The Danish Girl

Released:  November 27^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Focus Features

Starring:  Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ben Whishaw, Amber Heard

Directed by:  Tom Hooper

Written by:  Lucinda Coxon

Personal Bias Alert:  loves Vikander, haven’t read the book

6.8 of 10

            Welcome to your stuffy British Oscar bait!  You’d be hard-pressed to make a film more tailored for awards season than The Danish Girl, which has the distributor, topical storyline, and pedigree to make its run blindfolded.  In a way, that appears to be what it’s doing, as after a rousing premiere at the Venice Film Festival it stumbled in Toronto and has been limping along ever since.  But it’s still got foolproof nominations for Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, who’s strategically running in the supporting category, and remains in consideration for several other categories.  That’s the power of perception for you, because taken on its own accord, The Danish Girl deserves little more than a polite nod as you leave the theater.

            That topical storyline has to do with the growing prominence of transgendered people in Western media.  The Danish Girl draws upon the story of one of the first people to ever get sex reassignment surgery, the artist Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe (Redmayne).  I say draws upon because this story plays very loose with the facts, an easy freedom that isn’t inherently negative, but unfortunately wasn’t used here to form a well-structured movie.

            The Danish Girl is adapted from the novel of the same name, which I’m assuming is where the focus on the relationship between Einar and has wife, Gerda Wegener (Vikander), comes from.  It’s an excellent plan to root the story in the universally relatable situation of loving someone who’s changing before your eyes, and the pairing of such emotive actors as Redmayne and Vikander really allows that story to take off.  They play off of each other so well, vivaciously bubbly when they’re in love and misty-eyed when in rough patches, that the complexities of their ever-changing relationship is remarkably easy to track.

            The problem is that screenwriter Lucinda Coxon doesn’t match this relationship’s emotional arc to the plot’s structure, allowing the turning point in the relationship to come far too early and for the same dynamics to drag along for long stretches of time.  The plot itself becomes very bogged down in the physical aspects of Einar/Lili’s transition, from the adoption of feminine movements to the surgeries themselves.  This is understandable considering that her physical transformation is what she’s remembered for, but this doesn’t bear much emotional heft on its own.  By not pairing the plot’s climax to the couple’s relationship, the back half of this film becomes remarkably dispassionate, and its ending feels like nothing more than a rote bid for tears.

            Director Tom Hooper has a certain self-aggrandizing tone that he uses as his de facto mode of storytelling, which has led to two straight Best Picture nominations and certainly produces austerely beautiful films.  The Danish Girl proves to be no exception, as everything from the score, sets, costumes, and cinematography is impeccably done.  His framing of shots have often resembled posed paintings, which fits nicely with the galleries and workshops much of this film takes place in.  Stills from this movie would look lovely framed and hanging on a wall, but this style matches poorly with the film’s uneven emotional resonance, so much so that when the couple’s relationship ebbs from time to time, the film becomes very flat.  Hooper does nothing to address the story’s shortcomings, apparently feeling that a nice presentation was all the screenplay needed, which indicates a massive failure to understand the story he was tasked with telling.

              Thank god for Redmayne and Vikander, who prove to be the only ones capable of injecting some life into these stiff proceedings.  It’s encouraging that, for all of The Danish Girl’s Oscar maneuverings, the two people who truly delivered at their jobs are the only ones assured of its golden recognition.

Other Notes:

Ø  Ben Whishaw and Matthias Schoenaerts give solid, if stiff, supporting turns.

Ø  Whishaw may be one of the few people to have appeared in more films than Vikander in 2015.

Ø  I adore the way this film shows people painting through the back side of the canvas.

In the Heart of the Sea

Released:  December 11^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson

Directed by:  Ron Howard

Written by:  Charles Leavitt

Personal Bias Alert:  never read Moby-Dick, likes man-versus-nature themes

5.3 of 10

            Walking through the local movie theater a few months ago, I spotted a poster for In the Heart of the Sea.  It’s a great poster, using the massiveness of the whale to emphasize the futility of men, and then I noticed that it listed the old March release date.  The film was delayed for nine months, allegedly to position it for an awards season run, but few people bought that explanation.  It originally would’ve competed with the releases of Cinderella and Run All Night, while it’s new December slot had it up against zero wide releases.  A stinker was suspected, and the long wait soured many, like me, who were intrigued by this film.  Now it’s finally out in the world, and while it’s not a complete travesty, it does blow a solid premise and a strong cast.

            In the Heart of the Sea endeavors to tell the real-life inspiration for Moby-Dick, where the crew of the whaling ship Essex is attacked and stranded by a massive white whale.  There’s no one here to call Ishmael, but the storyteller role remains, taken over by the grizzled and haunted Thomas (Brendan Gleeson) who was the cabin boy on the ill-fated trip.  Novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) drags the story out of him, and what unravels is a tale of many, but unfortunately incohesive, sides.

