Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

With three directors over the course of four films, the one thing the Harry Potter films haven’t had is visual continuity. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong – the thing I really appreciate about the films is how they render the same world from different vantage points. With Order of the Phoenix, director David Yates climbs aboard the Hogwarts Express, and he’ll be with us for the rest of the journey (four films down, four to go). And while we’ll have consistency of vision, I’m not terrifically excited by that because Order of the Phoenix is my least favorite Harry Potter film – not just by dint of comparison, but because I’m genuinely underwhelmed by this one.

Though the wizarding world carries on in a state of denial, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) knows the truth – the dark lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has returned. The Ministry of Magic installs the stern Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) at Hogwarts, amid the vehement disapproval of headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), and Harry is elected to supplement the education of his fellow students with some practical Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons.

The older I get, I seem to have less patience for the old argument “the book was better.” It seems there’s a latent old media prejudice in there, for a film can be as thoughtful as a book (albeit in a different way). And so I don’t lament the excision of particular subplots; indeed, I didn’t notice the film had cut Quidditch until it was pointed out to me. What I do lament is the excision of depth. J.K. Rowling’s prose style is very smart, very contemplative, giving us a very powerful omniscient narrator who can tell us quite a bit about the characters and their motivations.

On film, however, Yates doesn’t seem able to capture that narrative depth. Instead, we have a lot of characters, including many new ones, who all seem terribly interesting but who don’t have the opportunity on screen to prove it. Take for example the titular Order of the Phoenix, a collection of powerful witches and wizards who hide out in a magical house doing... well, it’s not actually that clear. It’s obvious to the readers of the book, and that’s a problem, because the film and the book ought to be tangentially complementary experiences. There are so many intriguing characters in the order – the werewolf Remus Lupin, back from Prisoner of Azkaban; his shape-changing paramour Nymphadora Tonks, and the criminally underused Gary Oldman in his third role as Sirius Black.  But the film touches these only briefly, and moviegoers may find themselves wondering why book-readers have grown so attached to characters who appear on screen with minimal weight.

Yates, it seems, is not terribly interested in the Order, even if I am. What intrigues him more about the plot is its political statements about governance in a time of fear and the place of centralized authority in education. These are weighty issues, and Order of the Phoenix is the most political of the Harry Potter movies because of them. The analogy to Neville Chamberlain is perhaps less obvious to American audiences, but it’s quite clear that Yates dismisses the right of any government to interfere in a student’s education, and he does so with the wonderful casting of Imelda Staunton. As Professor Umbridge, Staunton is delightfully detestable and a fine adversary for Harry and his friends. Though she never rises to the level of Voldemort in terms of pure evil or clear motivations (other than reveling in literally torturing her students), she’s a fine fill-in while the Dark Lord schemes off-screen.

Order of the Phoenix introduces two more new characters, Ravenclaw classmate Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) and mad mass murderess Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter). Of the latter, little need be said – if ever perfect casting existed, it’s HBC as a killer lunatic with Tim Burton’s hair. Lynch’s Luna, though, is the real find of the film, enchanting in a deliriously dreamy sort of way. Sadly, the film doesn’t give her much of an arc (nor does the franchise, as I recall), but her scenes with Radcliffe are so good, the chemistry between them so strong as the two bond over the losses they’ve endured, that I believe – and here I’m about to say something book readers will judge heretical – the films should have departed from the books and had Harry end up with Luna and not Ginny Weasley, who’s been undercooked since Chamber of Secrets.

At the end of the day, a disappointing Harry Potter movie is still a step more interesting than a lot of what’s out there. Yates has an interesting visual style, and I especially like the way he crafts the Ministry as this austere brick building with inverted colors, illuminated primarily by magic wands. But the storytelling on display in Order of the Phoenix is nowhere near as strong as it’s been in previous installments, and the film does a disservice to most of its characters by narratively shortchanging them. Put another way, Order of the Phoenix treads too much water where it ought to be gliding, losing too much momentum by attempting to tell us what’s important when it ought to be showing us.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is rated PG-13 for “sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images.” You have a lot of scenes of wizards silently casting spells, propelling each other across the room, and flying around in smoky forms. One character is killed by magic, while another is tortured.

