Beauty and the Beast (2017)

It’s a tale as old as time, and it’s certainly one we’ve seen before. But for the first time in Disney’s ongoing project of remaking its animated classics into live-action big budget fairy tales (with or without a healthy dose of revisionism), Beauty and the Beast both makes the case for another retelling of the story and manages to be a compelling and potent riff on the original.

If you’re like me, you probably have vast swathes of the 1991 animated film committed to (or seared into) memory, and you’ll likely be singing along in your head to the musical numbers, which get a few bonus verses here and there but are otherwise largely unchanged. So too is the plot translated fairly directly to live-action: bookish villager Belle (Emma Watson) finds herself imprisoned in the castle of the Beast (Dan Stevens), a prince turned monstrous by a curse, in order to save her doddering father Maurice (Kevin Kline). While local ape-man Gaston (Luke Evans) pines for her, to the consternation of his compatriot LeFou (Josh Gad), the castle’s lusty candlestick Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), fussy clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), and maternal teapot Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) conspire to bring beauty and the beast together to lift the spell.

In the case of Disney’s continued remake renaissance, I wouldn’t say there’s been a complete win. Maleficent was at once too distant from its source material while simultaneously pulling its punches on that difference. Meanwhile, Cinderella and The Jungle Book were visually stunning but ultimately more of the same as far as the originals were concerned. With Beauty and the Beast, however, I recall thinking several times during the film, “Oh, so that’s why they remade this!” Between its new characters and its patched-up plot holes, elucidated backstories and added lyrics, this Beauty and the Beast is a lot like a new brand of your favorite flavor of ice cream. There’s a lot that’s recognizable and reminds you what you love about it, but there are added nuances that gives this incarnation a life all its own. (It’s like the time I discovered they made cookie dough ice cream out of monster cookies and M&Ms.)

Perhaps the greatest strength of the film is its cast, which is positively bang-on from the word “go.” Watson and Stevens are well cast as the star-crossed lovers, in a romantic plotline that doesn’t feel obligatory and includes a few very well-crafted turns of character that give believability to the courtship plot. (That one such moment revolves around a library is perhaps preaching to this bibliophile’s choir, but I’d fall in love with a beast too if he had a library of his own to make Alexandria blush.) That McGregor, McKellen, and Thompson are note-perfect is right up there with “Water Wet” in terms of headlines, nor should one be surprised by the frankly stunning special effects work. What’s genuinely surprising is that Evans and Gad create something really quite special in Gaston and LeFou. Though it’s by no means sympathy for the devil, the script gives Gaston a refreshing amount of psychological depth, and Gad plays LeFou with an understated tenderness that gives LeFou a few legitimate reasons to hang around a specimen as deplorable as Gaston.

Indeed, what Beauty and the Beast does quite well is clarify a few of the nagging details and polish up the bits that work in order to present a fresh version of the story to an audience who is a little older, a little wiser, and a bit more sophisticated. This is hardly an “adult” version of the story, but it does feel a bit more grown-up, more willing to go to places the original didn’t – the question of Belle’s mother, for one, and the aforementioned update to Gaston: neither of which changes the characters or the plot but brings them into sharper focus.

Perhaps most importantly for this moviegoer, Beauty and the Beast never forgets to embrace with exuberance the playful weirdness of a film that includes a talking wardrobe, a barking footstool, and a boisterously romantic candlestick who turns a dinner invitation into something out of Busby Berkeley. It is the kind of film that touches the heart in the right places but isn’t embarrassed to leave you with a big dumb grin on your face as a talking clockface excretes gears in alarm. It’s a film that has more emotional range than we have any right to expect from a remake of an animated fairy tale.

But it’s also a film that, as the song goes, may have something there that wasn’t there before. I’m reticent to call it a brain or a heart or something so reductive, nor do I want to chalk it up to je ne sais quoi, though one character actually does. But unlike some of Disney’s more recent live-action updates, it has an unflappable demand to exist and ends up a worthy successor to the original.