            Charles Leavitt gets the lone screenwriter credit here, but story credits also go to the writing duo of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.  Leavitt’s spotty track record includes the excellent Blood Diamond and the terrible Seventh Son, while Jaffa and Silver have collaborated on blockbusters like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World.  That’s not a particularly strong team, and they clearly struggled with the cumbersome, sprawling nature of this story.  There’s a lot of characters to set up as well as the unfamiliar business of whale hunting, and then they needed to condense what is a very long story into a manageable size.  They never seem to land on how to do any of this, as characters are paper-thin but made to have unsatisfying arcs (á la Jurassic World) and the story is allowed to plod on far longer than is needed (á la Seventh Son).  To add to the messiness, there’s a part of the film that tries to take on the myriad of themes that run through the story, but there’s also clearly a pull to make this into an action film (there’s a moment where Chris Hemsworth jumps at the whale with a hatchet).  This overall disjointedness nearly ruins what should be an epic tale, one that Melville himself was able to form into an American classic.

            Luckily for the audience, even when the story struggles there’s always a top-shelf actor onscreen to make it sort of work.  Hemsworth leads the group, and even though his accent is a bit shaky, his shoulders and acting ability are more than broad enough to carry the load.  He, Benjamin Walker, and Cillian Murphy make a nice threesome as the ship’s leaders, and they smooth out some of the dark turns that the film takes.  Tom Holland plays the younger version of Gleeson, and he yet again proves to be a young actor worth watching.  But it’s the scenes back on land with Gleeson and Whishaw that pop the most, proving yet again that masterfully played conversations can be more riveting than CGI spectacles.

            And there is a lot of CGI in this thing, as everything from the whales they are hunting to the backdrop behind the characters is digitally rendered in a strangely obvious way.  It’s the kind of film where the real things feel more palpable and set apart from those that aren’t, and it’s such a pervasive feeling that it’s hard to determine whether it was intentional or not.  Director Ron Howard would be the man to ask, and whether you find this effect and his constantly moving camera beautiful or a bit annoying will be dependent on your personal taste  It certainly makes it impossible to forget that you’re watching a movie, and while it does lead to a few impressive shots, that doesn’t make up for how jarring it often is.

            In the Heart of the Sea had a tough legacy to live up to, both from the history of its story and from the talent involved in its production.  It’s disappointing that it is such a long, jumbled mess, but there’s still bright spots peppered into this long slog.  Then again, it’s kind of fitting that the filmmaker’s attempt to make an epic out of the story behind Moby-Dick ended up as their white whale.

Other Notes:

Ø  Warning:  this film contains unnecessary whale gore.

Ø  As good of a job as Hemsworth did, I still feel that he was miscast.  He’s just too lumbering and imposing of a figure to be in the cramped spaces of a boat.

Ø  Is it possible for Frank Dillane not to feel smarmy?

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Released:  November 13^th, 1993

Rated:  PG

Distributor:  Buena Vista International

Starring:  Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey

Directed by:  Henry Selick

Written by:  Tim Burton, Michael McDowell, Caroline Thompson

Personal Bias Alert:  doesn’t like stop-motion animation, lukewarm on Tim Burton

4 of 10

            The Nightmare Before Christmas should be one of my classics.  I was the perfect age when it came out, was drawn to dark kids fare, and was already steeped in Burton’s style.  But Nightmare slipped through the cracks to become one of those films I always knew of but never saw.  Now over twenty years later, the film seems to have lost its magic.  Perhaps replication has made it seem less original, perhaps I’m just too old, or perhaps (just perhaps) it has always been too lightweight to hold up its own reputation.

            In a world where each holiday has its own isolated town, Halloween’s frightful leader Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman) finds himself tired of celebrating the same holiday every year.  While wandering the woods in misery, he comes across Christmas Town and is enchanted by its bright cheer.  Jack brings tidings of Christmas back to Halloween Town and endeavors to lead his newfound holiday the following year, but when his fear-loving townsfolk struggle to grasp the concept, Jack must somehow morph ghoulish ghosts into spry elves.

            It’s a silly plot, but to be fair, it is intended for very young children.  In this case, silly is fine, but lightweight is not.  So little happens in Nightmare that its brief runtime feels stretched tight.  It plays out with the intentional clunkiness of a TV special and lacks drive or stakes.  It falls prey to the idea that little kids can’t handle narrative menace, and it’s a much lesser and slightly patronizing film for it.  Consider Disney’s landmark Beauty and the Beast, released just two years before Nightmare.  This film presents kids with the prospect of being separated from your parents, bullied by a monster, and loosing forever the people that you love.  Nightmare has a potentially messed up Christmas and a bored protagonist.  See the difference?  How are children, let alone the adults being drug along with them, supposed to get invested in this story?

