Friday, July 24, 2015

Southpaw


Southpaw poster.jpg

Released:  July 24th, 2015
Rated:  R
Distributor:  The Weinstein Company
Starring:  Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, Rachel McAdams, Oona Laurence
Directed by:  Antoine Fuqua
Written by:  Kurt Sutter
Personal Bias Alert:  loved Sons of Anarchy, likes boxing movies

5.7 of 10






            What’s so great about Kurt Sutter, who’s previously written for The Shield and created Sons of Anarchy, is that he manages to craft ultra-masculine stories without demeaning women or disregarding his character’s emotions.  Sure, there’s porn stars and hookers and loose women, but when really examined, these characters tend to have families, responsibilities, and fierce wills.  Sons of Anarchy, which centered on a biker gang in California, is an intricate examination on male bonding, one where the relationships became familial and the men comfortably expressed their love for each other.  That might seem incongruous given their leather-clad, tough guy exteriors, but they, and the show, were softies under all the violence and mayhem.  With such a writer behind it, the boxing drama Southpaw should stir up some strong expectations, but it fails to deliver anything as smart or as surprising as Sutter’s previous work.

            This is Sutter’s first foray into movie writing, and the format is, perhaps, not the best fit.  His strengths shine in sprawling complexity, and the two hours he got to work with in Southpaw aren’t well used.  There’s a lack of urgency to this plot, laying out a simple tale of loss and redemption that lacks originality and thematic weight.  The fighting metaphor that goes so hand-in-hand with boxing films needs something more behind it, and this film, quite simply, drops the ball on its secondary plots.  There’s hints of other stories brimming off to the side, like the safe haven building Tick (Forest Whitaker) and the inescapability of one’s background, but none ever become fully examined, feeling more like asides that prop up instead of building on the main storyline.

            The pairing of Sutter with the equally masculinity-focused director Antoine Fuqua was a more troubling prospect, as Fuqua has a rough track record when it comes to the quality of his films.  He struggles with Southpaw, never finding a consistent visual tone and failing to ever provide a break from the dour proceedings.  It’s funny, because he’s clearly done his homework, copying the visual styles from classic boxing movies (the gym scenes pull heavily from the lighting in Million Dollar Baby) but never settles on any one approach.  It gives the film a disjointed feel, moving from the drab cave of the gym to the glaring lights of Madison Square Garden without any sense of comment.  Perhaps if he had crafted the contrast into some meaning it would’ve felt more natural, but this and other inserted visual flairs feel like just that, flair, instead of something to really make note of.

            Much ado has been made about Jake Gyllenhaal’s physical heft as the light heavyweight champ Billy Hope, and his physicality, both in size and in the way he carries himself as the battered boxer, deserves adoration.  The dedication to his gym prep shows, a necessary step to playing a realistic boxer, but it’s that body movement, the shuffling weariness of a person who’s taken a beating, that elevates the performance.  Gyllenhaal is one of the greats when it comes to inhabiting a character, but he’s never overly showy about it, always playing to the strengths of the film and not overstepping into gaudiness.  Playing right along at his level is Rachel McAdams as his wife, Maureen.  She’s a classic Sutter momma, knowing her place when out in the world but fiercely fighting behind the scenes for the man she loves.  McAdams brings her all to the pivotal role, and her commitment and natural interplay with Gyllenhaal is what makes the film work.

            Gyllenhaal sells the hell out of this lightweight film, but its failings show in how drawn out the whole thing feels.  Their either needed to be more to the story or twenty less minutes to the film, because it’s current iteration is too dour to be fun and too empty to be great.  Gyllenhaal and McAdams makes what is there work, though, and that is far from a complete loss.

Other Notes:
Ø  Whitaker and Naomi Harris make for some woefully underused side characters.
Ø  Speaking of Naomi Harris, did I detect a romance between her and Gyllenhaal that was left on the cutting room floor?
Ø  Southpaw:  a left-handed person, especially a boxer who leads with the right hand or a baseball pitcher

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?


Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?.jpg

Released:  November 25th, 2013
Rated:  Unrated
Distributor:  IFC Films
Starring:  Noam Chomsky, Michel Gondry
Directed by:  Michel Gondry
Written by:  Michel Gondry
Personal Bias Alert:  not familiar with Chomsky, likes Gondry’s films

7.8 of 10


7




Well, this is an odd little…what?  Documentary?  I suppose that’s the closest category to put it in, although there’s no story being told here.  It’s simply an interview with writer/director Michel Gondry asking questions of the linguist, philosopher, political activist, and man of many intellectual hats Noam Chomsky.  However, instead of the usual (and much easier) talking heads setup, Gondry takes the time to animate the conversation, limiting the use of live footage to only small chunks of the conversation that were intermittently captured by a camera on a timer.  This may sound sparse to you, but in an age where TED Talks and other lecture series have hit it big in the podcast world, it’s unsurprising to find a filmmaker taking on the challenge of livening up such an event.