Beauty and the Beast is rated PG for “some action violence, peril, and frightening images.” Directed by Bill Condon. Written by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos. Starring Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, and Emma Thompson.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

After something akin to an allergic reaction to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I very nearly gave up on this review series. Equal parts uneven and uninteresting, Order seemed decidedly disorderly – a pun I wish I’d thought up last month. Instead, I forged on; I’ve consumed a lot of lackluster media solely in the name of completionism, but fortunately returning director David Yates seems to have learned his lesson with Half-Blood Prince, which is on the whole much more engaging and unified than its predecessor.

Now in his sixth year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) becomes a closer confidante to his headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), who brings Harry along when incoming Potions professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) is hired. Harry soon learns, though, that Slughorn has been hired because he knows valuable information about the dark lord Voldemort. While Harry’s friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) wrestle with their feelings for each other, Harry and Dumbledore pursue the last bit of hidden knowledge needed to defeat Voldemort.

Right off the bat, Yates demonstrates a much stronger command of the visual language of film, establishing in the film’s opening shot the central theme – Dumbledore, having seen firsthand the consequences of keeping Harry in the dark, elects to trust his star pupil. After much of the confusion of Order, wondering what the central throughline was, there’s a pleasant “Aha!” at the beginning of Prince. And indeed, throughout we see Yates communicating silently with his audience, allowing us to glean from the visual that which we need to know. We have very few ponderous monologues or, at the other end of the spectrum, moments of ungraspable speculation; the film tells us what we need to know in a way natural to the medium.

It helps that you have wonderfully expressive yet subtle performances, first by the teenage cast who have really come into their own. Last time I reviewed this film, as a younger man I bemoaned the “angsty teenage romance” that pervades the film. Now that I’m older, wiser, and fresher on the franchise, I see what’s actually happening here is that the actors are (perhaps for the first time) allowed to humanize their characters and give them a few emotions besides stock tropes of “stoic,” “goofy,” and “brainy” (respectively). Furthermore, it’s a treat to see Alan Rickman as Snape and Broadbent’s Slughorn given stretching room for those fine thespians to vivify their characters.

It’s Michael Gambon, surprisingly, who ends up being something of a scene-stealer. Though I’ve never been sold on Gambon as a replacement for the late Richard Harris (I’ve always wondered what Peter O’Toole could have done with the part), he does pretty impressive work with Dumbledore, who’s nowhere near as stern and shouty as he’s been. Instead, we get a pretty close approximation of the Dumbledore from the books, much more contemplative and compassionate, which Gambon layers on as a natural role-reversal from his earlier interpretation of the character. This is the Dumbledore I wish we’d gotten all along, but in light of the way this film ends (I’m being cautiously vague, even though I’m sure this “spoiler” is right up there with Rosebud in terms of a statute of limitations) it’s a much more sobered and thoughtful performance than we might have been led to expect.

The film is overall more focused than the last one, and even though the book split its attention between flashbacks and present-day movement toward the seventh book, the film finds a much more confident identity in its present, giving Harry something very tangible for which to fight while deepening the mythology of the universe. Even the last-minute cliffhanger of sorts, which teases the narrative center of the final film(s), ties into the main theme of friendship and trust (which, actually, links up with the major twist of this film as well). What you have, then, is a much better organized Harry Potter film in which each element is deeply integrated into the main storyline and theme. It is, in short, a much more successful penultimate feature film than I’d presumed possible from Yates. Half-Blood Prince is a full-blood success.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is rated PG for “scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality.” Spells and their occasionally bloody after-effects, as well as a few creepy creatures and a looming sense of peril at every turn (including one spectacular jump moment near the film's climax), could be objectionable as far as "scary images [and] some violence" are concerned. The snogging in this film ("mild sensuality") isn't much to write home about, though it dominates a lot of the main characters' focus.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Although it takes a veritable meat-cleaver to its source material, pruning more than 700 pages into 150-some minutes of film, Mike Newell’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a strong contender for my new favorite Harry Potter film. I’d always maintained that Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban held that rank, and although Goblet of Fire isn’t as moody or as visually striking it’s a tight and engaging film that gives us the most spectacular (emphasis on “spectacle”) Harry Potter film yet.

