Monday at the Movies - January 28, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, two animated features – both nominated for an Academy Award, no less.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) – One of the best things I can say about Steven Spielberg’s Tintin adaptation (the first in a purported franchise) is that in many ways it’s the “Young Indiana Jones” movie we never actually got to see.  Based on the iconic comic series by Hergé, this film finds Tintin (Jamie Bell) on an adventure to uncover lost treasure amid the mystery of identical model ships.  Tintin recruits the help of the besotted Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) before the sinister Sakharine (Daniel Craig) can unearth the secret of the Unicorn.  Under Spielberg’s direction (and John Williams’s rousing score), the comparison to Indiana Jones is particularly apt because Tintin is littered with action sequences that require only a fedora and a whip to fit into Indy’s canon; though the stakes are often quite low (we know, for instance, that Tintin is untouchable and free from danger), the spectacle Spielberg creates is thrilling and a treat to watch.  The animation style, somewhere near that “uncanny valley” of digital resemblance, may be off-putting to some viewers, but I found the quasi-realistic renderings mostly undistracting, adding to the slightly surreal atmosphere of the movie.  Digitally painting over the actors both approximates Hergé’s style while allowing actors to take on roles beyond their “type” – casting Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, for example, as the identical bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson is visually unlikely but possible (and fantastic) in Tintin.  All told, Tintin was more fun than I was expecting, a welcome relief from Spielberg’s recent “heavier” work and a reminder of the childlike awe his movies can bring.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with “childlike.”)

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012) – In a post-Depp world, we’ve seen an infusion of piratical adventures featuring swashbucklers of every ilk (even Doctor Who got in on the act with “The Curse of the Black Spot”).  But Band of Misfits is by far the most irreverent, throwing anachronisms to the wind like so much topsail being unfurled.  Rendered in the claymation style popularized by Wallace & Gromit, The Pirates stars Hugh Grant as the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain, whose quest for the coveted Pirate of the Year Award is waylaid when Charles Darwin (David Tennant) discovers that the Pirate Captain’s parrot is actually a presumed-extinct dodo.  Along the way, the pirates run afoul of the pirate vendetta of Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), as well as the Pirate King dressed suspiciously like Elvis.  If all of this sounds like it doesn’t fit, you’d be right, but that’s the brand of humor served up by director Peter Lord; in typical British fashion, cheekiness is the order of the day, governed by “It just is” logic.  The Pirate Captain is an out-of-type choice for Hugh Grant, who’s usually more at home as the foppish and awkward elite in love, but he lends the requisite confidence and swagger to the Captain.  Historical buffs may quibble – after all, Darwin never trained a monkey to speak using an infinite supply of notecards – but surrender to the ludic whimsy of the film is required.  If one can believe it, The Pirates (recently nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Film) takes itself less seriously than the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and that’s such a good thing.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - January 21, 2013

Welcome to the first “Monday at the Movies” of 2013!  (Somebody went to the movies a lot in January.)  This week, two features that elicited less-than-favorable reactions – though you may be surprised which one I enjoyed more...

Red State (2011) – Kevin Smith is a talented (if loquacious) raconteur, but I’ve never been a big fan of his movies; Chasing Amy is just okay, and Mallrats has its moments.  It just seems that Smith doesn’t have very much to say in movies filled with chattering.  With Red State, Smith approaches a theme – that extreme belief in anything, be it God or country, is dangerous – and then bludgeons you over the head with it.  Smith clearly has an axe to grind with Patriot Act-ers and the Westboro Baptist Church, but his disapproval of these groups is so unsubtle that (no joke) Smith actually cameos to shout “Shut the f--- up!” at a preacher.  The film imagines Westboro as Hostel-style torture pornographers, murdering local homosexuals and adulterers on the orders of Abin Cooper (Michael Parks).  The film escalates when Cooper’s church kidnaps a trio of teenagers before the ATF – led by John Goodman – bumble their way into a raid on the compound.  Red State is, surprisingly for Smith, quite violent, but there’s neither mirth nor menace in the bloodshed; instead, the movie plods along without any suspense or momentum.  The film is populated by many character actors – Goodman, Melissa Leo, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollak – but surprisingly the standout performance here is Michael Parks, surprisingly because Parks hasn’t really been acting when I’ve seen him team up with Quentin Tarantino.  As Cooper, Parks is equal parts charismatic and terrifying, subtle with a manic gleam in his eye; thanks to Parks, it’s not difficult to see how Abin Cooper could have acquired such power.  Parks’s performance, combined with an odd compulsion to see how this mess will all turn out, ends up redeeming the film and making it watchable, though faith in Kevin Smith as a filmmaker has yet to be earned.