There will, of course, always be an entry barrier to this sort of work.  You have to enjoy talks and lectures, be the kind of person willing to sit through long, unstructured conversations that require the utmost mental attention with little to no need to insert your own opinions.  I have faith that the crossover between this sort of audience and serious film fans is rather strong, as the desire to sit still and be challenged is a requirement for both groups.  Still, if you fall asleep during school or watch the clock drag by during presentations, you should definitely skip Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy, because it delivers something much closer to the lecture format than to a traditional documentary.

The conversation itself meanders, touching on many aspects of Chomsky’s work without any sense of structure or pace.  At times, it presents incredibly challenging concepts that might require you to go back and rewatch a few times to understand, which if you’ve decided to give this film a try is likely what you’re looking for.  Personally, I don’t know anything about Chomsky or his work, but I’ve got a background in psychology, so the rudiments of what he was talking about was familiar to me.  Someone without such a background, like Gondry, will struggle even more to keep up, especially given the language barrier that the two faced.  Gondry speaks only passable English, so there are times when the conversation between the two becomes muddled by misunderstanding.  These make for interesting moments that exist entirely outside of Chomsky’s intellect, giving a glimpse into how the minds of a deeply studious linguist and a creative layman bounce off of and react to each other.  Instead of slowing the film down, these moments make for perhaps the only aspect that feels like a traditional film, moments where two characters come into conflict and must resolve (or ignore) the problem in front of them.

The cinematic aspect, i.e. Gondry’s drawings, largely aims to compliment the conversation going on.  They occasionally dabble in illuminating or making more clear the concepts being discussed, but they mostly shy away from such pursuits (I have doubts that Gondry understood the concepts clearly enough to explain them).  Instead, it largely takes the shape of something like doodles, the kind of half-thought out sketches that jittery-handed people make when intensely focused on something else.  The images glide around the conversation, forming into simplistic expressions that pulse with the flow of the conversation.  It’s a similar effect to being hypnotized by the visualizations on a music player.  You’re mostly focused on the noise, but the bright colors bouncing in response keeps all other distractions tuned out.  In doing so, Gondry’s animation actually emphasizes Chomsky’s words, sucking you in in a way that talking heads simply wouldn’t have accomplished.

Gondry seems to have a great respect for Noam Chomsky, but the desire to preserve him yet again is a bit baffling.  Chomsky’s books are numerous, and he’s appeared many times in film and television formats much more accessible than this.  Although, perhaps Gondry’s aim wasn’t one of preservation but a desire to express his own excitement about Chomsky’s work.  Such a selfish intent isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the lack of structure or central concept keeps the whole thing from having much of an effect.  The film is interesting and captivating while you watch it, but it slips from the mind quickly, leaving any long-term takeaways too few and too simplistic to have a lasting effect.

Other Notes:
Ø  Gondry is too kind to be a documentarian.  He fails to push Chomsky when painful things come up.
Ø  Watching this, I went into the stupor I often do when intensely focused:  an almost asleep daze where my body shuts down while my mind is whirring away.
Ø  Is the man who tall is happy?

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Ant-Man


Ant-Man poster.jpg

Released:  July 17th, 2015
Rated:  PG-13
Distributor:  Walt Disney Studios
Starring:  Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Michael Douglas, Judy Greer
Directed by:  Peyton Reed
Written by:  Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, Paul Rudd
Personal Bias Alert:  never heard of Ant-Man, likes the cast

6 of 10




            Remember when Guardians of the Galaxy was considered a risk?  It was an expansion of the MCU with little-known characters and a hint of nostalgia, all wrapped up in a space-western bow?  Then the film and its star, Chris Pratt, became the beloved breakouts of 2014, leaving the troubled Ant-Man as the last “risk” of MCU’s phase 2.  Let’s face it, anything with that Marvel label isn’t an actual risk, financially or creatively, as they are controlled and marketed by the most commercially influential studio of our time.  But with development and production spanning nearly ten years and a director switch mere months before shooting, the footing seemed especially shaky for the little hero that could.  As if on cue, Ant-Man rolled out to a resounding and deserved ‘meh’.