When the fabled and dangerous Triwizard Tournament unites three wizarding schools at Hogwarts, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) inexplicably finds himself the fourth contestant for the Triwizard Cup. While his friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) work to keep him alive during the perilous games, Harry learns that the Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is once again plotting his return.

Goblet of Fire is, in a way, the Willy Wonka of the Harry Potter world, in that it consists of a very episodic movement from event to event while a grander story is being told. But where a Willy Wonka adaptation runs the risk of feeling somewhat obligatory, shuffling its audience from set piece to set piece, Goblet of Fire manages to maintain a level of tension throughout, compounded by the fact that Harry isn’t necessarily the best competitor in the Triwizard Tournament. He might lose this thing, and it might kill him before Voldemort can.

Here I’ve got to step aside and breathe a sigh of “Finally...!” at the arrival of Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. Finally, the series has its Darth Vader, its Sauron, its inimitable force of evil to match the inherent goodness of the Potter gang. While Newell does a fine job humanizing the Hogwarts crew, giving them opportunities for a range of very human emotions and quintessential teenage experiences, Goblet of Fire really ought to be remembered as Harry Potter and the Amazing Fifteen Minutes with Voldemort. While we’ve heard tales of Voldemort’s evil and seen incarnations of his ghostly lingerings, it’s something else entirely to behold Fiennes in all his glory, offering a master class in malice and demonstrating for the viewer exactly why the very thought of his name terrifies the wizarding world. If the rest of the films can capture the character as well as Goblet does, we’re looking at the franchise’s Empire Strikes Back moment.

As much as I want to spend this review lavishing praise on Fiennes’s Voldemort, there are other things in the film, and the other things are really quite successful. In streamlining the novel’s plot to focus less on the academic calendar (Hogwarts is, lest we forget, first and foremost a school), Newell instead focuses on the spectacle of the Tournament and all its task-based adventuring. We have colossal dragons, ephemeral mer-people, and a spooky maze populated with fewer horrors than in the book but with an impeccable visual style that makes the sequence a compelling lead-up to the graveyard climax. Much as I loved Cuarón’s Burton-lite visuals, Newell has a flair for the visual that is less stylized than affective. Goblet is full of small successes, moments when the film surprises you by how well it’s working. (Take, for example, the occasion of the death of a character; the plaintive wail that accompanies said character’s passing is more moving than half of any given year’s Oscar nominations, a powerful moment from a bit performer that sells the film’s pathos.)

I started this rewatch-and-review for the Harry Potter films because of how fun the Lego video games have been, but I’m sticking with them because of how well-crafted these movies have been. Removed as we are from the hype surrounding the books when they debuted, it’s comforting – and refreshing – to see thoughtful and well-made adaptations that offer something cinematically engaging for devotees and dilettantes alike.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is rated PG-13 for “sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images.” You have your run of the mill magical hijinks, although this one amps up the tension by including dragons and beastly mer-people, as well as the arrival of Lord Voldemort and the on-screen abrupt (but bloodless) killing of a fairly important character.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third of eight films in the Harry Potter series, represents in a lot of ways a changing of the guard:  Alfonso Cuarón takes the directorial reins from Chris Columbus, Michael Gambon assumes the role of Albus Dumbledore, and a general mood of darkness falls over the franchise.  And really, only one of these things is less than ideal, because Azkaban feels the most accomplished of the three Harry Potter films thus far.

Though the wizarding world at large is content to conceal the truth from Harry, Ron, and Hermione (Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson), the recent escape of Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) from the wizard prison Azkaban puts them all in great danger – Black was imprisoned for betraying Harry’s parents and facilitating their deaths at the hands of the dark lord Voldemort. With soul-sucking Dementors prowling Hogwarts in search of the escaped convict, Harry must confront the untold secrets of his past, while new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) teaches him to repel the Dementors.

Cuarón, who struck gold two years ago with the breathtaking Gravity, is perhaps an unlikely choice to take the helm on a major kid-friendly franchise; though well-known at the time for his hard-R Y tu mama también, he had already acquitted himself well with the fantastical The Little Princess (the VHS tape of which still holds fond memories for my sister and me, worn out though it may be). In fact, one might be forgiven for thinking that Azkaban was directed by Tim Burton, for Cuarón replaces Columbus’s austere candlelit corridors with dark and angular shadows, winding passageways, and a color palette more night than day.