Cinderella (2015)

With Maleficent (mercifully) behind us and a live-action Beauty and the Beast yet to come, we’re in the midst of a live-action reinvention over at the House of Mouse.  While I do have some reservation regarding the overall necessity of the move, I do think that Cinderella acquits itself better than Maleficent thanks to its narrative fidelity and its frankly stunning production value.

In what is essentially a remake of the 1950 animated Disney film, Lily James stars as Cinderella, left after her father’s passing in the care of her evil stepmother Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett).  After a chance encounter with her Prince Charming (Richard Madden), Cinderella makes every effort to go to the ball, with a little magical assist from her Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter).

The most striking thing about Cinderella is, surprisingly, the clothing.  I cannot recall ever being as impressed with costume design as I was with Sandy Powell’s work on this film.  (Fun fact:  she’s also the costume designer for my all-time favorite film, The Departed.)  Perhaps some credit is due to the cinematography, but the colors in the film really pop in a way that dominates my overall impression of the film – Cinderella looks spectacular.  The dresses of Lady Tremaine and her daughters very plainly communicate their interior ugliness, doing so with a flair that Powell has described as nineteenth century by way of the 1940s.  Cinderella’s dresses, too, are incredibly vibrant, matching well the Prince’s royal finery.

The film overall has a very polished look which I credit to the very pristine direction of Kenneth Branagh, who does fairy tales with the same elegance he brings to Shakespeare and superheroes.  There are a few nods to both – from Hamlet, both Derek Jacobi and fencing, and from Thor, Stellan Skarsgard – but more importantly, Branagh brings his trademark earnestness to Cinderella.  It’s honestly a little jarring to go from the delightfully revisionist Into the Woods, in which Cinderella’s indecisiveness clashed with Prince Charming’s insincerity, to a film which wholly believes in the happily-ever-after genre tropes.

Despite the well-crafted nature of the film and the strong performances all around, there is still the lingering question of whether there is a need for another treatment of Cinderella which doesn’t really distinguish itself too strongly from the versions that preceded it.  This is, of course, the question asked of every remake at one time or another, and my chief complaint about Maleficent was, you’ll recall, that its contributions to the revisionist project were so uneven that the best scene was the one that took the fewest liberties, so clearly there’s a threshold of acceptable innovation/transgression.  Cinderella succeeds, I think, on the grounds that it steers a very straight course through the familiar elements of the plot in an even and engaging way, but as content as I felt during the end credits there was still the sensation that I hadn’t actually seen anything new.

Now, to be fair, Cinderella goes 180-degrees from Into the Woods by making the Prince more, not less, compelling; where Sondheim’s Prince “was raised to be charming, not sincere,” Cinderella gives us a prince bristling at his royal obligations, more interested in marrying for love than for obligation (subtext that I don’t recall being quite so present in the animated film).  It also recognizes that Cate Blanchett is phenomenally gifted, so Lady Tremaine’s wickedness is played up as well as explored near the end of the film as she monologues about her motivations.

Ultimately, then, I’m in an unusual place with Cinderella.  The creative team responsible have created something that amounts to a very good cover band version of a classic with a few neat solos in the middle there, but there’s a curmudgeonly bit of me that wants to cling to the original because the new isn’t different enough.  Then again, I think of all the children in the theater with me that afternoon, and I realize that for them this film likely is the definitive Cinderella, and I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.  Maybe the better metaphor is that of translation, the act of going from one language (animation) to another (live-action), and it is on those grounds that Branagh’s Cinderella succeeds.

Cinderella is rated PG for “mild thematic elements.”  I suppose that’s due to the passing of Cinderella’s parents and the verbal abuse she endures at the hands of her wicked stepmother, but this is very nearly G-rated material.