            As is often the answer with Tim Burton products, it’s the off-kilter, gothic style that’s supposed to reel you in.  The beauty of the film can’t be denied, even when you’re looking at worm-ridden monsters.  Burton and company designed a few truly memorable creatures here, from the lanky Jack to his pincushion admirer, which are all just the right amount of creepy.  Surrounding them are elaborate, misshapen buildings that you can imagine creaking and swaying in the wind.  Halloween Town is so perfectly themed that it’s a shock when things briefly switch to Christmas Town, with its popping colors and twinkling light.  It shows that the production team was capable of so much variety, which makes Halloween Town’s rigidly Tim Burton style a bit disappointing.  The entire look is replicated in past and future projects, the awe of which is diminished by so much repetition.  It’s still beautiful, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not enough to support an entire film.

            Filling out the scant plot is a bunch of supposedly peppy musical numbers composed by longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.  While the songs have their moments, they’re filled with repetitive and semi-lazy lyrics.   Sentiments are reworded ad nauseam, and it’s not uncommon to hear nonsense phrases just because they rhyme.  The accompanying music is often pretty bare-bones, so if you’re not into the zany words, then the numbers will do little to brew your excitement.  Couple that with a ridiculously undercooked romance, and the film offers little else besides surface entertainment.

            Burton had Nightmare cooking in his brain for nearly ten years before the film went into production.  It seems to have been a passion project for the man, and perhaps because of that there’s little effort to make it appeal to a wider audience.  You’ll either be charmed by his style or you won’t, because there’s little other reason to watch this film.

Other Notes:

Ø  I’ve long been slightly creeped out by stop-motion animation.  Everything appears lifeless to me, and I have great difficulty connecting to any story told with this method.

Ø  Note that this film is Tim Burton’s baby, but he did not direct it.  He was too busy at the time with Batman Returns and Ed Wood.

Ø  The scientific method joke made me laugh out loud.  Poor Jack, it never sways public opinion.

Krampus

Released:  December 4^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

Starring:  Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrel, Emjay Anthony

Directed by:  Michael Dougherty

Written by:  Todd Casey, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields

Personal Bias Alert:  was lukewarm on Dougherty’s Trick r’ Treat, likes genre blending

7.3 of 10

            Christmas horror movies have been made before, but they’re generally intended for B-movie or hard genre fanatics.  Ask the average moviegoer to name a few and you’ll likely get:  “Gremlins!  And, uh…”  The conversation won’t last long, because gleeful gore and Christmas tidings just don’t seem to go together.  It’s a balance that Krampus struggles to get right, but the effort, and Universal’s confident marketing push, is a risk to be admired.

            Director/co-writer Michael Dougherty is mining a very similar well here as his previous film, Trick r’ Treat.  Both are about an impish creature punishing those who don’t take the holidays seriously.  Perhaps they’re part of a loose series, or perhaps Dougherty just wants us to keep our holidays more reverent.  Christmas, it turns out, already had a creepy monster in its lore, which should come as no surprise considering how old and mixed its traditions are.   The character of Krampus is described in a nifty story within a story as “the shadow of Santa”, bringing carnage to those who lose the holiday spirit.  He’s inadvertently summoned by the central family’s youngest son, Max (Emjay Anthony), after becoming disillusioned by his family’s bickering.  Holiday-themed horror ensues, but not without a lot of winks at the audience, because the whole thing is knowingly a bit ridiculous.

            How much leeway that gives the film is going to vary for everyone, and its charm relies on having lots of room to slip up.  The film is, in many ways, a mess.  Its characters are obnoxious stereotypes, its sentimentality seems tacked on, and it settles for scares instead of terror.  There’s also a nasty anti-middle America streak that’s hard to get over (I know lots of nice people who like hot dogs and mac n’ cheese), and yet it overcomes all of this because it’s so darn gleeful.  The love that seeps through this film for oddball horror and kitschy bad guys is effervescent, and the tone weirdly fits with Christmas’s garish traditions.  It’s genuinely fun to watch this family get terrorized, and even though you don’t want to see them die, you do want to see what craziness gets thrown at them next.

            Between this and the anthology-based Trick r’ Treat, Dougherty proves to have a varied and imaginative take on his monsters.  Both films send all sorts of creepy-crawlies after their victims, and while they’re based on horror staples like clowns, children, and ancient demons, there’s always a twist to take things up a notch.  Either due to budget constraints or personal taste, Dougherty relies mostly on practical effects, working with Weta Workshop to create some very memorable monsters that any Planet Hollywood should proudly display.  Krampus himself is introduced in a rather memorable scene, and even if he never proves to be as terrifying as his introduction implies, he’s still a noteworthy baddie in the annals of PG-13 horror.