V/H/S/ (2012) – I’m a sucker for a good horror film, only there are so few of them around that I almost always write off the genre as a dumping ground for most of what Hollywood would be unable to sell without some blood and breasts.  Paradoxically, one of my favorite movie experiences is watching a truly scary film with all the lights off, allowing that sense of dread to creep into my very being as the movie washes over me.  None of this was my experience with V/H/S, an amateurish-at-best attempt to capitalize on the dying craze of found footage.  The film revolves around a group of friends who break into an abandoned house to steal a videotape, allowing the film to take on an anthology format as we watch the tapes with the characters.  Perhaps using a dead medium like the VHS tape is a perfect analogy, because V/H/S is better off left in the basement with those moldering relics of a bygone era of home video.  There are almost no good scares here, only two memorable moments of palpable dread (a knife-wielding camerawoman and a haunted house with arms coming through the walls), and a cast populated by “fresh faces” so unskilled that their bad acting is entirely distracting.  You’d think that any anthology would have at least one redeeming entry (even the disappointing New York, I Love You, after all, did), but the rubbish acting, the unconvincing gimmick (why, for example, would a Skype call be on a VHS tape?), and the generally misogynistic tone make V/H/S an unredeeming waste of time.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

After the surprisingly deft Hurt Locker cleaned up at the Oscars a few years back, Kathryn Bigelow’s next project had everyone’s attention, and the topicality of Zero Dark Thirty – both political and awards-season – has everyone talking all over again.  And rightly so, because Zero Dark Thirty is another smartly crafted thriller dissecting the effects of war on the human psyche.

Jessica Chastain stars as CIA investigator Maya, who’s sent to Afghanistan during the early days of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden.  After a stint with a torturer (Jason Clarke), Maya picks up a lead on bin Laden’s location and pursues it, even against the advice of her superiors.  The film culminates with a tense and cathartic retelling of the predawn raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where American forces finally caught up to bin Laden.

In many ways, a review of Zero Dark Thirty necessarily must weigh in on the controversy of torture, which some contend is endorsed by the film.  I disagree, though; it seems instead that the film takes a documentary approach to the issue, demonstrating that, yes, torture happened, sometimes with beneficial results and sometimes without.  The film doesn’t make blanket statements about the efficacy of torture, though its moral opposition seems evident; the opening scenes depict an intense interrogation that emphasizes the desperate dehumanization of the act glibly elided over by 24 and others.  Instead, the film argues that bin Laden’s capture was effected by the rugged determination of one agent.

That the film is inspiring such fervent debate, though, suggests something about the caliber and fertility of the art; our willingness to interpret and engage with this work tells me that Bigelow has crafted something rather dense and significant, the stakes of which involve the way we remember our own past.  (Perhaps, even, the film is neutral to the point of permitting us to read our own prejudices onto it.)  As a piece of art, then, Zero Dark Thirty is important in the same way that The Hurt Locker was – it’s fresh and relevant, and it asks us to consider if we as a people have changed over the last ten years.

The battleground for this issue is Maya, a rather unique character in that we know next to nothing about her – no backstory, no character insights, no next of kin.  Yet it’s not a weakness of story, since we learn in a key scene that Maya has no other life beyond her pursuit of bin Laden (which may explain her tears in the final shot of the film).  It’s a credit to Chastain, then, that she manages to make this character compelling in spite of her relative anonymity.  One character remarks that it’s her confidence that sets her apart, and Chastain does well do show the difference between Maya’s performative poise and her inner doubts and frustrations.  It’ll be a well-deserved trophy should she win the Oscar next month.

That the selfsame Academy snubbed Bigelow for her directing duties is a shame.  The film is quite suspenseful and dramatic, with the audience following along with Maya’s investigation.  For a film that has a foregone conclusion, an ending that everyone already knows, Zero Dark Thirty manages to be gripping because Bigelow is an expert at generating that sense of unease in her audience; as with Hurt Locker, danger is around every corner, but Bigelow doesn’t let you know that until she’s ready.

