Barbie (2023)

Apparently it’s been Barbie’s world all along, folks; we just live and dream in it. In this topsy-turvy summer where the pink day-glo sparkle of Barbie can open on the same day as the portentous and sobered Oppenheimer – and both can make a boatload of money – Barbie ends up being an excellent reminder that we can have both. If Barbie can have it all, so can we, and we don’t need to take ourselves too seriously in the process.
 
Things are great in Barbieland, a paradise populated only with Barbies and Kens (and Allan, played by Michael Cera). It’s all good until Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to experience flat feet, anxiety, and cellulite. At the insistence of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), Barbie ventures out into the real world with Ken (Ryan Gosling) to find out why her worldview has gotten so grim – much to the consternation of the president of Mattel (Will Ferrell).
 
From its earliest trailers and first-looks, it was quite clear that Barbie’s secret weapon was going to be self-awareness. An early trailer cast Barbie in a send-off of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with children gleefully smashing baby dolls, and the hard cuts to the pristine plastic of Barbieland reassured us that director Greta Gerwig knew exactly what we might expect from a corporate Barbie film – and she was steadfastly opposed to creating a two-hour toy commercial. Instead, we get The Lego Movie by way of Enchanted, a film that shouldn’t be this delightful for a movie based on a narrative-less toy. (The antithesis, I suppose, is something like Transformers, a joyless toy commercial mired in its own monastic mythos.)
 
Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as “stereotypical” Barbie, the ur-doll from which all other Barbies (even President Barbie) draw their inspiration. Indeed, so immaculate is Robbie in this role that even the narrator (Helen Mirren) cannot help but comment on the utter absurdity of her lament that she’s not pretty; “Note to filmmakers,” she opines in one of the film’s many terrific jokes, “Margot Robbie is not the actress to get this point across.” Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling is, if it can be imagined, even doofier as Ken than Michael Keaton was in Toy Story 3. Gosling’s Ken is a true buffoon, a self-described accessory and self-insistent “ten” whose job is “beach” despite an apparent inability to perform CPR or even swim to shore on his own. Together, the two have some of the funniest chemistry imaginable, particularly because of the perennial lack of clarity about the precise nature of their relationship.
 
Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach are delightfully cavalier about most of the rules that govern Barbieland. Some of this is due to the logic that governs a child’s play, but more of it is in an embrace of fantasy and dreams at large. In two sequences, Rhea Perlman appears (particularly jarring for someone who, like myself, has binged nearly all of Cheers in about four months), and there’s an explanation provided in a hand-wavey kind of way that rolls over the audience like a wave. In another scene, someone ponders the possible differences between Barbieland and the real world, and in asking which difference is key, he receives a unanimous answer, “Yes.” Whether Barbieland is just down the block, like Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or whether it is a creation of a child’s fictional dreamscape, is the kind of question that only an adult reviewer would begin to ask – and Gerwig’s response is, “Don’t worry about it.”
 
The film is bracingly unselfconscious, with no one afraid to embarrass themselves or lean into the broad absurdism of playing a plastic doll come to life. Simu Liu is wickedly fun as a Ken consumed with himself (as they all are), a walking/talking competitive vanity incarnate. Similarly, Gerwig is undaunted by the prospect of directing cardboard montages, placing a corporate boardroom on the world’s longest tandem bicycle. It’s peppy and poppy, a little subversive and a little heavy on the ‘message,’ but if anyone’s upset by the film, they’re taking it – or themselves – a little too seriously. It’s a film where Gosling’s Ken is both perplexed and disappointed about the number of horses involved in a “patriarchy,” where Weird Barbie is unapologetic about smelling like a basement. The little nine-year-old boy next to me was as enchanted as his younger sister a few seats over. Their mother, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be enjoying herself, but then again she didn’t seem like a person who enjoyed much of anything. Perhaps she needed a Barbie of her own to inspire her, to remind her that it’s okay to feel joy. 
 
That message is Barbie’s greatest gift – that it’s tough out there, but it’s okay to laugh, to dream, to blaze your own path forward on tippy-toes, wearing so much more pink than any one retina can handle – just as long as you’re you while you’re doing it.
 

Barbie is rated PG-13 for “suggestive references and brief language.” Directed by Greta Gerwig. Written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. Based on the Barbie dolls by Mattel. Starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.