Bonus review!  Cinderella is preceded by a seven-minute short, Frozen Fever – a sequel to (you guessed it), Disney’s wildly profitable Frozen from two Christmases ago.  The short finds Elsa (Idina Menzel) prepping the kingdom for the birthday of her sister Anna (Kristen Bell).  Only two things stand in the way – the snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) is trying to eat the cake, and Elsa has a head cold.  The cynic in me thinks that Frozen Fever is a long advertisement for plush toys of the snow-babies created whenever Elsa sneezes, but aren’t they cute?  By nature of being so short, Frozen Fever isn’t long on substance, but it does continue the film’s emphasis on the sisters’ relationship over a romantic one between Anna and Kristoff in a way that is more refreshing than treacle.  The main song “Making Today a Perfect Day” is about as catchy as “For the First Time in Forever” from the main film, though it won’t, I predict, have the staying power of “Let It Go” (either in eternity or in your head).  All told, I’m a bigger fan of Disney’s original shorts like Paperman and Feast, though Frozen Fever is as pleasant as the “Toy Story Toons” we’d been getting for a while there, a fun pit stop with some familiar faces.

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.

Monday at the Movies - November 26, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Two of “Monday at the Movies.”

Fight Club (1999) – I’ll say this for David Fincher’s Fight Club:  it holds up much better on a second viewing.  I came to it years ago under the auspices of anticipating the allegedly brilliant twist ending, but after predicting it fairly early on I found myself disappointed.  I won’t spoil the ending here, though I will say that the movie is much more successful when you know the reality-bending twist in advance, particularly since the self-congratulatory way in which it’s revealed may seem abrasive to viewers ahead of the game.  Edward Norton plays a pitch-perfect nameless sad sack (known only as “The Narrator”) who begins to find meaning in his life after the charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) begins a franchise of “fight clubs” in which men can take out their anger and recapture their masculinity in a consumerist and depersonalizing world; Helena Bonham Carter costars as Marla Singer, an intensely damaged individual whose self-hatred leads her into the path of Tyler and The Narrator.  At its best, Fight Club is classic Fincher:  dimly-lit, intensely violent, and monomaniacal in its examination of deranged, deviant personalities.  Pitt’s performance in particular stands out as one of his best; Tyler is infectiously exuberant and sadistically nuanced, allowing Pitt to show off the full range of his talents and recalling his nutty turns in Twelve Monkeys and, to a lesser extent, Burn After Reading.  What the film leaves you with is a slightly unsettling commentary on modern society that asks you to sympathize with The Narrator before abandoning you as his plans go awry; Fincher wisely avoids moralizing by leaving the ending ambiguous, asking the audience what is to be made of Fight Club and Project Mayhem.  If nothing else, it’s astounding that this is the same director who did The Social Network!

Hable con ella (2002) – It’s been a year of firsts here at The Cinema King, reviewing silent films (The Italian) and James Bond films (Skyfall) for the first time.  Now your first foreign-language film, courtesy of Pedro Almodóvar.  Hable con ella (“Talk to Her”) is an unusual film, many things at once without leaving much room for the audience to get comfortable in one genre.  Through a series of interconnected events, caregiver Benigno (Javier Cámara) and travel writer Marco (Darío Grandinetti) become friends in the hospital where the comatose loves of their lives sleep.  Marco’s relationship with the bullfighter Lydia (Rosario Flores) becomes more tragic as flashbacks and surprise reveals detail the secret she was keeping from him before her injury, while Benigno’s one-sided friendship with ballerina Alicia (Leonor Watling) becomes more unsettling as we learn more about the extent of his devotion to her.  I’m not sure what to make of this movie; it accomplishes a great deal without leaving much closer for the audience, and it seems that Almodóvar’s film is essentially a treatment of misinterpreted romantic relationships.  To that end it’s a compelling one, helped by strong performances and a willingness to let the audience put some of the major pieces together.  Grandinetti’s turn as Marco is particularly compelling, his emotional vulnerability and forthright nature reminding this viewer of Gordon Pinsent’s moving turn in 2006’s Away From Her.  The film is troubling in places (some unintentional, as I found myself a bit perturbed that the women in the film are literally reduced to bodies), but I think that Almodóvar is after just that – a destabilizing of assumptions and the revelation that everyone has something to hide, be it an emotional trauma in the past or an aberrant secret in the present.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We had “Fight” today – tune in on Wednesday for Flight!