            Krampus, for all its odd mixing, never does anything truly original.  It holds very tight to clichés, but the gleeful way it goes about its story will earn it many laughs and cheers.  The ending is a letdown, that’s all I’ll say, but it’s a big one considering how assured it had been up until that point.  Still, there are so many worth-while moments that its flaws become overwhelmed, leaving audiences with an appetite for more holiday carnage should Dougherty choose to continue his series.

Other Notes:

Ø  It’s not lost on me how difficult it must’ve been for the entire cast to hit the same note tone-wise.  Kudos all around.

Ø  Without spoiling it, there’s a plot point early on that I was terrified that they would renege on.  Thankfully, they don’t.

Ø  The score in this film is inventive and near-perfect.

Ø  And so the legend of ‘the noodle incident’ is expanded.

Happy Christmas

Released:  July 25^th, 2014

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Magnolia Pictures

Starring:  Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg, Mark Webber

Directed by:  Joe Swanberg

Written by:  Joe Swanberg

Personal Bias Alert:  hit-and-miss on mumblecore, likes Anna Kendrick

7 of 10

            Mumblecore is quietly becoming one of the biggest filmmaking movements in America, but its founders reject that there’s any organization involved.  Instead, they surmise that the characteristic low-budget, organic feel is a natural response to mainstream cinema’s swelling budgets and rote stories.  Many of the founders are already making forays into bigger pictures, with Lynn Shelton, Mark Duplass, and Joe Swanberg attracting a variety of mainstream actors to their projects.  Despite this shift, Swanberg has chosen to keep his budgets low and with Happy Christmas reverts back to a micro-budget style (the film was made for a reported $70,000) after maxing out at $1 million for Drinking Buddies.  How this is possible with a cast that includes Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham, and Melanie Lynskey is a mystery, but it’s one that you won’t bother to consider when watching the thoroughly enjoyable Happy Christmas.

            As a hallmark of the subgenre, the film is largely improvised, leaving the plot to be a loose, shaggy thing that doesn’t go anywhere drastic.  There’s a 30ish couple (Swanberg and Lynskey) with a young baby and a couch-surfing little sister (Kendrick) in need of a restart.  There’s hints early on of animosity that never quite blossoms.  Instead, the film circles around a story of familial love and responsibility that is worth the pain.  It’s a gentle conflict, but one that most people will recognize.  It’s refreshing, given the histrionics that come with most films about families, to find one that captures the calmness of day-to-day operations.  There’s annoyance and frustration, yes, but there’s also an affectionate history and a bond that runs too deep to break.

            Another easy cliché that the film manages to avoid is pigeonholing Kendrick’s Jenny as a good-for-nothing slacker.  She’s troubled and there’s hints that she’s rebounding from a bad relationship, but she’s also genuinely interested in her brother and sister-in-law’s life, not wanting to interrupt it for too long.  Kendrick plays her as someone smart enough to know that she’s intruding, and her attempts to make herself useful is what staves off animosity.  These efforts lead to a sweet relationship between Kendrick and Lynskey, one that feels genuine and is wonderfully navigated by the two actresses.  They make it feel as if they wander into the understatedly powerful moments that occur between these two characters, and given the genre, perhaps that’s what actually happened.

            However, the style sometimes gets in the way, as almost all of the moments when Happy Christmas stumbles can be traced back to its mumblecore tenets.  The aesthetic simply isn’t for everyone, and the low-fi camerawork, lighting, and sound design doesn’t make for an elegant film.  More coverage shots would give the film some energy, and the lackadaisical plot inevitably leads to some inconsequential scenes.  There’s a sense that Swanberg wasn’t out to make a perfect film but to capture some small moments that aren’t often observed.  This is something he does quite well, but it doesn’t make for a complete film.

            Despite its shortcomings, Happy Christmas is carried across the finish line on the backs of Kendrick and Lynskey.  Everything about the film quickly fades from your mind except a few raw and wholly recognizable moments between these two.  If that is truly all that Swanberg wanted to capture, then the mission was accomplished.

Other Notes

Ø  Here’s hoping that Lynskey gets more starring roles.

Ø  I’ve never taken to Lena Dunham, even here.

Ø  Fun fact:  the baby is played by Swanberg’s real-life daughter.