            If you haven’t heard of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), rest assured that his powers are exactly what they sound like:  he shrinks to ant size, acquires the super-strength of an ant, and controls his ant comrades.  I guess this is a slight step up from Aquaman, but really, I’m surprised that I’ve never heard this guy come up in any ‘worst superpower ever’ debates.  Anyway, his MCU debut follows the tired and true origin story plot to a fault, complete with an older mentor played by a famous actor (Michael Douglas), a drawn-out training montage that acclimatizes the character and the audience to his powers, and a cackling bad guy that is personally entwined with our heroes.  In fact, the setup and training period is so yawn-inducing that I was surprised when no further wrinkle to the plot was ever revealed.  As the film buzzed into its finale, I had the shocking revelation that this was really all it was going to be, and that wasn’t quite enough for a satisfying film.

            Now, small plots aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but they’re just plain boring when the tone of the film is so lifeless.  Rudd, who has a wonderfully disreputable charm, is the perfect casting choice for the burglar-turned-hero, but his hands are tied behind his back by the utter blandness of his character.  Like so many heroes in the MCU, he gets a short background that relates directly to his becoming a superhero, while the rest of him is left blank.  Any emotional traits these characters have lack nuance and are so simplistic that they can be described using caveman speak.  It’s sad to see Rudd so robbed of personality, and the scattered jokes he does get were surely added by himself and Adam McKay (who both get screenwriting credits).  The rest of the characters don’t fare any better, with Corey Stoll going way too big as the almost mustache-twisting bad guy and Evangeline Lily getting hamstrung by a forced romance and head-scratching motives.  Douglas gets the most fleshed-out character, but daddy figures don’t fare well in this universe, plus his ‘revelations’ are so obvious that they can only be withheld until midway through the film.

            But eventually that third act does kick in, and the final battle delivers the cool but silly fun that should accompany a character called Ant-Man.  From a technical standpoint, the way they capture Ant-Man’s changing size is a nice visual change-up from the usual punch-and-shoot battles.  They vary the scale that we see the fight in to match whatever size Ant-Man is taking, making the action sequences a trippy little treat.  Despite its relatively modest budget (it’s the lowest production budget of any MCU film), the effects are dazzling, providing the only interesting element that spans the entire film.

            The idea of giving this largely unknown and offbeat hero an introductory movie that matches his size wasn’t a bad call.  It’s the fumbling that occurred with the script, directing, and editing that makes this film so lifelessly forgettable.  Perhaps this lack of spark is what caused original director Edgar Wright to jump ship, leaving his replacement with only one last-minute defense:  to lay there like a slug.

Other Notes (Ridiculous Plot Point Version):
Ø  At one point, it’s claimed that Ant-Man’s suit has more potential dangers than Tony Stark’s, which is complete crap.
Ø  Along the same lines, what’s with the conceit that the suit would give the bad guys such a grave upper hand if they got ahold of it?  All you’d have to do is give the technology to the good guys, too, and the playing field would be level again.
Ø  The mysterious long-term mental effects of the serum makes no sense in this movie’s mythology.
Ø  So was Rudd’s character a Robin Hood-esque figure or a common burglar before he became Ant-Man?

Other Notes (Normal Version):
Ø  I really like the Ant-Man suit.
Ø  Let’s all take a collection and fund a solo movie for Michael Peña, because it was painful to see him relegated to this role.
Ø  *Credits Sequence Spoiler*:  Yeah, about time we get a female character that can actually fight with the big boys.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Quick Shots

Trainwreck

Trainwreck poster.jpg

Released:  July 17th, 2015
Rated:  R
Distributor:  Universal Pictures
Starring:  Amy Schumer, Tilda Swinton, Bill Hader, John Cena, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn
Directed by:  Judd Apatow
Written by:  Amy Schumer
Personal Bias Alert:  not an Apatow fan, likes nearly all the supporting cast

4.9 of 10






            Writer and star Amy Schumer’s career has been on a meteoric rise the last couple years, with her sketch comedy series gaining more and more ardent followers with each successive outing.  Its third season has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and gained a Peabody Award alongside programs like the political thriller The Honorable Woman and the news satire Last Week Tonight, a background which might prime you for a smart comedy that skewers societal norms or plays with genre standards.  That’s how Trainwreck is being billed, and even how many critics are taking it, but it’s actually little more than a bawdy outfit covering a very traditional walk of shame.