Dark Shadows (2012)

Most of us were probably squealing with delight when we heard that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were channeling the old Dark Shadows soap opera in an attempt to take the vampire crown back from the tweener Twilight crowd.

What we got probably won’t dethrone Edward Cullen as pop culture’s current top vampire, but it’s exactly what diehard Burton/Depp fans will enjoy.

After being cursed, vampirized, and resurrected, Barnabas Collins (Depp) awakens in 1972 to find his family’s name in danger of stasis.  Taken in by the family’s current matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) and assisted by the groundskeeper (Jackie Earle Haley), Barnabas works to rebuild his family’s fishing industry, which places him in direct competition with Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) – the witch who cursed him 200 years ago.

Added to the mix are Elizabeth’s angsty teen daughter Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), scandal-prone uncle Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) and his ghost-plagued son David (Gulliver McGrath), Barnabas’s lover reincarnated as the family nanny (Bella Heathcote), and the alcoholic live-in psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Burton mainstay Helena Bonham Carter).

I catalogued meticulously the ensemble cast behind Depp because this movie has no shortage of plotlines.  It seems that Burton and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (late of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fame) are trying to replicate the structure of a soap opera, in that characters and plots alternate center stage.  But it doesn’t quite work on film – as a result, great actors like Carter are underused, while clear talents like Moretz are forced to wait their turn, while others still, like Miller, never really see their moment arrive.

As a consequence of all this waiting, many of the actors seem irritated.  While all this scowling and frowning and grimacing does set a certain mood within the film, it’s a distancing mood for the audience.  When all the other characters seem impatient, I get restless too, waiting for the next scene with the actors who seem to be indulging in the spirit of what the movie ought to be.

The two talents who do shine, perhaps predictably, are Depp and Green.  Depp manages to distinguish this British character from Sweeney Todd and Captain Jack Sparrow, immersing himself in the role just as we’d expect of him; Depp is the master of the reaction shot, toeing the line between “creature of the night” and “fish out of water.”  As for Green, she makes her character’s evil infectious, giving us the sense that she’s having a tremendous amount of fun being nasty; in the hands of a less capable actress this would have been a one-note “pretty face” role, but Green creates with aplomb a memorable villain and a worthy adversary for Barnabas.

When I said that Sweeney Todd was “the movie Tim Burton’s been trying to make all his life,” I didn’t realize how sadly prophetic that statement would be.  While I contend that Sweeney Todd is Top Ten Tim, his subsequent work has been somewhat less than.  2009’s Alice in Wonderland was lackluster, and Dark Shadows isn’t quite the revelation I had hoped.  Again, it’s exactly what I expected.  What it doesn’t do is transcend those expectations.

Indeed, the film’s basic attitude can be summed up with the line, “I’m a werewolf.  Deal with it.”  Certainly we can deal with it, but I wanted a little more.  The film is exactly a werewolf, but it’s a bit declawed.  It has its strengths, and it’s another Tim Burton movie, but it didn’t blow me away.

See it, sure, but it’s no Avengers.

Dark Shadows is rated PG-13 for “comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking.”  Vampires feast, but for comic effect; blood is omnipresent. Much of the film revolves around a seduction plot, again played for comic effect.  Since it’s the Seventies, there’s drinking, smoking, and pot throughout.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

If it's Day Two of Depp Week here on The Cinema King, that means it must be Tuesday. And if you're smelling cocoa beans, don't adjust your set, because that indicates only that we're coming under the chocolate waterfall to the next Depp/Burton collaboration under scrutiny (and a surefire chance for yet another food metaphor) - 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Here Depp plays eccentric recluse and chocolate bar wunderkind Willy Wonka, who for the first time is opening his factory's doors to the five lucky winners of a candy bar contest. Those bearers of the golden tickets - gluttonous Augustus Gloop, uber-competitive Violet Beauregarde, covetous Veruca Salt, media addict Mike Teavee, and good-natured Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) - are treated to an all-access tour of the factory and all its magical secrets. But as this is a Roald Dahl story, the children's own vices - and the sins of their parents - will prove to be their chocolatey downfall, and the most virtuous of them will be rewarded.