The centerpiece of the film is, perhaps naturally, the Seal Team 6 raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, in which Bigelow crosscuts between standard camerawork and first-person night vision shots that put the viewer in the position of a team member.  Again, the outcome of the raid is inevitable, but Bigelow manages to make the adventure exciting and compelling; indeed, I’m not sure I blinked during the last half-hour of the film.  As filmmaking, it’s among Bigelow’s better work, but as art it’s perhaps cathartic for viewers who felt vindicated after a ten-year manhunt.

The ambiguous note on which Zero Dark Thirty ends asks, “What next?”  Like The Hurt Locker, there is no easy answer – there may not be an answer at all.  A more interesting question, though, might be, “What’s next for Kathryn Bigelow?”  I’m hoping she makes a third war film to round out the thematic trilogy; it’s obvious she has much to say and a gift for knowing how to say it.

Zero Dark Thirty is rated R "for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language."  The torture scenes are quite intense though mostly bloodless; there is a suicide bombing, also without gore, though the raid includes a few bloody gunfire exchanges and a few out-of-focus glimpses of a badly-mutilated body.  The F-word is sprinkled throughout, as are less offensive words.

Gangster Squad (2013)

Gangster Squad, a movie about assembling a team for a top-secret mission, is a film whose story resembles its own structure, in that the film is as much an assembly of component parts from other prominent films in the genre.  Whether this collage method hurts the film is up for debate (though I contend that the comparisons do violence to the film), but the final product before us is a stylish and reliably enjoyable experience.

Los Angeles, 1949, is the playground of mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), who lives beyond the reach of the corrupt law force until Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) establishes an extralegal “gangster squad” to take down Cohen without the sanction of their badges.  Among others, “Sarge” John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) recruits smooth-talking Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) to join the squad, unaware that Wooters has been romancing Cohen’s girl Grace (Emma Stone).

When I initially described the movie as a cross between the plot of The Untouchables and the look of L.A. Confidential, I tried to do so without derision, recognizing almost immediately that Gangster Squad is not of the same A-list caliber as those two instant classics.  In fact, my chief complaint about Gangster Squad – that it doesn’t do anything particularly new with the genre – stems from my familiarity with the other two films to the point of absorption; knowing The Untouchables as well as I do made the similarities apparent to the point of prediction and distraction.

What Gangster Squad does not do, then, is break new ground.  But does it have to?  On one level, probably, because who wants to see remake after remake, but on the other hand my proclivity for writing favorable reviews stems from my chief intention when going to the movies:  I want to have a good time.  And Gangster Squad allowed me to do just that.  I admit the film isn’t perfect – the Manichean worldview with accompanying narration is a bit heavyhanded, and we never really find out Grace’s angle – but what works in the film is the atmosphere of old Hollywood mixed with the contemporary aesthetic and sense of humor.

Brolin and Gosling turn in reliably engaging performances, and the other members of the squad – though likely not authentic – possess a modern sensibility and delightful self-awareness, particularly Robert Patrick’s Wild West throwback.  The biggest surprise is not Stone finally playing a postwar vamp (a type, incidentally, into which she fits quite well) but rather Penn’s performance as Cohen.  Obscured behind Dick Tracy makeup, Penn never plays too cool for the room nor hides behind his Oscar cred (or otherwise irksome off-screen persona); instead, he gets right into the spirit of the movie and embraces the hammy characterization required of his villainous role.  While Gosling is clearly a rising star (if he’s not there already), it’s hard not to say that Penn steals the show even more than De Niro did in The Untouchables.

Gangster Squad exists somewhere in the gray zone between modern mobster movie (i.e., The Departed) and retro gangster chic (i.e., Boardwalk Empire).  But the blending of the two modes works for the film because of how unapologetically stylized it is; nothing seems accidental, and the film seems aware of its own indulgences, particularly the video game-esque shootout sequences.  I’m usually opposed to movies that play the “video game card,” but Gangster Squad knows itself well enough to ramp up the visuals in order to compensate for that potential distance from the audience.

It isn’t an instant classic, to be sure, but I suspect that the people who will be drawn to Gangster Squad are exactly the kinds of people for whom the film was made – those who will find themselves entertained by the time the credits roll.  Count me among them.