First Man (2018)

At the risk of opening myself up to relitigating 2016, it was the year Damien Chazelle demanded I take him seriously with La La Land, a beautiful film which I perhaps overhastily dubbed “best of 2016” (though then-runner-up Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has only risen in my estimations). He had physically rattled me with Whiplash, one of the only movies to leave me visibly shaking, but La La Land was something else entirely, revelatory and emotional, resonant and instant Personal Canon material. With First Man, a movie at once quite different and yet of a piece with his oeuvre, Damien Chazelle three-peats and earns himself a spot on my “worth a look” list.

Ryan Gosling stars as Neil Armstrong, the aforementioned “first man” on the moon in this biopic that begins with his application to NASA and culminates (spoilers?) with his walk on the moon. Claire Foy co-stars as his wife Janet, the emotional center of the film amid her husband’s obdurate refusal to acknowledge that his missions are increasingly dangerous.

As a true story, First Man is quite different from Whiplash and La La Land, and though it continues Chazelle’s exploration of the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness, it puts the audience in the interesting position of knowing that Neil Armstrong does indeed succeed; we didn’t know if Andrew, Mia, or Sebastian would achieve their goals, which added a tension to those stories (and a heartbreak if the costs ever outweighed the results). With First Man, we know where this is going, which lets Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer flip the script and examine the emotional toll of this achievement and the grave uncertainty that leads up to it. Here Foy is particularly riveting, playing opposite a veritable cipher in the form of Gosling; where Gosling bottles up every emotion he has, Foy proves unable – or more likely, unwilling – to curb those feelings when they are killing her. Gosling, meanwhile, plays the portrait of restraint, single-minded focus with a twitchy flinch at the prospect of facing his fears. 

Also returning from La La Land is Justin Hurwitz on score duties, and I have to say it does show. There’s something about the way Hurwitz organizes a melody and a musical refrain that recalls the sweeping score of 2016’s top musical. New to Hurwitz’s repertoire is the theremin, underappreciated and right at home in a science-fiction movie (this being, of course, nonfiction); invoking the score from The Day the Earth Stood Still is never a bad idea, and hearing the theremin build up to the moon landing sequence proves highly effective. 

Equally (and perhaps more) successful is the way the film drops out most of the audio during the moon landing. There’s been much ballyhoo about “needing” to see the film in IMAX, and I’ll certainly agree that it’s a standout feature when the aspect ratio opens up and the film goes dead silent – I’ve never seen a theater audience that respectful of silence. Emphasizing that the only things on the moon with Neil are what he brings up with him, the score focuses on a swirling martial beat, John Barry by way of Hans Zimmer (or is it the other way around?), before ceding to the majesty of the lunar surface. It’s a breathtaking sequence, worth the price of admission even in spite of the fact that we know he’s going to stick the landing – Hurwitz and Chazelle give a real powerhouse of a moment.

The film ends on a much quieter note – I won’t spoil it, because the film does go beyond the moon landing just a bit. The silent closing sequence is tremendously powerful, even after the bombastic scope of the moon; it’s a potent scene between two performers who should earn Oscar nominations on those facial expressions alone. Whiplash left me shaken, and La La Land left me sobbing; First Man is somewhere closer to the latter end of the spectrum, but softer, less painful by far. It’s a poetic conclusion to a movie with a surprising emotional core, but then Chazelle has hit me with more than his fair share of sentimental sucker punches. Three in a row, at least, guarantees I’ll be in attendance for whatever he tries next.

First Man is rated PG-13 for “some thematic content involving peril, and brief strong language.” Directed by Damien Chazelle. Written by Josh Singer. Based on the book by James R. Hansen. Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, and Ciaran Hinds.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

I’ve had a roller coaster of prerelease emotions when it comes to Blade Runner 2049, from skeptical that we needed to revisit the 1982 classic to nervous that Ridley Scott might direct (after he’d done the Alien franchise a disservice with Prometheus); from cautiously optimistic that Harrison Ford was involved to exuberant upon hearing that Denis Villeneuve would ultimately helm the film. Now that I’ve actually seen it, I can attest that Blade Runner 2049 is the success it needed to be, another strong science fiction outing from the man who brought us Arrival and a potent reengagement with the central questions that the original Blade Runner continues to pose.

Ryan Gosling stars as K, a blade runner thirty years after the events of the original film. On a routine “retirement” of one of a new breed of replicants, K discovers a mystery that sets him on a new case, one that will lead him to seek out Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford).