I'll say in honesty that this is not Johnny Depp's finest performance. It's a good turn by him. It's typical Depp - wholly engrossed in the part and just this side of normal. But it's not his best. Comparatively, it's about as good as his turn in Alice in Wonderland. Willy Wonka is good, and there's nothing wrong with him, but it's just that we know Depp is capable of so much more. Of course, there's no other performance in the film that comes close to what Depp's up to (save perhaps Deep Roy, who portrays all the Oompa-Loompas, even the female ones), but Willy Wonka is just good but not great. But then again, even when Johnny Depp "phones it in," it's only the difference between an express train and a bullet train.

But I think the strongest comment I can make in praise of Charlie - and really, I did enjoy it, even after about one or two viewings a year until this most recent one - is that it's leaps and bounds better than its predecessor, 1971's ill-advised Newley/Bricusse musical version, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, led by Gene Wilder. A large part of this is due to the fact that this interpretation - as recognizable as it is as a product of director Burton's unique vision - adheres much closer to Roald Dahl's sensibilities than did the music-and-whimsy Wilder version. As much fun as Wilder was as Wonka (indeed, his version remains definitive in a way that Depp's isn't yet), the fact is that the original movie is a stinker; the acting is lame, the songs lamer, and a corporate espionage plotline shoehorned into the already meandering screenplay. Here the only songs are from Dahl's own book, sung gleefully by the Oompa-Loompas (all voiced by the unequivocal genius and frequent Burton partner Danny Elfman) after each child's inevitable and quasi-grisly exit from the factory; that the songs are all different (one a Brit-pop ballad, another an apparent homage to Queen) and closer to the source material belies a more earnest feel, something I never got from "Pure Imagination" or "I've Got a Golden Ticket" (which I detested so much that I can't be bothered to verify that was the actual title of the song Jack Albertson sang in the 1971 version).

So it sounds good, but the film looks even better, filled with Burton trademark flourishes and near-cameos by Burton regulars Helena Bonham Carter (as Charlie's mother) and Christopher Lee. It's Lee's turn as Wonka's father - dentist Dr. Wilbur Wonka - that's one of the more inspired additions to the film; while Wilbur appears nowhere in the original novels, his addition feels natural and lends a degree of plausibility to the otherwise indulgently kooky Wonka character. It humanizes the character in a way that it's almost impossible to remember that the candy mogul didn't originally have a chocophobic dentist for a father. But this is a movie that would work just as well on "Mute" as it would with the audio on; it's more colorful than a 96-count Crayola box, and it's fluid in a way that recalls the chocolate waterfall at the film's centerpiece.

But I do need to answer the criticism that I've often leveled while invoking this movie's name. I've said before that this film and others suffer from a creative mindset of "These are the story beats we need to hit, so let's keep moving because there's a lot we have to cover." Perhaps it's a casualty of the actual plot of the movie - a tour through certain rooms in which dramatic set pieces occur. But there's never a feel that anything in this movie is not preordained; certainly there are overt implications that Willy Wonka has planned each child's demi-demise, but there's a similar lack of creativity in the screenplay adaptation. Wilbur Wonka aside, it's almost too faithful, slavishly loyal to the source material; there's never a sense, for example, that there are other rooms in the factory beyond the few the kiddies get to see (although we do get shots of other rooms much later in the film). Consequently, it feels almost too generic, as though there are no other alternatives for how this whole thing will shake itself out.

In short, it's better than that other one. It feels pretty close, but it looks vastly different. That's the most critical deviation - the Burton look. And tossing Johnny Depp into the mix never hurt, either.

Hey, look at that. Nary a culinary metaphor in sight. Well done, indeed.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is rated a mere PG "for quirky situations, action and mild language." I'm not even going to pretend I know what that means. It's cartoonish, so the kids can probably handle it.