Creed

Released:  November 25^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad

Directed by:  Ryan Coogler

Written by:  Ryan Coogler, Aaron Covington

Personal Bias Alert:  never seen a Rocky film

7.8 of 10

            It seems that in 2015, the 7^th time’s the charm.  Furious 7 racked up money and praise back in April, and Creed appears to be going in the same direction.  Oddly, both films find their series at tricky crossroads, unable to continue as they had before.  The Fast and Furious series lost one of its stars.  Creed must admit that Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) can no longer box.  The magnitude of these changes cannot be understated, and if nothing else, both series have seized the moment and delivered a crowd-pleasing entry for their die-hard fans.

            In Creed, the baton is passed from Rocky to Creed’s illegitimate son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan).  Adonis is trying to prove himself without using his father’s reputation, making his way under the surname Johnson.  Of course, the illegitimate tag gnaws at him, and he’s angered at the thought of taking the name of a man he never met.  This doesn’t stop him from taking advantage of the connection to get Rocky in his corner, though (a contradiction that is thankful acknowledged), and the two form a relationship far beyond that of coach and trainee.

            The formula for the Rocky movies have always been well-worn, and Creed does nothing to change that.  We know all along that Rocky and Adonis will form a close relationship, that complications will arise, and then a big fight will bring them back together.  Like all great sports movies, the winning and losing isn’t what it’s all about.  The fight is symbolic, and unfortunately for Creed, that symbol is its weakest link.  The film’s metaphor is too simple and too clean to knock you out, a misstep that is a holdover from writer/director Ryan Coogler’s previous film, Fruitvale Station.  Neither film is sunk by this simplicity, but it’s more apparent in this drug out behemoth.  There’s just too much tire-spinning, too many moments of macho men acting out, and yes, too many training montages.  If these moments had built on each other to complicate the core relationship then we’d be having an entirely different conversation, but the film uses them only to pound down the same points, leaving the middle section feeling a bit weary.

            Still, complicated is not a defining word of the Rocky series, and fans that are turning up for a good-ole underdog story won’t be disappointed.  Jordan turns in an effervescent performance as Adonis, showing that he’s more than capable of carrying the sweat and the charm of the series.  Stallone is as comfortable as he’ll ever be in a role, and even if he’s not your cup of tea (he’s certainly not mine), it’s hard to argue against such a solid performance.  You’re third lead here would have to be Tessa Thompson, another charismatic actor that, like Jordan, has unfortunately been held back by the color of her skin.  Both should be much bigger stars than they are, and perhaps the best thing about Creed is that the continued series should become a career stabilizer for both of them.  Thompson plays Adonis’s love interest, a role that starts out as touchingly well-rounded but unfortunately fades.  And yet, Thompson and Jordan give such excellent performances that their relationship always works, and it will be a pleasure to see where they, along with Sly’s Rocky, end up next.

            What separates Creed from the sports movie pack is just how well it’s made, partially thanks to the performances that have already been outlined and partially because of Coogler’s direction.  His faults as a writer aside, Coogler is an unusually assured young filmmaker, taking chances here that mostly pay off in a beautiful and moving film.  The camera swirls, ducks, and pounds with the fighters, and the score goes big and sweeping.  In spite of the film’s simplicity, Coogler will play your emotions like a fiddle, and that last fight will certainly leave you feeling something, even if it does fall short of the genre’s legends.

            Coogler has made Creed into a reboot worthy of continued entries.  There are aspects of these characters that would be interesting to explore, and Jordan and Thompson prove to be a duo that will be exciting to watch well into the future.  It’s a rousing success for a very simple franchise and a tantalizing taste of what it’s capable of becoming.

Other Notes:

Ø  Obviously, Rocky is not a series that speaks to me.  That I responded to this film as much as I did is pretty remarkable.

Ø  This gets my nomination for Funniest Performance by a Turtle.

Ø  I do sincerely applaud this series for willingly shifting its focus to non-white people.  I have full confidence that audiences will continue to shell out money no matter the color of the actors onscreen.

Stranger than Fiction

Released:  November 10^th, 2006

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Columbia Pictures

Starring:  Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, Emma Thompson

Directed by:  Marc Forster

Written by:  Zach Helm

Personal Bias Alert:  likes the cast, likes novel-style narration

9.5 of 10

            Harold Crick is a man who counts his toothbrush strokes.  That says a lot about a person, making it exactly the kind of detail that a novelist would hone in on when describing their character.  So precise and so orderly a man would be perfect for high tragedy or comedy, an idea that Stranger than Fiction toys with for the better part of the movie only to flip on its head.  Most of the movie does this, setting up ideas with two possible outcomes only to take option C, a sweet and steady route that goes somewhere between what you thought was possible.