That’s about all I’d like to say about the plot of Blade Runner 2049 – indeed, I almost wish that the marketing hadn’t revealed that Harrison Ford was returning, because the film unfolds at such a deliberate and methodical pace that each of its reveals feels carefully measured and deployed at just the right moment. At two hours, forty minutes, and then some, 2049 is long – not slow but disciplined, walking through the world of Blade Runner without failing to stop and take notice of the sprawling landscapes, the colossal neon billboards, and the depth of the imagined future world. There’s so much content in the film that I would have appreciated being surprised by Ford’s inclusion, but then again, I recognize that Deckard is something of an elephant in the Blade Runner room, and so his presence does feel like a legitimizing agent to plant 2049 solidly in place.

I had the opportunity to rewatch the original Blade Runner the night before seeing 2049, and it’s an arrangement I’d highly recommend for an optimal viewing experience. (Back to back might numb the bum, to say nothing of the back!) Blade Runner 2049 does rely on parts of its predecessor, picking up plot elements and referencing iconic visuals, but by the same token I do think the film works well enough as a standalone that develops in a new but consistent direction, in that sense reminding me a great deal of Tron Legacy. Indeed, there’s been a trend lately of dusting off these classics from decades past – Harrison Ford himself had already done it in The Force Awakens – and seeing what they have to say these years later. By and large, these efforts have to my eyes been roundly successful, resisting the impulse to reboot (and the creative liberties that might come therein) but rather working within the confines of the established universe and layering in new roads, not unlike the way The Godfather Part II filled in the world of the first Godfather and extended its lifespan in gripping ways.

You have, of course, the continuing saga of Rick Deckard, who’s as striking when he’s absent as when he’s present; where has he gone, but more importantly why’s he gone away? (Here Ford is both the returning Han Solo and the vanished Luke Skywalker.) But aside from extending the narrative of Blade Runner (melding nicely with whichever of the umpteen cuts you prize), 2049 looks for new opportunities; Jared Leto plays the erstwhile heir to the Tyrell replicant empire, while Dave Bautista plays a surprisingly graceful farmer, a far cry from either Drax or Mr. Hinx. Gosling is solid as always, a well-deserved heir to Harrison Ford’s remarkably deft career, but I was surprised that it’s Ana de Armas who steals more than her fair share of the film, playing K’s holographic companion Joi (think a slinky, autonomous Alexa). Joi allows the film to continue to probe the question of the lines between simulation and reality in ways related to, but also quite distinct from, the mystery posed by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in the original.

Simply put, Blade Runner 2049 is one of the better sequels in recent memory. Early in production, Christopher Nolan had been bounced around as a possible director, but – while I’ll never say no to more Nolan (particularly since his frequent collaborator, Hans Zimmer, appears to have discovered the vuvuzela with his follow-up to Vangelis) – I do think Villenueve is the ideal candidate here. As we saw with Arrival, Villeneuve has mastered the balance between wonder and revelation, in portraying immense scope with the weight of narrative to match. (Has anyone called him yet for a Star Wars film?) Villeneuve’s direction is capable and confident, taking its time but earning that extended runtime by doling out information and momentum to keep the audience right where he needs them to be.

I almost don’t want there to be a third Blade Runner, but then I didn’t know I wanted the second one, either. It’ll be exceedingly difficult to capture replicant lightning in a bottle once more, and though there’s a thread here and there left unknotted the film does seem to end in a place that feels whole and proper. If Villeneuve is in the driver’s seat once more, though, I’m confident we’ll be in a good place.

Blade Runner 2049 is rated R for “violence, some sexuality, nudity and language.” Directed by Denis Villenueve. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, and Jared Leto.

La La Land (2016)

In one of the most famous passages from his Confessions, Saint Augustine realizes he has been moved to tears by the suicide of Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid. In hindsight, Augustine recognizes that the true tragedy was not the death of the Carthaginian queen but Augustine’s blindness to his own reality as a sinner – that is, he had no tears for the reality of his soul but rather had wasted them on the dimension of the imaginary.

I couldn’t help but think of Dido while I watched La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s eagerly-awaited follow-up to the masterful Whiplash, because it does feel like Chazelle is directly rebutting Augustine on this count. Yes, La La Land seems to declare, it is right and proper for us to weep for that which is not real, that which we cannot help but imagine in the language of film, for reality can often be dispiriting, unexpected, or filled with fear of the future.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star as Sebastian and Mia, a jazz pianist and an aspiring actress whose paths continue to cross in Los Angeles until finally, inevitably, they surrender to temptation and fall in love. Amid the continual anxiety that they won’t make it in Hollywood, Sebastian and Mia inspire each other to pursue their dreams, even when they seem difficult and unattainable.