Depp Week continues into Wednesday with Once Upon a Time in Mexico, but keep your eyes peeled for a special bonus post between now and then, featuring a certain doe-eyed Disney star who's no stranger to this site. Stay tuned!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to Depp Week at The Cinema King. In celebration of the work of one of the most talented actors of our generation, we'll begin our look at some of Johnny Depp's recent work and evaluate how he's done over the last ten years. We'll begin with the performance that netted Depp his third Oscar nod and his first (and, to this date, only) Golden Globe win: that of the singing, slicing barber Sweeney Todd.

One of my earliest musical reviews (of Hairspray, also from 2007) conducted itself in a song-by-song analysis, which was a format I found a) conducive to musical reviews and b) a stylistic shake-up amid the tedium of formula. I'll begin by way of a few prefatory notes. First, I am enamored with this movie; I've said before that it is the movie Tim Burton's been trying to make all his life. Second, I concede that it is not for everyone: Johnny Depp's performance is among his best, but it may not be for everyone; the brutal violence is stunning in a way that may repulse; and a few alterations to the source material may cause Sondheim diehards to spurn this adaptation. Finally, it is a musical, a fact not made apparent by the marketing team, and so some moviegoers may feel tricked. But, if you're like me - an open-minded Depp-head with a Burton fetish (for that is how best Burton's imagery may be described) - Sweeney Todd might be more delicious than a meatpie - with or without human filling.

The film opens on a ship (no, not a pirate ship; that's later on in Depp Week) with the mysterious Sweeney Todd (Depp) and the wide-eyed sailor Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower) each arguing that "There's No Place Like London." Anthony comes from a place of naivete, suggesting that London is the most beautiful city in the world, while Sweeney Todd - fresh off an unjust stint in prison - remarks on the ugliness of the city by way of an anecdote about a barber (Sweeney, pre-prison) and his wife who were targeted by the dastardly Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). The story ends unfinished, and the two part ways. Depp instantly inhabits the skin of the dark and disturbed stranger, evoking pathos before we even know why his eyes are so sunken; Bower is sort of beige, more of a sounding board than an actual character, but at least his singing voice is professional-sounding.
Sweeney finds his way to Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) and her meat pie emporium, wherein are sold "The Worst Pies in London." It's a perfect introduction to Mrs. Lovett and a perfect opportunity for HBC to show off just how delectably nutty she can be as she bemoans the bad luck her business has suffered. HBC continues to shine with "Poor Thing," as she reveals to Sweeney that his wife has killed herself, which leads Sweeney into the revenge ballad "My Friends," essentially a love song to the razors he plans to use as murder weapons. As Mrs. Lovett cloys and attempts to ingratiate herself with Sweeney, HBC gets one more chance to kook it up, but all eyes on this number ought to be on Depp, who pushes his voice as far as it can go - and succeeds.

The plot takes a step back for a moment as Anthony meets the love of his life - Joanna (Jayne Wisener), Sweeney's daughter and ward to Judge Turpin. The catch is that she's locked up ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird"), and her legal guardian isn't too keen on letting her go. The obvious solution here is to sing about it - Anthony gets the solo "Joanna" and promises to free his love before the end of the movie. This set of tracks might turn a few viewers away, but do stick with the film: Anthony and Joanna are slower parts of the picture, but intentionally so, as they're to provide a sort of counterpoint to the Sweeney/Lovett madness. Indeed, Joanna is more a MacGuffin than an actual character, since she's the thing Sweeney, Anthony, and Turpin are all chasing.

The plot takes a second, albeit more intriguing detour with "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir," a street-performance-turned-sales-pitch. The host, the Italian Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), serenades about his potion, which he and his young apprentice Toby (Ed Sanders) promise will regrow hair. But Sweeney calls them out and initiates "The Contest," a shaving competition to see who is the better barber. I won't spoil who the victor of the challenge is, but I will say that this is a great branching-out role for Cohen. Though he's known for his prankumentaries like Borat and Bruno, Cohen is at home as Pirelli, whose theatricality demands an actor who can play comedy with a straight face; Cohen is that actor, balancing the disingenuous front Pirelli wears with the actual menace beneath the blue frills.