Gangster Squad is rated R “for strong violence and language.”  The film is surprisingly bloody, almost Tarantino-lite, and the language is standard “R” fare, with a few implied sexual encounters for good measure.

On Thursday, our road to the Oscars continues with Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.  Stay tuned!

Les Misérables (2012)

I’m of two minds regarding Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, the Oscar-bait adaptation of the long-running musical.  There are good things to say about the film, but the delivery of the movie’s technical aspects is so distracting that I came away feeling a bit disappointed.

You know the story, adapted from Victor Hugo’s sprawling epic about French justice and revolution:  Former convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is doggedly pursued by Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) for breaking parole after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread.  After experiencing God’s mercy, Valjean builds a new life for himself, raising the daughter of his late employee Fantine (Anne Hathaway).  The film reaches its third act when the daughter, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried), falls in love with brave young revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne), embroiling Valjean and Javert in a conflict larger than themselves.

Preliminary disclaimer:  I’d never seen the musical version before, though I’ve read the novel and seen the mostly successful Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush film version.  I’m aware that the following “Why is there so much singing in a musical?” is a bit like bemoaning a Superman film for too much flying.

But the singing in the film doesn’t always work.  It’s been my custom to review musicals by musical number, of which there are two kinds in this sung-through musical:  full and distinct pieces, and interludes where the dialogue is sung.  Consequently, a movie where nearly every word is sung is difficult to break down in paragraph form.  There are some standout pieces, to be fair; Hathaway is heart-breaking with “I Dreamed a Dream,” a despairing ode that would drive even the stone-hearted Pharaoh to tears and will likely garner her an Oscar nod – if not a win – come February.

In the scene-stealer category, we have a surprisingly delightful “Master of the House,” featuring Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as crooked innkeepers.  As the Thénardiers, Cohen and Carter recur throughout the film (always unexpectedly, always agreeably) but take center stage in this giddy revelry in corruption, reminiscent of their deliciously evil turns in Sweeney Todd.  Their enchanting abilities were never truly in question, but the unanticipated levity their presence brings helps to alleviate some of the grim and unsuccessful elements of the film.

The film’s bleakness isn’t inherently a fault; truth be told, Hugo’s novel is a depressing one.  Les Mis conveys that quite well; in spite of the distracting talk-singing, Jackman and Crowe are both quite good in their roles as tortured and torturer, conveying a wide range of subtle emotions and conveying characterization past the singing that would tell rather than show.  Indeed, the greatest success of the film is that Jackman and Crowe manage to emote past their distracting tendency to sing every word; it’s almost as though there’s a better movie in here somewhere, if only the singing were reined in or at least less operatic.  I wonder, for example, why you cast someone like Russell Crowe, who plainly can’t sing, opposite Hugh Jackman, whose musical theater pedigree is significant and self-evident.

What the film doesn’t do well is provide the counter to the tragedy; though Hooper isn’t wallowing in sadness, the purported ray of sunshine falls flat.  Yes, the Thénardiers are a delight each time they appear, but the film offers as its source of optimism the uncompelling relationship of Cosette and Marius.  Seyfried is squandered as Cosette, reduced to nothing more than a pretty face on which Marius pins his hopes – hopes which he quickly abandons in favor of his duty.  Marius, too, gives voice to the meaninglessness of his comrades’ deaths (a moment when less singing would have meant more emotional weight), but the saccharine wedding scene that follows feels forced and unconvincing.  Redmayne clearly has love in his eyes when he looks at Cosette – leading me to wonder when this actor’s “moment” will come – but Cosette doesn’t requite it as well as I’d like.

Which gets me back to the central problem of Les Mis – the sense of imbalance.  Hooper’s direction is quite distracting in moments, as when he rapidly zooms in on a soloist like the end of the line on a roller coaster.  These disorienting moments felt more at home in the grand guignol surrealism of Sweeney Todd but never quite fit in this mostly realistic piece.  In short, the movie is too theatrical, too operatic, to work within the confines of a film.  Like Danny Boyle with Frankenstein, perhaps Hooper would have been better served by moving his production to the stage.

I don’t like being the guy who pulls apart a multimillion-dollar movie from behind a hundred-dollar laptop, but there are things that work in this film and there are things that don’t.  Perhaps this film is not made for someone like me (buzz indicates it’s certain to clean up at the Oscars), but for my money the film does not succeed in the same way that Sweeney Todd did.