Aside from a few shots of single spotlights on jazz musicians, it’s difficult to tell that La La Land, wistful and nostalgic, comes from the same writer/director as the intensely furious Whiplash. Instead, La La Land feels like the postmodern thematic sequel to 2011’s The Artist, which reveled in the tropes of the silent film while reminding audiences of the acute sense of loss that came with the passing of an era. In the same way, La La Land embraces the aesthetic of the musicals of the 1950s (though in color, there are also affinities with the Fred-and-Gingers of the 1930s), lamenting the way that reality all so often fails to live up to the romanticized spectacle of a big Hollywood musical. Reality can be sweet, La La Land posits, but it’s got nothing on the polish and image surfaces made on a movie studio backlot.

And whether that makes the film’s final statement one of tragedy or beauty is, I think, in the eye of the beholder. If you have a romantic eye, thank God we have the movies; if yours is a cynical vision, how ignoble that we supplant reality with the image. But Chazelle is content to leave the rose-colored glasses of Hollywood in place as a filter, amplifying the emotions of the story by blowing them up into something extravagant, with a clever sense of humor that I hope isn’t lost on moviegoers. Mia and Sebastian’s first date takes them, naturally, to the movies, to see Rebel Without a Cause, but when things go awry they visit the Griffith Observatory, where parts of Rebel were set.

There, if we hadn’t been paying attention, Chazelle reveals his end game. What begins as a typical cute date turns into the fantastic (emphasis on fantasy) as they dance in the observatory and join the stars in a beautifully-shot midair waltz. It’s breathtaking in its unreality; there’s no doubt that this isn’t really happening – this isn’t Superman, after all; you won’t believe a man can fly – but isn’t it beautiful to imagine it so?

It’s really difficult to talk about this without discussing the ending of the film – and don’t worry, I won’t, because the third act has maybe the best gut-punch in recent memory, at least as far back as the last time my whole theater collectively gasped, at Frozen – so let’s shift gears and talk about the music. For those who, like me, still tremor a bit when thinking about the climax of Whiplash, there’s none of that in La La Land, thank heavens, but as far as the singing goes, I’ve seen a fair bit of critique laid at Gosling and Stone’s feet. While I do concede that they’re not the strongest singers on the screen these days, I do wonder if some of that is the point – Mia and Sebastian, as much as they want to be, are not stars just yet; Gosling’s piano playing, though, has rightly earned its share of accolades, and I do have to say that Emma Stone’s final number, “Audition” (as heard in many of the trailers), is as affective as Anne Hathaway’s “I Dreamed a Dream,” which in 2013 I described as a “heart-breaking . . . despairing ode that would drive even the stone-hearted Pharaoh to tears and will likely garner her an Oscar nod.” I have similar words to say about “Audition,” which pins all our hopes on Mia’s ability to connect with her auditioners, even as we quickly lose track of them and fall into the story Mia weaves.

La La Land is not Whiplash, although J.K. Simmons appears in both (here, he cameos as a club owner who’s a stickler for seasonal set-lists). Instead, it’s an elegy for a bygone film genre, a glimpse of a relationship which imagines itself in loftier terms, positing the question of whether “la la land” – suggesting Los Angeles, “la la” singing, and “la la” head in the clouds – is such a bad place to be. Under Chazelle’s watch, it’s anything but.

La La Land is rated PG-13 for “some language.” Written and directed by Damien Chazelle. Music by Justin Hurwitz. Starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

The Nice Guys (2016)

After two Iron Man films, Jon Favreau retired to a more personal film with Chef, which seems to have rejuvenated his creative batteries while remaining an entertaining movie in its own right. Likewise, three years after Iron Man 3 it’s Shane Black’s turn to scale back for a smaller film – misplaced, perhaps, in the summer blockbuster season (I can’t help thinking it’d have performed better financially in, say, October), but right up there with Hail, Caesar! in terms of laughs per minute.

Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling star as errant private eyes whose paths cross on a missing persons case before the case turns into an apparent murder (or, as it turns out, murders) reaching as high as the head of the Department of Justice (Kim Basinger). It’s a 1970s extravaganza, from the music and locations to the politics and pornography; hat-tip to Angourie Rice as Gosling’s daughter, overeager and spirited despite her father’s protestations.