            Amy’s Amy (yep, the character shares her name) is a 30-something magazine writer who’s a bit too self-absorbed and way too damaged to commit to a relationship when a fling with one of her article’s subjects threatens to knock her life back onto the tracks.  The plot is as traditional as they come, trying to distract you from its tameness with raunch that has a surprisingly nasty undertone.  Any deviation from traditional sexuality (i.e. loving man-woman stuff) is played for laughs in protracted, lazy sex scenes that border on offensive to those of us with an open mind about what turns people on.  I mean, am I really supposed to laugh at a guy who’s in touch with his emotions, has healthy relationships and goals, and may or may not be gay?

            However, when the comedy manages to get back on the right side of offensive, it delivers some bursting laughs.  An almost unrecognizable Tilda Swinton appears as a one-liner machine and LeBron James proves a surprisingly adept straight-man, with most of the big moments reserved for Amy herself.  But the hits are outweighed by the cringe-inducing misses, and the alleged social commentary is as out of date as a grown man making a comedy about a (wo)man-child.

______________________________________
Amy

Amy Movie Poster.jpg

Rated:  R
Distributor:  A24
Directed by:  Asif Kapadia
Edited by:  Chris King
Personal Bias Alert:  not an Amy Winehouse fan

7.5 of 10











            I just couldn’t get behind Amy Winehouse when she was alive, and it had everything to do with her talent.  Her music was an honest glimpse inside a troubled mind, and the frail body belting it out left no doubts about its authenticity.  By the time she burst into the mainstream and into my life with Rehab, her path seemed to already be tread, and I chose not to go along for the tragedy.  With this documentary, Asif Kapadia aims to dig deeper into the whys of Winehouse’s life, but what comes up oddly missing is Amy herself.

            While using traditional interviews, Kapadia completely avoids the talking head setup that many docs lean on, instead putting the audio of these sit-downs over the voluminous footage, both public and private, of Winehouse herself.  The structure is still very linear, with the movie spanning approximately the last 15 years of Winehouse’s life.  What we come to find out is that Winehouse was troubled from even these early years, suffering from depression and self-medicating with drugs, alcohol, and music for most of her life.  This causes the doc to take on the familiar and winding story of the untreated depressive, a slog of ups and downs that leads only to a final, sputtering end.  This lack of arc becomes a bit frustrating as the film drags itself over two hours, sticking resolutely to Amy’s disintegrating life instead of building with her career’s success.


            What Kapadia undeniably captures, though, is Winehouse’s skill and love of music.  Her most forceful opinions and truest expressions stem from this, highlighted by wonderfully added text of her lyrics and isolated vocal tracks.  With Winehouse dead long before the production was conceived, this is the closest thing we have to personal musings on her own life, but even this is only what she could surmise through the haze of her depression.  Because she was never able to beat back the disease, we will never get a clear view of what Winehouse thought of herself.  It’s the elephant in the room, so to speak, and Kapadia never comes up with a way to work around it.  It gives the film a hint of unintentional voyeurism, a feeling made all the more uneasy as the constant spotlight accelerates Winehouse’s decline.  The closest thing we come to a clear-headed moment in the back half of the film is a brief scene where Winehouse gets to do something she’s always dreamed of.  Her wonder at the moment breaks through the haze, but by then she’s too far gone to recover, drenching the whole scene in tragedy.  That’s the greatest achievement of Amy:  instilling the wish that her life could’ve gone on, not for our own selfish reasons, but for her.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

What's Eating Gilbert Grape


Whats eating gilbert grape poster.jpg

Released:  December 17th, 1993
Rated:  PG-13
Distributor:  Paramount Pictures
Starring:  Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, Crispin Glover, John C. Reilly, Darlene Cates
Directed by:  Lasse Hallström
Written by:  Peter Hedges
Personal Bias Alert:  from the countryside of America, values family

9 of 10





            American films are often criticized for getting the interior of the country wrong, and as a native of the Midwest, I must pipe up in agreement.  There are a smattering of movies that seem to understand the good and the bad of small town life, but most pander, representing us as wholesome, god-fearing folks that may not be the brightest but have their hearts in the right place.  The complexity of our makeup is lost, and uneducated becomes synonymous with unintelligent.  This couldn’t be further from the truth in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, a film written by an Iowan that seems hell-bent on dispelling these misconceptions.