Les Misérables is rated PG-13 “for suggestive and sexual material, violence and thematic elements.”  Prostitution is implied during the story, and we see one exchange with no nudity.  The June Rebellion is depicted with several deaths by gunfire, some with bloody sprays (though nothing on the order of Django Unchained).  I have yet to know what “thematic elements” are.

Dr. No (1962)

Revisiting Dr. No in a post-Skyfall world gives us a better sense of what the latter film is trying to restore to the mythos, and though I’m not convinced modern audiences would go for it, I say bring it on.

Dr. No introduces us to (Bond,) James Bond (Sean Connery), MI6’s best agent, who travels to Jamaica after the murder of a British diplomat and his assistant.  Bond quickly learns that the diplomat was investigating the titular doctor (Joseph Wiseman), who reclusively inhabits the mysterious island Crab Key amid rumors of a scheme to topple American lunar rockets.  But after making his way to Crab Key, Bond meets Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), a woman who needs saving almost as much as Bond himself does.

I wonder if director Terence Young was cognizant of how many precedents he was setting with the film; the end credits don’t read “James Bond Will Return,” leading me to suspect that franchising wasn’t a top priority – and for good measure.  The film’s self-contained nature works, introducing all of its principals economically (even in spite of a hasty reference to a larger enemy force).  After fifty years and umpteen viewings, the first intonation of “Bond, James Bond” remains instantly iconic and transcendently concise, telling us everything we need to know about the cool customer who’s arguably one of the top five good guys of all fiction.  The omnipresence of Monty Norman’s inimitable theme tune (you’re humming it now, I’m sure) solidifies its connection with this character’s every move.  And Connery, though not quite the Bond of Ian Fleming’s book series, inhabits the role to the hilt, able to handle flirting with Miss Moneypenny while convincingly delivering deadpan death threats to his foes.

As that foe, Wiseman sets the bar for the deranged Bond villain whose physical deformity (here, metallic hands) matches his insatiable insanity, an almost Dickensian move which unites psychological interiority with physical appearance.  His scenes are few, but Wiseman’s stern soft-spokenness sets Dr. No up as a man who is feared beyond his physical abilities.  His treasure room, too, in which he meets Bond, establishes his grand theatricality – another Bond villain hallmark – which Wiseman does well to underplay.  It’s surprising that he’s on screen for less than twenty minutes in a film which bears his name, but he shoulders the role well.

Andress, however, is disappointing, in part because her voice is distractingly overdubbed but more so because she doesn’t do much at all in a film dominated by such compelling leads.  I know that complaining about character development for a Bond girl is a little like chiding a ring for not being a bracelet, but I’ve been spoiled by later entries that do more with the female lead than just strap a bikini on her and set her a-snoggin’.  It doesn’t help that Andress’s dubbing exposes the basic emotionlessness of her performance; she describes an apparent rape with the same monotone ennui as she details her meticulous revenge, never convincing the audience that she’s capable of either.

What’s striking about Dr. No on this latest rewatch is how carefully and methodically everything unfolds.  There are actual clues, suspicions, and improvisations on the part of the Bond character.  He doesn’t enter the film with everything figured out; indeed, he’s a bit of a cipher, playing blank and allowing the drama to unfold around him as he pursues a resolution.  Of course, it helps that M (Bernard Lee) tells Bond most of what he needs to know at the beginning, but this is not a Bond movie that sketches out its players immediately.  Instead, the film includes as much deduction as action sequences, a strength of the film in light of the dated special effects.  I suspect, though, that modern audiences might get bored with a Bond film where Bond is more inscrutable than active.  I for one think it’s a credit to the filmmakers that the world they create is compelling enough to hold my attention when Bond isn’t doing anything.

As the first Bond film, it’s almost too easy to say that Dr. No is an instant classic, a trendsetter, and a first-rate spy film.  But it is.  With the franchise’s darkest hours ahead of me in the coming months, it’s good to revisit the original incarnation of the character and remind myself how they were made back in the good old days.  (They were made, of course, shaken but not stirred.)

Dr. No is rated PG.  There are a few deaths and fight scenes, though blood is only seen thrice.  Bond kisses and canoodles with many women (setting that famous precedent), though nothing in the film ever rises above the level of “tame by today’s standards.”

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of From Russia With Love (1963), on February 7, 2013!