I’ve been a fan of Shane Black’s going as far back as my first viewing of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and his clever screenplay on The Monster Squad. Of course, the former had a lot to do with Robert Downey Jr. in a starring role, but that has a lot to do with the fact that RDJ is naturally adept at delivering the kind of lines that Black writers – quick-witted, dryly sarcastic, and unapologetically buffoonish when need be. Throw in the buddy cop element (lest we forget, Black screenwrote Lethal Weapon), and you’re well on your way to The Nice Guys.

Another way to put it would be to think of The Nice Guys as “Thomas Pynchon’s Big Lebowski,” juxtaposing the neo-noir aesthetics of the Coen Brothers with Pynchon’s penchant for the absurd, Inherent Vice if it starred a pair of detectives. Yet for all the twists and turns that analogy might lead you to expect, The Nice Guys is never less than straightforward, its mystery meandering but never straying while wrinkling in a nice bit of ambiguity just because the final reel (in brief, is someone lying about the truth of the case?).

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was a success because of the unlikely chemistry between the extreme personalities of RDJ and Val Kilmer (the latter in an uproarious turn as Gay Perry), and The Nice Guys continues that pattern by joining Crowe and Gosling in a successful combination of thuggish straight man Crowe and waggish clown Gosling. While Crowe gets in his fair share of punchlines and confident one-liners, it’s Gosling who runs away with the film’s funniest moments (some playing off his daughter, in an entry for “World’s Nuttiest Approach to Parenting”).

Unfortunately, it seems that The Nice Guys is flying under the commercial radar, though critically it’s hovering around 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps The Nice Guys will find its audience on DVD, and hopefully so because this is a film that is a guaranteed bad-mood-killer. Hail, Caesar! gave me an unending grin on my face, but The Nice Guys goes for the comedic jugular and left me wheezing with laughter throughout much of the picture.

The Nice Guys is rated R for “violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use.” Definitely a hard R between the violence (gunfights, fistfights, people getting hit with cars and falling off buildings), profanity (F-bombs aplenty), and nudity (topless and nude women in the opening scene and in an extended party scene).

Monday at the Movies - September 2, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies” – this week, we review two films that are really quite draining in an entirely delectable sense.

Drive (2011) – Here’s a movie that’s way more intense than I was expecting.  In Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver, moonlighting as a getaway driver, who becomes embroiled in the underworld after falling in love with his neighbor (Carey Mulligan).  I don’t really know what I thought I was getting into; I’d only heard rave reviews, and I’ve never seen a Gosling performance I didn’t like.  But Drive is such an oddball captivating flick, its glacial pace tempered by Refn’s keen cinematographic eye – the result is something closer to There Will Be Blood than 2001: A Space Odyssey.  All this is not to say that the film is boring; rather, Refn directs the daylights out of some car chases without resorting to shaky cameras or even quick cuts, relying on the natural tension of the narrative and a well-placed close-up on Gosling’s steely stare.  Drive is undeniably Gosling’s show (Refn’s direction, though, giving a run for his proverbial money), but an astounding array of supporters – Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, and Albert Brooks as a spooky mobster sans eyebrows – fill out the film with that who’s-who delight enjoyed by moviegoers such as myself.  But boy, is this a violent flick, with some of the most jarring violence I’ve seen in movies recently – and, remember, I loved Django Unchained.  But Refn’s use of violence is sparse, used to jar and interrupt and not to delight; essentially, it does what violence actually does in real life, which makes it all the more effective and/or disturbing.  Drive, then, comes highly recommended.

Take Shelter (2011) – Is there any working actor more intense than Michael Shannon?  He’s always wound tighter than Taft’s bathtub, but when that simmer boils over it’s explosively good fun to watch.  Take Shelter might have been a dull picture with any other front man, but Shannon does fantastic work in an Oscar-snubbed lead performance as Curtis, a family man haunted by nightmares of an impending apocalypse.  As his behavior becomes increasingly obsessive and erratic, Curtis risks alienating his wife (Jessica Chastain), who’s especially worried about the fate of their deaf daughter and what will happen to the family if Curtis’s burgeoning psychosis threatens his own employment as a construction worker.  This is not a movie where much happens; instead, the film relies on the capable performances of Shannon and Chastain, who are more than believable as beleaguered Midwestern spouses.  The film is undeniably Shannon’s, his clairvoyance/psychosis (depending on how you read the film) taking a clear toll on his wellbeing as he grimaces and twitches in quiet moments before squinting into the horizon or, in one of the film’s strongest moments, unleashing his manic frustrations on his friends.  While she stands in a long shadow, Chastain is the emotional anchor of the film, the audience’s point of interaction as voice to a thousand doubts and frustrations; I don’t know where she came from all of a sudden, but her work in the past few years (particularly Zero Dark Thirty) demonstrates that Hollywood needs more of her kind of actress.  More indie than blockbuster, Take Shelter flew low enough under the radar that more people ought to see it – especially those of us needing a little more intensity from General Zod.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  And don’t forget that this Saturday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month...

