014 Oscars: The Most Popular (and Likely) Upsets

We’ve made all the predictions, but what would be real surprise this Oscar Sunday? Here are some likely upsets.

I’ve made my Oscar picks, and hopefully so have you, but anyone who has ever done this before knows that Oscar night ends up with pitiful looking ballots and people shouting at the TV (how in the world did that win?). So it actually makes sense to bet against the house in some occasions  and picking with your heart rather than your head is always allowed. So here are some last minute Oscar upsets to make to your ballot that a strong minority would both love to see happen and actually might.

Leonardo DiCaprio over Matthew McConaughey

People love Matthew McConaughey, but as I alluded to in this gallery, people really love Leonardo DiCaprio. A win for McConaughey is seen as justified, but only to commemorate a hot streak; it’s not something that’s obscenely long overdue as though an Oscar was the embodiment of Leo’s kids in “Inception” and he’ll never ever get to see their faces unless he’s caught in his own perpetual ambiguous dream world existence. 

Leo will win if the Academy convinces itself that somehow Leo gave the biggest, most physical and grueling performance of the year and his career by flailing like a fish out of water… a fish that has just done a ton of quaaludes and is trying to get into a Lambo. And yes, this will be seen as even more physical than McConaughey losing 40 pounds, Christian Bale gaining 40, Chiwetel Ejiofor spending 2+ hours getting whipped and hung and Bruce Dern being ancient.

Amy Adams over Cate Blanchett

I think everyone agrees that Cate Blanchett gives the best female performance of the year, but is anyone rooting for her? Is anyone rooting for anyone in this category?

Yes! It’s Amy Adams of course! She’s the only one in this bunch who doesn’t have an Oscar. But not only that, of all living actresses, only Glenn Close has more nominations and no wins than her (six to Adams’ five). Her split personality work in “American Hustle” is as complex as the movie itself, and her surprise nomination is evidence the Academy is already behind her and the movie. Continue reading “2014 Oscars: The Most Popular (and Likely) Upsets”

Ellen, Tina, Amy and Oscar: Why we need more women in Awards Season

This is the first time in 10 years the Oscars and Golden Globes have both been hosted by women in the same year.

Many pundits saw Ellen DeGeneres’s selection as this year’s Oscar host as “safe.” She could be funny and mocking, but she could play by the rules. She was also a time-tested choice who had proven she could hold her own on Hollywood’s biggest night.

But the Academy may have made a bold choice in picking DeGeneres after all. With Tina Fey and Amy Poehler serving as Golden Globe hosts this year, 2014 marks the first time in nearly 10 years where two of the four major awards shows have been hosted by women.

This is skewed slightly because the Globes have not traditionally had a host in the way the Oscars always have, but Ellen, Tina and Amy likewise joined People’s Choice hosts Beth Behrs and Kat Dennings, the stars of “Two Broke Girls,” as part of this female fronted awards circuit.

Fey and Poehler managed to bring in the highest ratings in 10 years for the Hollywood Foreign Press, and they’ll be back again next year to make out with more Irish rock stars and continue sending fruit baskets to Matt Damon’s house. Continue reading “Ellen, Tina, Amy and Oscar: Why we need more women in Awards Season”