            This immediacy is easy to miss in Gilbert Grape as it doesn’t rub it in your face like a city slicker might.  No, it goes about it in a quiet, methodical way, one that reminds me very much of sitting around with my dad and listening to one of his childhood stories.  It seems light and boring at first, but you slide into its protracted rhythm without realizing it, and soon you’re finding the quiet moments of humor, desire, and despair popping out in ways that seem impossible to miss.  You come to see that none of the people in Gilbert’s town are complacent.  Each brim with their own dreams and ambitions, things that gnaw away at them with the same ferocity as everyone else, even though their surroundings cultivate a feeling of sameness that beguiles the constant flux surrounding them.

            Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is the quintessential small-town young man.  He’s unobtrusive and loyal, spending every day bagging groceries at the local store and caring for his mentally handicapped brother.  He must seem like something out a fairytale to Juliette Lewis’s Becky, who becomes stranded when her trailer breaks down as she’s passing through his town.  The attraction between the two is instantaneous, but each regard the other with some trepidation.  Gilbert, whose duties to his brother and family are a 24/7 commitment, doesn’t have the time nor emotional energy to spend on a relationship, while Becky is hesitant to believe a man like Gilbert can really exist.  Her wariness is assuaged in one of the film’s best and most understated scenes, when she responds to Gilbert’s admission that he’ll miss a former lover with a mumbled “Good.”

            This scene, which revolves around Gilbert’s fling with an older, married woman, is also indicative of how well Gilbert Grape handles the flaws of its characters.  While everyone onscreen has dreams, they also have faults that they are never judged nor condemned for.  That’s not to say that there aren’t consequences for their mistakes; in fact, they often come in such a devastating fashion that the whole film has a twinge of tragedy, but at the same time each are treated with such kindness and understanding that you’re encouraged to view even the most frustrating characters with a humane eye.

            This reluctance to judge, along with the film’s decidedly understated nature, may feel like tedium at times, like you’re stuck in a loop of mumbled, pent-up emotions.  It’s a familiar tone for indies, but one that fits Gilbert and his town like a glove.  This isn’t a case of adherence to genre standards, but an accurate and true representation of characters that are brought to tender life by an excellent cast.  Of course, many things do change, most of which are inevitable but still horrendously upsetting.  In the climactic scene with Gilbert and his family, they make a decision they can never turn back from, and an insert shot reveals just how far they’ve all come.  Given the circumstances, they seem lucky to have made it there at all.

Other Notes:
Ø  There are, admittedly, some overwritten moments.
Ø  Gilbert’s struggle to be a good person is admirable and rarely seen in film.
Ø  “I haven’t always been like this, either.”

Friday, July 10, 2015

The Gallows


The Gallows Poster.jpg

Released:  July 10th, 2015
Rated:  R
Distributor:  Warner Bros.
Starring:  Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford
Directed by:  Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing
Written by:  Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing
Personal Bias Alert:  doesn’t like jump scares, was intrigued by the premise

3.8 of 10






            You know those mundane horror films that people like me are always complaining about?  Well, The Gallows is one of them.  The sad thing is that I was on this film’s side going in.  The endlessness discomfort of high school makes it a ripe setting for horror, and the marketing campaign had done a good job of establishing this as a claustrophobic little creeper.  Problem is, the film’s too small for its own good.  The plot, character, ambiance, and yes, even the horror, is too scarce to fill it’s 81 minute runtime, and the stuff that is there doesn’t add up to much that’s redeeming.

            As I said, The Gallows doesn’t even make it to the 90 minute mark, and the first twenty minutes or so centers on the inane hijinks of the most insufferable character of the group:  the bully jock.  He’s recording the last practices of the school play, a revival of The Gallows, which resulted in the accidental death of a student the last time it was performed.  And yes, while it’s ridiculous to think that any school would allow such a play to be revived, let’s not forget how ridiculous it is that a school would put on a play where someone is fake-hung in the first place.  Think of the logistics of a fake hanging, the liability of the school, and the outraged parents of the scarred young children in attendance.  No way in hell that would ever be allowed to happen.  And yet, hell is exactly what our humorless brute gets when he, his best friend, and his girlfriend break into the school to tear down the set and unintentionally come under the wrath of the play’s previous victim.

            To make things even more fun, that first twenty minutes of setup only establishes the rudiments of each character, namely that jock Ryan (Ryan Shoos) is a jerk, friend Reese (Reese Houser) is in love with the play’s lead, and girlfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford) is, well, she never actually gets anything beside the ‘cheerleader’ label.  The play’s lead, Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), is also introduced as an overly-enthusiastic drama nerd, and she ends up trapped in the school along with the others.  This is how The Gallows chooses to spend one fourth of its time, blandly establishing a group of terrified teens that you don’t like enough to care about or hate enough to revel in their deaths, leaving you with nothing to give a crap about once the lights go off and the nooses start flying.