It’s a marked difference from the style Columbus worked to cultivate, a style that fit the source material quite well, but I appreciate Cuarón’s decision to innovate visually and take Hogwarts in a moodier direction. It helps the franchise feel less like a kiddy-movie and moves it into a more mature and, I think, more interesting direction. As much as I appreciated it in the first two films, there is only so much wide-eyed wonderment that Harry Potter can be allowed before he grows up and accepts the wizarding world as his new normal. Cuarón’s play with shadows and his modified colors give us the sense of a world being lived-in, being inhabited.

The elephant in the room here is, of course, the recasting of Dumbledore after the unfortunate passing of Richard Harris. It’s important to recognize that Gambon is doing something different with Dumbledore – a more knowing, more wearied headmaster to Harris’s kinder, gentler Dumbledore – but I have to concede that it is not to my liking. I’d have preferred Peter O’Toole inherit the role (as, I understand, Harris’s family lobbied), for there is something about Gambon’s temperament that strikes a false chord for me, something almost perplexingly youthful in a character who shouldn’t be. Gambon isn’t patently bad as Dumbledore, and for that reason the revolt will have to wait for now.

I’d also like to levy a modest complaint about the underuse of the always commendable Gary Oldman, whose turn as Sirius Black amounts to little more than a cameo. This is a minor grievance, a clash of the role’s smallness in the book juxtaposed with the screen presence of Oldman. He is, of course, cast as a guarantee for future films, but one can’t help but wish Prisoner of Azkaban had just a bit more of said prisoner in the film.

These are, though, as I’ve said, small nits to pick in a film which is otherwise highly enjoyable. My personal favorite of the series (at least, on memory – I’ve only seen the next five films once each), Prisoner of Azkaban is well-crafted and engaging, with a central mystery that holds up on rewatch and a visual style that sells the film even without the ever-capable score by John Williams. On the whole, I’m feeling rather good about reviewing the Harry Potter series.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is rated PG for “frightening moments, creature violence and mild language.” There are some jump scenes in this one, including an attack from a wolf-like creature and an enormous dog, to say nothing of the appearance of the Dementors (ghostly, soul-devouring prison guards) in a few scenes. The film also includes a hippogriff (half eagle, half horse) which is meant to be gentle once one sees past the gruff exterior, the threat of execution, and an escaped demented prisoner.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets could go, as a sequel, one of three ways – as good as the first one if not a little better, leaps and bounds better than the first, or a dreadful second coming. The first one, Sorcerer’s Stone, was actually quite good, but the second one improves on the first by jumping straight into the plot, which is:

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) ignores several warnings not to return to Hogwarts for his second year at the wizarding school, even hitching a ride in a flying car owned by the family of his chum Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint). But upon arrival and reuniting with Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), Harry finds that a dark secret from Hogwarts’s past has resurfaced, and students are beginning to fall now that the “Chamber of Secrets” has been opened.

First of all, I lightly complained that much of Sorcerer’s Stone felt a little plotless, meandering and reveling in the world-building until the somewhat plot-heavy third act. Chamber of Secrets immediately rectifies that and dives headlong into the plot – revealing, in fact, that we’ve already been in the midst of the plot because of the long history of Hogwarts. The film’s opening scene finds Harry being told by the house elf Dobby that he must not return, with the movie containing a dual mystery of the identity of Salazar Slytherin’s heir and what it means for said heir to open the Chamber of Secrets. The mystery angle here is perhaps sharper than in the first one, foregrounded as it is through each of the character interactions and classroom sequences, as when Maggie Smith’s Professor McGonagall provides a mini-exposition lecture on the stakes of the attacks plaguing students.

As a result, the atmosphere is grimmer the second time around, though returning director Chris Columbus doesn’t make it unbearable or inconsistent with the first. There remains the sense of wonderment amid great danger – something key, I think, for a film which is ostensibly a children’s movie but wants to retain that adult audience – and there are several shots of the castle interiors that are frankly beautiful. Additionally, the film is wisely aware of the need to do things differently while retaining many of the familiar trappings; for instance, there’s another Quidditch match (as, I expect, there is in every film), but it’s satisfyingly different from Harry’s first outing on a broomstick.