            In the film, Harold (Will Ferrell) wakes up to find his life being narrated.  Only he can hear the voice of Karen (Emma Thompson), who is in fact struggling to finish a book that ends in Harold’s death.  Her observations seem to kick in just when a novel would start, i.e. just when exciting things start to happen in Harold’s life.  It’s a tragedy that it took Harold this long to take an interest in what’s going on around him, but the layers that get peeled back reveal a witty, love-struck man (he’s fallen for an anarchist baker played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) that could easily morph the story into a comedy.  These are the two options laid out for Harold by literary professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who Harold turns to to figure out which author is bringing about his imminent death.

            The high-concept pitch that a writer is writing a real man’s life is one that’s been used many times over, but what makes Zach Helm’s screenplay truly stand out is the tone he manages to hit.  It’s on the one hand extremely literary in its wording and themes, on the other hand sweet in its romance and characters, on one foot light and breezy in its movement, and on the other foot emotionally impactful in its big moments.  Note that I said tone, singular, because all of this magically feels like one complete feeling.  Of course, the only magic involved is Helm’s pitch-perfect screenplay, which on top of all this makes subtle nods to scientific and mathematic theories without being in-your-face about it.  It’s one of the most approachably smart screenplays you’ll come across, laying a groundwork that would’ve been heartbreaking to see flubbed.

            Luckily, director Marc Forster applies a perfect visual palette to Helm’s tale, picking up on every beat and adding a little flourish to bring it all home.  The film is bright and warm with oddball little things like equations and diagrams popping up as people go about their day.  It’s a subtle nod to the fantasy world the film exists it, one that all films exist in but few feel so comfortable wallowing in.  You are, it says to the audience, being told a story, and it invites you to snuggle in close and be swept along with the tale.

            As if these bountiful riches aren’t enough, the film is bursting with a superb cast, from reliable stalwarts like Thompson and Hoffman to side players like Queen Latifah and Tony Hale.  But this is Ferrell’s movie, and the role demands a gamut of skills audiences hadn’t seen from the comedian in 2006.  He had to be funny, yes, but in a quiet way; the exact opposite of how he was in Talladega Nights and Anchorman.  Mostly, though, Harold must be timid and lovable.  The film, like the book within it, is about figuring out how to find happiness in your life, and its lessons aren’t big or grand.  To make the whole thing work, Ferrell had to scale Harold’s actions down and trust that the larger emotions of the film’s moments would ring through.  Never is that more apparent than in a scene where he strums a guitar, singing in a wavering voice that explodes into a moment of pure ecstasy.  Gyllenhaal’s reaction to his quiet bravery is what makes it work, and this trust that Ferrell and Gyllenhaal show in each other makes for a lovely spark of romance.

            Stranger than Fiction radiates a tenderness that few films dare aspire to, which all but covers up its minor flaws.  The hairs on my neck stand up every time the film espouses its final verdict on life, rejuvenating me in bad times and solidifying me in good.  What more can you ask of your fiction?

Other Notes:

Ø  Don’t miss the fun fact that Emma Thompson plays a writer and is a writer in real life.  See her Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for 1995’s Sense and Sensibility.

Ø  Admittedly, not everyone else is as high on this film as I am.  Rotten Tomatoes has it at 72%, Metacritic at 67%, and IMDB at 7.6 of 10.

Ø  “Anarchists have a group?”

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Released:  November 20^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Claflin, Donald Sutherland

Directed by:  Francis Lawrence

Written by:  Peter Craig, Danny Strong

Personal Bias Alert:  loved the books, felt the first two movies were rushed

8.7 of 10

            The Hunger Games film series did itself a great disservice with its first two installments.  While they were slick, action-packed entertainments with a good head on their shoulders, they still were paired down too much from the books.  I grimaced when I thought what this would do to the finale, which magnifies every unsure moment and sweeping tide into a cataclysmic revolution entirely out of Katniss’s control.  The brilliance of the book series is in how neatly every little thread comes together.  The film series had dropped too many threads, ones that seem extraneous early on but were actually tiny building blocks for the finale.  This is why I understand people’s aversion to the dramatic tonal shift of the two Mockingjay installments, but the straight and narrow gaze it gains is precisely what elevates it into the upper echelon of popcorn entertainment.

            Mockingjay Part 2 finds Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) recovering physically from the attack by a mind-warped Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) but without a moment for mental healing.  The revolution led by District 13 is gaining ground, with the obstacles between themselves and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) are quickly falling away.  As usual, the tempestuous Katniss would rather be in the fight than dealing with its aftermath, so she sets off with Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Finnick (Sam Claflin), and company to enter the final fray:  a storming of the Capital.

             Of course, President Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) won’t let her jeopardize their carefully orchestrated rebellion, so she’s saddled with a protection team and kept behind the front lines.  Katniss’s removal from center stage is something that could alternately be frustrating or thrilling to the audience.  The Hunger Games very pointedly doesn’t follow the ‘chosen one’ narrative, continuously making it more and more obvious that Katniss is just a girl with a bow and arrow that happened to be in the right (wrong?) place at the right time.  No, she’s a pawn in a much larger game, and both parts of Mockingjay examines just how much she is used by both sides of the fight.