            Once the horror elements do kick in, it quickly leans on a series of jump scares instead of actual horror.  That’s the funny thing about The Gallows; it’s never actually scary.  It’s more a matter of tension, which is delivered at a non-stop pace once it really takes off.  Sure, it’s all cheap or lackluster jump scares (the ghost is neither well-designed nor well-used), but it’s hard not to feel unsettled in a dark theater with things popping out and going bang all the time.  The theater, or at least a large group, is the only way to find any enjoyment in this film.  The camaraderie and chuckles that come with the shrieks and jumps, which The Gallows encourages with its continuous edginess, is a decent bit of fun if you’re into the midnight madness thing.

            Then, just when you’re ready to forgive it’s awfulness for the sake of fun, The Gallows spirals into its finish, crashing and burning under the predictable yet idiotic plot.  The ‘twist’ is telegraphed pretty badly, and even the shot construction of its climactic scene goes down exactly how you imagine it.  Even as it goes down, the unmerited and irrational reasoning behind the nights events will gnaw at you, and the final scene is nothing but the icing on top of a derivative, weak horror film.

Other Notes: 
Ø  There’s an entire scene towards the end that’s shot so poorly that you can’t even tell what’s happening.
Ø  This film contains possibly the most otherworldly plot point I’ve seen all year:  that drama is a required class.
Ø  Let’s hope the school officials get the hint and never put on this play again.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Saved!


Saved! movie poster.jpg

Released:  June 11th, 2004
Rated:  PG-13
Distributor:  United Artists
Starring:  Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Eva Amurri, Patrick Fugit
Directed by:  Brian Dannelly
Written by:  Brian Dannelly, Michael Urban
Personal Bias Alert:  first saw it in high school, likes Patrick Fugit

6.2 of 10






            Coming out a mere six weeks after Tina Fey’s hit Mean Girls, Saved! understandably got a bit lost in its predecessor’s shadow.  Mean Girls is a clean, punchy teen comedy that skewers high school dynamics.  Saved!, on the other hand, is an unsure yet bold teen comedy that skewers both the evangelical Christian movement and the outsider’s reaction to it.  The former is much more relatable and much safer to a wide audience, but Saved! has more merits and might have done us some good if we had embraced it with the same fervor as Mean Girls.

            Set in the kind of private high school that I imagine the kids from Jesus Camp attending (complete with intelligent design posters and reluctant sex ed lessons), the plastics at this school are the most devout, the ones who spout Jesus’s message at every opportunity, leaving anyone who openly questions or rejects the word at the bottom of the social totem pole.  Mary (Jena Malone) starts at the top, winning her way into the highest echelon of the pecking order (for which she literally gets a pin), but a mixed-up message from God leads her to sleep with her gay boyfriend, become pregnant, and lose her elevated status.  There to catch her are outcasts Cassandra (Eva Amurri), Roland (Macaulay Culkin), and the Pastor’s son, Patrick (Patrick Fugit).

            Understand that, in 2004, America was still in the midst of a prominent evangelical movement, as well as only beginning to broach the issue of gay rights seriously.  The idea that a film aimed at teens would address these topics head on while poking fun at them and somehow maintaining a PG-13 rating was novel, and stumbles by such a path-forging film are to be expected.  Writer/director Brian Dannelly never quite finds the sweet spot of his satire, if one even exists, going from too biting at the beginning to too sweet at the end, but you can’t deny how satisfying his one-liners are.  Meanwhile, his characters are largely one-dimensional, fulfilling whatever type was necessary to make this story play out as it does.  The arc of this film is rather obvious from the beginning, but the fact that such a film even existed in 2004 is remarkable enough to excuse a few glaring faults.

            The cast is largely what saves this film, led by the pitch perfect Malone who’s backed up in every direction by game performers.  Mandy Moore chews the scenery as the gatekeeper of the saved, constantly spouting her superiority and aggressively pursuing those who she feels needs God’s word.  She invites your hatred without letting you completely give up on her character, a tightrope that she walks rather well.  The rabble of nonconformists are led by Culkin, who gives the most mature performance of his sparse adult career, alongside stalwart supporting players like Fugit, Amurri, and Mary-Louise Parker.  Malone navigates the trickiest arc, conveying the lessons of the film while touting an ever-growing attitude and belly.  Her eventual snark and self-confidence feels earned thanks to Malone’s subtle movement through the character’s changing beliefs, something that’s remarkably not over- nor underplayed.