The best addition made by Chamber of Secrets, about which I cannot say enough, is that of Kenneth Branagh as new professor Gilderoy Lockhart. In what feels a bit like a caricature of his own often self-aggrandizing Bardolatry, Branagh is uproariously funny as the infinitely conceited Lockhart, who quotes liberally from his own collected works, citing his own marvelous deeds, and blustering his way past anyone who so much as intimates he might be slightly full of it. I’ve talked about scene stealers on this blog before, but Branagh practically reinvents the concept and walks away with the film entire with this performance. It bears repeating, because I’m not exaggerating here; every sequence with Gilderoy Lockhart had me in fits of hysterics.  Chamber of Secrets is worth the watch, if only for Branagh’s exceedingly delightful performance.

Fortunately, there are many other elements worth enjoying in Chamber of Secrets. Columbus’s swan song for the franchise is a fine note on which to end for him, the rest of the supporting cast are quite charming in their own way, and the world of Harry Potter feels deeper for all that the film contributes to the larger mythology of the character.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is rated PG for “scary moments, some creature violence and mild language.” The plot is darker than the first one, with students frozen in death-like trances; several scary creatures, including giant spiders and an enormous snake, haunt the castle this time around. Again, “bloody hell” is invoked.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)

Next year the Harry Potter films turn fifteen; the books themselves are four years older, set to turn twenty in 2017. Now’s as good a time as any for me to take stock of the film franchise, which I’ve only reviewed in patches here and there. The first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s (née Philosopher’s) Stone, is still a remarkably engaging film, even if its magical meanderings leave much of the narrative drive until only the third act.

A young orphan named Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), taken in by his vile aunt and uncle, discovers upon turning eleven that he is of magical heritage, and he’s been admitted to the prestigious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he develops his magical abilities, befriends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), and uncovers a plot to use the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone to resurrect a great evil.

British film critic Mark Kermode has accused Chris Columbus of “direct[ing] like a bean counter,” which I don’t think is an entirely fair assessment of Columbus’s directorial abilities – at least, not as on display here. What I do see from Columbus is a very respectful approach to the wildly popular J. K. Rowling novel, one that is almost slavishly faithful to the source material but deftly managing not to feel exorbitant or devoutly bloated. Instead, Columbus directs with the ocular equivalent of “gee-whiz,” marveling at the lightly soft-focused fantasies of the film and allowing the audience to feel that same sense of wonder.

It’s not a perfect film, however, because there’s a strong sense – particularly around the second act of the film – that Sorcerer’s Stone is, for lack of a kinder word, wasting time. I don’t mean that there are things that need to be cut, but the film is much more interested in world-building and character development than in furthering the plot once Harry gets to Hogwarts. It isn’t until the third act that the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone is revealed and the clues are assembled, giving Sorcerer’s Stone much less of a sense of being plot-driven than its subsequent installments.

Fortunately, both the characters and the world are immensely fascinating; the leading trio of young actors are superbly chosen, and each takes to their characters brilliantly. They’re helped by a virtual who’s-who of fine British performers, including Alan Rickman’s delightful sneering Severus Snape, Maggie Smith’s prim and sharp Minerva McGonagall, and the late great Richard Harris as headmaster Albus Dumbledore. I’ll have more to say on these folks as the films go on, because the show undeniably belongs to Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson, and their performances are largely note-perfect. The film's visuals, too, are especially dazzling, particularly the Quidditch match (think magical rugby on brooms), and it's to Columbus's credit that the sequence feels imperiled without losing any of the wonder in the film.

There’s one last element to the film that absolutely makes it a success after fifteen years, and that’s the unmistakable score by John Williams. I don’t know if a film score has ever so totally dominated the public’s connection with a particular musical instrument the way that Harry Potter has taken over our relationship with the celesta, but it’s impossible not to associate the franchise with “Hedwig’s Theme” as composed by Williams. It’s Williams at his undeniable best, conjuring up instantly iconic melodies that fit the film effortlessly while remaining distinctly listenable in isolation. As I said of Attack of the Clones and other Star Wars films, Williams’s score is so compelling that the rest of the film could be on mute and rest comfortably on the shoulders of the soundtrack.