            This along with the series parallel themes about the influence of propaganda takes the viewer down a dismal path, examining just how revolutions start and are sustained.  War is a part of it, of course, but there’s much more sinister and damaging things afoot in Mockingjay that are easier to see when the parts are viewed together.  I attended the Mockingjay double feature for this review, where I saw Part 1 and Part 2 back-to-back.  What’s remarkable is how difficult it is to remember where one film started and the other ended.  They really are a cohesive piece, each part lesser on its own, but a grand, ambitious slice of filmmaking when taken together.

            Director Francis Lawrence keeps the film clipping along, adhering to the production company’s desire for a YA smash.  The action is crisp, clean, and occasionally brutal.  A little girl’s death in the woods is no longer a cause for mourning.  The audience and the characters have moved far beyond that, but there’s still obvious concessions made to keep the PG-13 rating.  Meaningful deaths are rarely seen, and while this takes the sting out of some moments, there’s more obvious ways that its target audience is acknowledged.  The film’s points, at times, are stated a bit too simply, and its plot is still hampered by a love triangle that seems inconsequential even to those onscreen.  And yet even this has a powerful payoff, a small moment where one path is irrevocably shut down thanks to the choices made during war.

            It would’ve been possible to tell Mockingjay in one film if the series had set itself up better for the finale, but Lionsgate wanted a blockbuster franchise, so the crazy dresses and explosions were played up instead of the agonizing decisions faced by Katniss and everyone else caught up in this world.  The first two installments moved at a break-neck pace, making a slowdown for Mockingjay necessary.  Still, there’s barely a wasted moment in Mockingjay, as what may seem like repetitive weariness is designed to wear you down.  Yes, this is a series intended for young adults, and yes, it’s supposed to be a thrilling blockbuster.  Mockingjay just wants you to be thrilled by its ideas as well as its explosions, and it does a riveting job at entertaining you with both.

Other Notes:

Ø  Throughout the two Mockingjay films, there’s several scenes where nameless foot soldiers carry out attacks against the Capital.  Waves of them are cut down so that a select few can complete the mission.  That’s a stark visual motif for the wanton way lives are used in times of war.

Ø  Few things are better than a well-used Michelle Forbes.

Ø  Let’s all take a moment and say a final goodbye to Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Reprise

Released:  May 16^th, 2008

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Miramax

Starring:  Anders Danielsen Lie, Espen Klouman Høiner, Viktoria Winge

Directed by:  Joachim Trier

Written by:  Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt

Personal Bias Alert:  likes Trier’s Oslo, August 31^st, likes opaque films

9.2 of 10

             When it comes to serious art, not much is expected of young people.  Sure, you can break out with a pop song when you’re 16, but just try to get a literary piece or arthouse picture to be taken seriously when you’re twenty-five.  You’ll get smacked down or condescendingly called ‘promising’, a struggle familiar to the two aspiring writers in Reprise and to filmmaker Joachim Trier.  Reprise was his first film, released in his native Norway in 2006 and submitted in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars that year, but the larger cinematic world didn’t take notice.  It took two years for the film to be released in the U.S., where it never played in more than 15 theaters and, despite getting many rave reviews, was relegated to ‘discovery’ sections on year-end lists.  The flippancy with which people disregard newcomers is a shame because great art is great art, and Reprise is great art.

            Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner) begin the film by mailing their first manuscripts to publishers.  A flight of fancy immediately takes off, and we follow them as they imagine tumultuous but rewarding lives as writers.  They eventually snap back to reality, but the film never really does, continuing to take a meandering path through the young men’s lives and thoughts.  Neither of their careers take off as planned, and the melancholy, unsure life to which they sink is dwelled upon in intimate detail.

            Neither man is particularly sympathetic, as the ooze of their privileged upbringings and expected success makes for a rather off-putting smell.  One young women needs only spend a few minutes with their friends to disparage them all with the quip “It can’t be easy to have problems in this crowd.”  But Phillip does have problems, and Erik is continuously unsure of what to do.  Neither prove to be bad friends, just immature, and it’s this dynamic that Trier explores with such depth.  They and Phillip’s girlfriend, Kari (Viktoria Winge), have all found themselves in situations they don’t fully understand, and they’re not smart enough to admit it.  Their struggles against this fact is at times pathetic but mostly heartbreaking, particularly during a painful trip to Paris by Phillip and Kari.