            The messages that the film hits you with are neither subtle nor easy, encouraging a complex and understanding view of faith and humanity.  The messages are often stated by one character or another, which is equal parts rallying and gag-inducing, but does include my favorite line of the film (a cheer-worthy moment delivered after someone literally throws a bible).  If you can’t handle on the nose films then this one will drive you insane, but if you can put aside the mistakes that Saved! makes while taking on complex issues, then you’ll find a funny, smart, and understanding film.

Other Notes (Awesome Quotes Version):
Ø  “It’s like a girl gang for Jesus.”
Ø  “I’m not dating right now.”  “What about tomorrow night?  Will you be dating then?”
Ø  “I’m saving myself until marriage, and I’ll use force if necessary.”

Other Noted (Regular Version):
Ø  I loved this as a teenager.  My love has subsided as I’ve aged, the reasons for which are not entirely clear to me.
Ø  It must have been confusing for Patrick Fugit to play a character named Patrick.  Or maybe it was the least confusing role he’s had.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Terminator: Genisys


Terminator Genisys.JPG

Released:  July 1st, 2015
Rated:  PG-13
Distributor:  Paramount Pictures
Starring:  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jai Courtney, Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Lee Byung-hun, J.K. Simmons
Directed by:  Alan Taylor
Written by:  Laeta Kalogridis, Patrick Lussier
Personal Bias Alert:  not into Arnold, never seen anything Terminator

7.2 of 10





            Yep, I was a Terminator virgin going into Genisys.  Neither the films nor the T.V. show had crossed my eyes, and outside the catchphrases and other rudiments that have seeped into pop culture, I knew zilch about their plots.  I’m an anomaly among avid moviegoers, some of whom are surely side-eying my self-proclaimed credentials suspiciously right about now, but trust me that I’ve seen a lot of films, enough to suss out the good from the bad, and can at least contribute a uniquely unburdened opinion on this wrongly maligned film.

            Terminator:  Genisys is a timeline-twisting tale, even without all the baggage of the previous installments, that roughly follows Sarah Connor (human from the past), Kyle Reese (human from the future), and Pops (terminator from the future) as they hop around in time trying to prevent the machines from overthrowing humanity.  Humanity is, of course, willingly setting themselves up for their own doom, a theme that’s ham-fistedly brought up and examined with all the depth of a bird bath.  Nearly all the film’s themes are this poorly handled, but this failure is an anomaly in an otherwise well-executed movie.

            For all it’s time jumping, Genisys is rather clear about the ramifications of its constantly shifting pasts and futures.  Some thorny problems pop up after you leave the film, the kind that plague nearly every time travel film, but the writers smartly give you something constant to track as the character’s do the time warp:  the blossoming bond between Sarah and Kyle.  Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney, who play the pair, are seasoned vets when it comes to working in CGI-laced, big-budget affairs, and their comfort around these potential distractions certainly helped them stay focused on tracking the pair’s curious but contentious relationship.  Obviously, their characters have bigger things to worry about, which tempers how prominent this relationship is in the film, but they’re deft enough to add in the nuances even in the midst of the big action scenes.  It’s an easy layer to overlook, particularly given how their characters fade to the background during most of the big terminator fights, but their performances expertly service an ensemble film without going for too much.

            The real stars, of course, are the terminators, whose various models duke it out over and over again without falling into repetition.  Arnold leads the bunch as the oldest model, who must take on the much more advanced versions using trickery and ingenuity instead of brute strength.  The battles are wonderfully staged, particularly the early battles with the liquid T-1000 model, which unfortunately upstages the big finale.  Still, there’s plenty of action spaced out in the film’s two hours, and it’s this pacing that carries the film past most of its wrong turns.  Arnold does his fair share of the lifting, both literally and metaphorically, as one of the most believable and funniest over-60 action characters to date.

            Admittedly, Genisys does take some wrong turns early on, leaving the eventualities of the plot pretty easy to spot.  Perhaps having this blatant of an endpoint helps the whole film feel more coherent, but this fault doesn’t feel intentional like the other downsides seemed to be.  The later revelations are still played out like they’re supposed to be surprising, which they never are, and takes away from the film’s climax. 