As much as I remembered enjoying the films as a child and in spite of my recognition now that some of the plotting here is a little bit uneven, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is charming enough that I have no qualms about continuing on to review the rest of the series.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is rated PG for “some scary moments and mild language.” There are a few creepy looking creatures, the occasional fantastical peril (such as a broomstick chase, a troll, and a large chess game), and one moment of particularly intense magical combat in which a two-faced man is apparently disintegrated. One of the characters says “bloody hell” a few times.

Noah (2014)

Abandon all hope, ye who anticipate a Biblically accurate adaptation of the flood narrative.  This here’s Aronofsky territory.  The same uber-metaphorical lens through which Black Swan regards Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” gets applied here to Genesis, resulting in a film that is often uncannily strange but never less than engaging.

Russell Crowe stars as the Scriptural patriarch who gathers his family and two-of-every-kind in a colossal ark after a vision from The Creator informs him that the world is about to perish in a flood.  As he gathers his family (wife Jennifer Connelly, sons including Logan Lerman, and daughter-in-law Emma Watson), Noah incurs the wrath of local warlord Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), who refuses to believe that God has not spoken to him too.  Postscript – check out Anthony Hopkins as a berry-gathering Methuselah, doing that wise old man act he’s perfected by now.

Let’s set aside the religious debate right off the bat.  The film doesn’t purport Biblical accuracy; in fact, director Darren Aronofsky disavows any such intention.  Consequently, I think Noah ought to be measured by the same standards as any other film adaptation of a major mythic narrative, in the vein of superhero or Hercules movies.  And there’s nothing in Noah that constitutes an unequivocal betrayal of the source material, nothing incompatible with the core of the original story.

As an interpretive adaptation, then, Noah is mostly successful, though it borders every so often on the bizarre.  The film is fortunately anchored by a very compelling and very human performance from Crowe, who imbues Noah with a deeper humanity than most interpretations. Rather than present Noah as a stoic “true believer,” Crowe gives him his moments of doubt, his misinterpretations of the message, and his post-flood uncertainty.  (Plus, after this and Man of Steel, Crowe has the market cornered on “dads who put their sons in arks.”)

Aronofsky does some visually clever stuff when he introduces Noah’s visions from The Creator as slideshow dream sequences, working in a nifty sample of the overlap between creationism and evolution.  But then the film gets really weird, and by weird I mean “rock people help build the ark.”  There’s a bit of murky theology in these rock people being fallen angels who help mankind, and their bids for forgiveness play up a side of Old Testament God that isn’t seen too often.  In a movie that otherwise immerses you in a specific time period in antiquity, though, living rocks strain credulity.

The other major subplot Aronofsky introduces is the presence of a tribal chief who goes to war for a spot on the ark.  It’s a plausible addition that Noah’s neighbors might have been a bit jealous, and Winstone is wholly engaging as Noah’s foil.  Aronofsky uses these villains, though, to posit an underlying vegans-versus-carnivores message that ultimately confounds more than it proselytizes.  (Some are reading it as anti-industrialist, though that may be a bridge too far.)  It’s fine for establishing a contrast between Noah and the sinners, but it raises major ethical questions:  Noah kills three hunters to avenge their killing of an animal for food, but he turns a blind eye to the rape and pillage of actual humans next door.  I see what Aronofsky is doing, adding an earthy and spiritual element to Noah’s communion with The Creator, but it’s more distracting than it should be precisely because the logic doesn’t hold up.

All told, though, Noah ends up an engaging film, a successful spectacle – which is, at the end of the day, all I ask of a movie.  It’s far from patently offensive, and the parts in the film that work do work very well.  Aside from a few silly bits, Noah is big-budget pageantry at its most watchable, put forward by a powerful lead performance and directed by a man with an unmistakable (if punctuated by logical error) directorial vision.

Noah is rated PG-13 for “violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content.”  Aside from the whole exterminating flood, there are a few scenes of bloody combat, other scenes of animals being killed in gory fashion, and a bit of bare-shouldered friskiness from the cast’s younger group.