Disheartened that his scheme is running slowly, Sweeney sulks as Mrs. Lovett encourages him to "Wait." It's a fairly low-key moment, but compared to the high intensity to come, it's a much needed breather, and it gives Burton a chance to play with some interesting angles and shots of mirrors in what is otherwise a scene of just one person singing to another. The calm, of course, precedes a storm, and with "Pretty Women" Sweeney gets his opportunity for revenge on Judge Turpin. It's a fantastically tense moment, as Sweeney readies his razors. It's also a unique scene because how often do you get to hear Alan Rickman sing? As quickly as this scene begins, it ends abruptly; Anthony interrupts, sending the Judge out of the barber shop and Sweeney into a rage. Suddenly, Sweeney has his "Epiphany" - the world is filled with monsters like Judge Turpin, which means the revenge scheme is thinking too small. As Sweeney vows to slit as many throats as possible, you'll get chills; finally, after about an hour of playing his cards close to the chest, Depp cuts loose and unleashes the full scope of his character's madness. It's this scene, as well as the next hour to follow, that I'm convinced earned Depp his nomination, since it's what fans of his trademark audacious insanity have come to expect and cherish.

And how do we top a number about genocide? Add cannibalism to the mix, suggests Mrs. Lovett in "A Little Priest." With all the bodies piling up, she teases, why not use them to boost my business, too? The song is infectiously loony, catchy in a way that giggles after laughing gas are; we know this is wrong, but the sheer normality and the subdued mirth evident in the performances of Depp and HBC are precursors to the kind of dark humor that governs the movie. But the movie pulls back a little from high satire and returns to its tragic roots with a reprise of "Joanna," in which Anthony's continuing love for Joanna is counterbalanced with Sweeney's sad realization that his original mission has slipped away from him - and that he no longer cares. Visually this is the most spectacular number, loosing Burton's bloody vision for the character by depicting throat after throat slit in spectacularly gushing fashion like something out of Tarantino's wildest imaginings; by pulling back on the intensity of the singing, it provides a built-in apology for the somewhat odd choice of casting Johnny Depp in a musical, since the feelings behind the music are vastly more important - and Depp does a dynamite job of revealing those emotions.

Mrs. Lovett dominates the next few tracks: "God, That's Good!" in which she introduces a hungry London to her latest culinary concoction; "By the Sea," a perfectly deluded number in which she details her lovestruck vision for a blissful future with an otherwise disinterested Sweeney; and "Not While I'm Around," in which she's forced to make a difficult promise to Toby, who's beginning to grow wise to Sweeney's machinations upstairs. The real highlight, though, is the Shakespearean tragedy that governs the film's ten-minute "Final Scene." Here, all the disparate plot threads - Sweeney's quest for revenge on the Judge, Mrs. Lovett's conflict over her love for Sweeney and for Toby, Anthony's pursuit of Joanna, and even that nutty old beggar woman who's been meandering in and out of the plot - tangle together with lightning speed, and before you know it, it's over - culminating in the most heartbreaking homage to the Pieta. Burton omits (wisely, in the opinion of this reviewer) the stage production's songs in the final scene, making it more about the things that characters aren't saying to each other; it's visually stunning and composed in a way that instills a building sense of dread that closes with a cathartic collapse of the house of cards these characters have built for themselves.

It's a film that'll leave you breathless. Once you've caught your breath, though, you might find yourself humming along to a few bars. It'll take a lot more than ale to wash that taste out.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is rated R "for graphic bloody violence." The movie is littered with angry arterial sprays, though all the blood appears in a highly stylized form, much thicker and color-desaturated than its real-life counterpart.

Tune in tomorrow, folks, because we're looking at another Depp/Burton collaboration - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - as Depp Week continues here at The Cinema King.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

I should begin by saying there isn't anything wrong with Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. But.

That's admittedly a strange way to begin a review, but Burton's version of the Lewis Carroll stories (equal parts remake and sequel) is admittedly a strange movie.

In this version, Alice (fresh face Mia Wasikowska) is 19, facing a less-than-exciting engagement and befuddled by recurring dreams of Wonderland in all its smiling-cat glory. After ditching her would-be fiance for a white rabbit (Michael Sheen, famous as David Frost in Frost/Nixon) in a waistcoat, Alice falls down the rabbit hole, and the classic hijinks ensue - tense confrontations with the decapitation-prone Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, replete with a digitally enhanced cranium), a zany tea party with The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), and a duel with the monstrous Jabberwocky (voiced with gusto by Christopher Lee).