            As was previously stated, Reprise was Trier’s first feature-length film, and it was early or first-time work for most of the cast, as well.  Perhaps because they were at such similar stages in life as the characters, the tenderness with which they observe Phillip and Erik never becomes romanticized nor absolves them from punishment.  There’s a real sense of trying to capture life as it is, and this along with the frequent dips into the distorted nature of the character’s brains makes the influence of New Wave cinema impossible to miss.  These stylistic flourishes are expertly used, drawing attention to Phillip and Erik’s dreams in a way that feels like a passionate reverie.   The small moments captured in these asides reveals how close to home these characters must‘ve been to Trier and company, but smartly they never let the familiarity lull them into bland stylistic choices.

            All of this culminates in a depth that is seemingly impossible to take in on the first viewing.  There’s an overwhelming sense of being moved by something that’s just out of your reach, something that you understand emotionally if not intellectually.  Multiple viewings is almost sure to reveal Trier’s machinations, but you’ll want to ruminate on the experience before plunging in again.  There’s many things to sort out after watching Reprise, and a film that can affect you on so many levels is certainly worth tracking down.

Other Notes:

Ø  Anders Danielsen Lie is also a practicing physician, because being good at one thing is never enough.

Ø  Joachim has pointedly noted that he is only distantly related to Danish writer/director Lars von Trier.

Ø  If you haven’t seen Trier’s follow-up, Oslo, August 31^st, I highly recommend it as well.

The 33

Released:  November 13^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Alcon Entertainment

Starring:  Antonio Banderas, Rodrigo Santoro, Juliette Binoche, James Brolin, Lou Diamond Phillips

Directed by:  Patricia Riggen

Written by:  Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten, Michael Thomas

Personal Bias Alert:  likes cast, remembers the real-life incident

5.8 of 10

            Five years ago, the story of 33 trapped miners in Chile captured the world’s attention.  News teams had two ways to approach the story:  either focus on the mine’s terrible safety record or the massive international rescue effort.  One side of the story takes you down the dark alley of capitalism and greed, while the other is an even narrower path of international altruism.  What I remember of the story is the miners reaching the surface to a cheering, flag-waving crowd.  As a world, we chose to applaud the men in the mine and those who saved them.  The 33 makes the same choice, and while that does make it a bit of a lightweight, it still feels wrong not to applaud.

            Even without knowing the particulars of the story, it’s safe to assume that the screenwriters played fast and loose with the facts, as everything in The 33 plays out in tidy, familiar storylines.  A sister, a family, and a pregnant wife is established, the men take a portentous trip underground, and the mine collapses.  This scene, with the rock crumbling around them in the dark, is viscerally thrilling, a top-notch slice of disaster filmmaking that captures the chaos and confusion that must have permeated the situation.  Once the dust settles, a drawn-out survival story ensues, as it took 69 days for the miners to be rescued.

            If the movie is to be believed, then it was faith and family that kept the men going, along with the rousing leadership of Antonio Banderas’s Mario.  Banderas goes big here, shaking his head and yelling vehemently at his fellow men, an energy that is unmatched by any of the other actors.  Rescue efforts on the outside are led by a sister played inexplicably by the very French Juliette Binoche (her ethnicity is never commented upon) and the Chilean Minister of Mining (Rodrigo Santoro).  Both characters have their stirring speeches, but Binoche and Santoro dial them back a bit, making them feel more of a piece with the rest of the film than Banderas’s strained effort.  None of this derails the film, though, as the stories of fathers trying to get home to their families and troubled men having revelations in the dark is superficially easy to connect with.  More troubling problems are hinted at but not explored, indicating that the screenwriters wanted to stick with a relatively upbeat tone instead of dredging through the mud.

            Stylistic choices aside, The 33 has a nearly deadly pacing problem.  Part of this is due to the timeline of the true story, with the miner’s being reached and sent supplies long before they are pulled out.  After watching dirty, sweaty men nearly starve to death, it’s hard not to lose steam once they’re all wearing nice shorts and sleeping on bed pads, and yet the movie drags on for a long time in this state.  Without the early survival-story tension (which is well done considering we all know how the story ends), the cookie-cutter characters and relationship dramas aren’t enough to hold the audience’s attention. 

Even with this limp into the finale, there’s still satisfaction in rooting for people to do right by each other, and that’s what the world ended up doing for 69 days.  In this case, a pat on the back is well-deserved, and that’s what The 33 ends up feeling like.

Other Notes:

Ø  Another inexplicable casting choice is Bob Gunton (the warden in The Shawshank Redemption) as the president of Chile.

Ø  Of course the American drill makes it through.  I know that’s what really happened, but I still cringed a bit.

Ø  The score was done by the late James Horner (Braveheart, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind), and its overt manipulations match what the film is trying to do.