            In reading the various reviews that are already flooding the internet, it seems everyone from laymen to professionals are pointing out different upsides and downsides to Genisys.  The consensus is certainly that it’s bad, but the reasons behind this opinion varies wildly.  As an outsider, I have to speculate that the disappointment stems from people’s love of the first two Terminator films and the fact that this isn’t similar enough to those movies.  But those films were released in 1984 and 1991, so long ago that the layout and pacing of films actually differ from their modern-day equivalents.  Genisys is a thoroughly modern blockbuster in terms of pacing and content, something that must be expected for a studio to invest $150 million, and it’s far from the worst of its kind to come across our screens.

Other Notes:
Ø  Beware poor casting.  They put a very famous person in a ‘surprise’ role.
Ø  Why are there gun stashes everywhere?  Wouldn’t someone have caught on that Arnold repeatedly buys an army’s worth of weapons?
Ø  The amount of times they destroy/wreck the Golden Gate Bridge has to be a joke.

Perfect Sense



Released:  February 3rd, 2012
Rated:  R
Distributor:  IFC Films
Starring:  Ewan McGregor, Eva Green, Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane, Connie Nielsen
Directed by:  David Mackenzie
Written by:  Kim Fupz Aakeson
Personal Bias Alert:  loves Eva Green, not big on romance

7.7 of 10






            Movies, while quite evocative, only work with two of your senses:  sight and sound.  There have been attempts to add touch and smell, but both have proven too costly a gimmick.  The limitations of this setup are rarely apparent, but they’re hard to miss in Perfect Sense, which depicts a world where humanity is losing their senses one by one.  The horror of such a strange loss has been seen before (watch/read Blindness), but it’s rarely as visceral as it is in Perfect Sense, which goes far out of its way to make the audience feel each blow.  When director David Mackenzie succeeds at this, the film floors you with its emotional ramifications, but just as many times the loss isn’t palpable enough to support the film’s misty-eyed philosophizing.

            Instead of focusing on society’s slow disintegration or using the situation as a metaphor for some larger cultural examination, writer Kim Fupz Aakeson chose to take the high concept and apply it to a simple parable about the power of love and connection.  To those of you gagging, please bear with me, because I normally hate that kind of mush, too.  The wonderful Ewan McGregor and Eva Green are your main couple, who fall in love as the disaster unfolds.  While their relationship isn’t that well-written and both characters feel more like a collection of affects than real people, McGregor and Green are such emotive actors that you get behind their relationship despite the false notes.  But it’s not just their love lives that prove meaningful.  Both characters are quite invested in their jobs, he’s a chef and she’s an epidemiologist, and the strong bonds they have with their coworkers prove nearly as fruitful.  The first half of the film suffers because of the underdeveloped characterization, but over time Green, McGregor, and the excellent supporting players sell the relationships with such wholeheartedness that the film’s back half transcends sappiness and achieves that remarkably elusive white whale:  a moment of vicarious joy.

            Working in tandem with the cast to achieve this moment is a myriad of bold technical choices by Mackenzie that butters you up for the eventual climax.  Characters are brought to the extreme foreground of shots, and the camera jostles and sways as their emotions brim.  When their emotions are released, which occurs before the onset of each new stage of the disease, Mackenzie chooses to stay with them, letting the big, occasionally nasty scenes play out in graphic detail.  It’s all very off-putting at first, like the overdone efforts of an uncertain guide, but these spaced-out punctuations eventually wear down your defenses, forcing you to become comfortable around the character’s beating hearts.

            Nothing, though, is as essential to the film’s success as its score.  This is a film about loss, about whittling down the world to the bare essentials, and what these essentials end up being aren’t tangible things.  To access these abstract aspects of life, Mackenzie smartly leans on the music, which becomes more and more important as the film goes on.  Composer Max Richter leads us gently, allowing pieces to expand and grow along with their accompanying scenes.  For all of Mackenzie’s aggressive insertions, the score cannot be counted among them, and it proves to be the most emotionally evocative aspect of the movie.

            This is a bleeding heart film, one that, depending on your affinity for such rawness, will either move you to tears or make you run screaming from the room.  As with many open wounds, it’s quite ragged around the edges, but there’s catharsis and comfort to be had at the end of it all.

Other Notes:
Ø  I found it very interesting to watch the world crumble and pick itself back up over and over again.
Ø  I wish they didn’t have the narrator spell out everything.
Ø  Green’s continued use of the word ‘sailor’ felt incredibly false.
Ø  Wanna throw some rocks?