I began the review as I did because I want to make it clear that the movie is as fun and enjoyable as most anything with Tim Burton's name on it. I also wanted to make clear that my disappointment with the movie doesn't hinder its capacity to be enjoyed by filmgoers. Okay, that's complicated - how can a movie's main flaw not be a flaw at all? Let's unpack that.

Beginning with the good news - the cast is vivacious and delightful as always. Johnny Depp gets his name before the title of the movie, likely because of his star power; his quirky eccentricities and a heavy dose of pathos in his backstory contribute to a fresh spin on the character, distancing him from the stereotypical nutjob as fully as Depp inhabits the character (which, like all his roles, is a complete immersion). HBC jokes that she plays in all of Burton's films because she's his wife, but the incontrovertible truth is that she's at her best when she's playing a completely disjointed person like the Red Queen; her first scene (in which she interrogates several frogs-in-waiting about her missing cranberry tarts) sets the stage for a mentally unhinged portrait, and her repeated cries of "Off with his/her/their head!" will make any filmgoer giggle with glee. As the White Queen (Red's sister), Anne Hathaway is - in Alice's parlance - "curiouser and curiouser," because I'm still not sure what to make of her; Hathaway bounds about the screen with the angelic grace of a waltz for one, but there seems to be a bit of madness ready to slip out at inopportune moments. Certainly this is an all-star cast (yes, that's Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, here named Absolem), but keep your eyes on scene-stealer Matt Lucas, who ably juggles the dual role of eggbodied twins Tweedledum & Tweedledee (or is it the other way around?).

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton does a clever job of weaving a new through-line into the classic story; it's not spoiling anything to say that Alice is called upon to battle the Jabberwocky and dethrone the Red Queen, but there's a slyness at play that puts a new relevance on familiar occurrences. The Cheshire Cat matters more in this version; no longer is he just a grinning feline evaporating in the trees, but he's now a turncoat seeking redemption at every turn; similarly, the Mad Hatter's not mad per se, but he's getting there. Hats off (pardon the pun) to Woolverton, who also turned Hamlet into The Lion King.

So there's nothing really wrong with the movie, but here comes the bad news. The bad news is that Burton could have done much better. Again, that isn't to say that the movie's bad or missteps in any places, but there's a certain feel to the movie that doesn't quite match the Tim Burton style (wildly imaginative and visually disorienting in a Rembrandt kind of way). Maybe it's his fidelity to the source material; though the film has a smart new story arc, I have the same complaint about this one that I did about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That is, there are certain story beats that any adaptation simply must hit, and there's a fine line there between pulling it off and feeling unimaginative; Alice has its moments, but it often feels like we're moving from room to room on a predestined chocolate factory tour.

Similarly, I felt like Depp was holding back in a lot of places; his Mad Hatter could have been so much more. What we get isn't bad - the decision to speak in a Scottish accent whenever provoked to anger is new and different - but perhaps I've come to expect too much. It's classic Depp, but perhaps "classic Depp" is last year's style. The film is "Classic Burton," too, but it never quite pushes the limit of what I've come to expect from the director. I've always considered 2007's Sweeney Todd to be the movie Tim Burton had been gearing up for his entire life, so it's a tough act to follow in that respect.

I can't say that anyone did any wrong here. Perhaps Depp and Burton's creative juices are on hold after Sweeney Todd (which, no matter what one feels about the movie as a musical, has to be awarded a medal for ambition and enthusiastic execution). Perhaps Disney held the reins too tightly on Burton and Co. (a slapdash nod to the 1951 animated version feels like the kind of overt nod that Burton's usually more subtle about). Whatever the case, I remain pleased but disappointed (if one can feel those two emotions at once) with Alice in Wonderland and look forward to Burton's next pairing with Depp - an adaptation of the campy vampire soap Dark Shadows.

Alice in Wonderland has one of the strangest ratings of all time - "PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar." I mean, I guess that makes sense.