Next week, something we haven’t done in a very long while – two reviews on the same day. Hint:  what’s the big release this Friday?  And when is the Double-Oh-Seventh of this month?  Put another way, when is an American icon like a British agent?  When they’re both reviewed here, that is!  See you next week!

This Is The End (2013)

You can read it as a scathing critique of self-obsessed celebrity culture, or you can take it as the payoff to a decade-long string of actors playing the same character over and over until they give up and play themselves.  But whichever way you choose to take it, This Is The End proves to be childishly crude, incredibly narcissistic, entirely self-indulgent – and, in the end, more fun than it has any right to be.

Trapped at James Franco’s house when a block party turns apocalyptic, a team of Frat Packers – Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Franco – struggle through the Biblical apocalypse while navigating their own petty differences and personal insecurities.  For example, with a demon at the door, the men argue about where to masturbate and whether anyone is entitled to a fifth of a Milky Way bar.  Satirizing the apoca-porn genre, which fetishizes death and destruction in disturbing ways (thank you, Roland Emmerich), This Is The End takes several surprisingly earnest turns, even while its leads are giggling about drinking urine.

Let’s be honest – taking This Is The End to task for its blatant and unapologetic immaturity is a little like scolding an infant for soiling himself.  Lest we forget, the writers – if indeed we can call “improvisation facilitators” such – were the savants (emphasis on the idiot) behind Superbad, a gleefully enjoyable movie that was quite obviously written by ten-year-olds.  So of course you’re going to get jokes about genitals and more weed gags than you can shake a joint at.  Of course.  And if that’s your thing, this movie has it in spades.

I’m of mixed feelings on this one.  It’s feel-good in the sense that you’ll probably end up laughing, even in spite of yourself if you go in deliberately trying not to have a good time (why you’d do that is anyone’s guess, but such people seem to exist).  Let’s be honest (the refrain of the day, it seems) – the earnest marijuana giggles Rogen delivers like a puttering engine are infectious, especially when it’s apparent that the rest of the cast are having as much fun making the film.  The cast are all fairly engaging as overblown caricatures of themselves (including an incisive turn by Jonah Hill as the “Hollywood fake” nice guy), though the standout performance award goes to Craig Robinson, who sells it to the back row with the same gregarious delight that made Hot Tub Time Machine more of a success.  There’s something about his mumbled confessions and oblivious non-sequiturs that gives him a fantastic screen presence.

But at the same time, I have trouble giving a good review to a film that contains a five-minute rape joke.  While the masturbation location conversation has a certain victimless immaturity to it, This Is The End takes on a very uncomfortable tone when Emma Watson becomes the subject of a hypothetical-rape conversation.  Though it’s played for laughs as a series of escalating misunderstandings, the scene is made all the more distasteful by McBride’s (admittedly) self-aware scummy self-caricature; and as the rape accusation is bounced around among buddies, the film’s brutal rejection of the Bechdel test is thrown into sharp relief.  I’m willing to excuse many of the film’s excesses  (including the bizarre detail that every demon has pronouncedly enormous genitals), but I’m at a loss as to why the film couldn’t have included Kristen Bell or Aubrey Plaza or – for God’s sake! – Melissa McCarthy among the survivors.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it.  There’s a certain ad hoc insanity to which you have to surrender in order to appreciate a film like this one, a go-along-for-the-ride resignation that carries with it a kind of intoxicating bliss while the lead actors bumble their way through arguments about the quotidian aspects of morning-after survival.  While certainly not for everyone, This Is The End has enough entertainment value that most people will find something worth enjoying – be it the catchy enthusiasm, the high stakes action-comedy, or even the exaggeration of excess (note the mild-mannered Michael Cera, rendered here as an oversexed addict).  A martini glass of urine never looked so funny.

This Is The End is rated R for “crude and sexual content throughout, brief graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence.”  Every sexual and profane epithet you can imagine gets trotted out to excessive effect; alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine are abused throughout.  We see Cera’s rear end and the aforementioned demonic genitalia (twice), while many celebrities die in quick but intense fashion (played, you guessed it, for laughs).