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!

Monday at the Movies - July 30, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Eight of “Monday at the Movies.”  A few romantic comedies on tap this week, plus a film so disturbing I feel uncomfortable saying I enjoyed it.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – A long, long time ago, I directed readers to an essay by David Bordwell in which he draws the distinction between an excellent film and a film that is to one’s liking.  I invoke Bordwell here because I think he might be the key to my take on Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange; it’s a great film, certainly, excellent by technical standards and one of Kubrick’s more accomplished films, but it’s entirely different to “like” on a purely evaluative level.  For one, its protagonist Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell in the epitome of a career-making performance) is a brutal sadist who spends his evenings raping and engaging in “ultra-violence.”  Perhaps worse, Kubrick’s filmmaking attempts to get us to sympathize with – and even like – Alex, a disconcerting premise once you realize what’s afoot.  I’m probably in the minority on this one, but I usually find Kubrick a bit... boring; Dr. Strangelove is, I admit, genius, but I’ve never been able to watch 2001 or The Shining in one sitting because they seem plodding and aimless – which may be the point, perhaps, but they’re just not “to my liking.”  (The first hour of Full Metal Jacket, though, is brilliant.)  But here Kubrick displays his ability to keep a scene moving even if the camera is stationary, and though much of the film is repulsive on a moral level, it’s transfixing on an aesthetic one, helped in no small part by the quirky yet unspeakably evil performance McDowell turns in.

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) – I’m on record as not being the world’s biggest Steve Carell fan, and Crazy, Stupid, Love does very little to swing me in the other direction.  Which is not to say that the film isn’t enjoyable – halfway far from it.  I say halfway because there are really two movies going on in Crazy, Stupid, Love (one, it seems for each unnecessary comma in the title):  in one, divorcee Steve Carell tries life without his wife Julianne Moore, while in the other his womanizing wingman Ryan Gosling reforms his ways after meeting girl-of-his-dreams Emma Stone.  As is usually the case with these kinds of films, it’s the latter plot, the supporting one, that succeeds far more than the former.  The problem, perhaps, is that Carell is too real as a man who’s had his heart ripped out; just when the supposed comedy is getting to the funny bits, Carell mopes into frame with his sad-sack character to remind us just how miserable he is.  It’s a shame, because Gosling and Stone are so talented and so charismatic together that one wishes for a movie revolving solely around them.  As a consequence of being so schizophrenic, the film’s message is a mixed one – is love possible or not?  Or is it merely difficult but worthwhile?  If the latter, tell me something I don’t know.  Aside from the Gosling/Stone scenes, I will credit the film with a rather clever third act twist, something I didn’t know to see coming.

Friends with Benefits (2011) – Remember that time that the two leads from Black Swan starred in separate movies about casual sex?  I certainly do, but after seeing Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached (with an uninspiring Ashton Kutcher as her co-lead) I wasn’t exactly ready to join Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends with Benefits.  Turns out the joke was on me, because Friends with Benefits is by far the better of this odd couple.  Director Will Gluck, who made such a winner out of Easy A with Emma Stone, creates a solidly funny film here, which is by and large victorious thanks to the infectious chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake; their characters are likeable from the first, and – pivotally for a comedy film – they’re funny, too.  Also back from Easy A is Patricia Clarkson, who reprises her role as the kooky and sexually liberated mother, this time of Kunis’s character.  The only part of the equation that doesn’t fit is Richard Jenkins as Timberlake’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, whose outbursts lead not to comic relief but to unexpectedly heartfelt pathos.  While the film falls prey to the clichés of the romantic comedy genre, it does so more credibly than No Strings Attached, without asking us to cry for the protagonists when their bizarre experiment complicates itself.  Wisely, the film remembers that we have to like our characters in order to want to see them together, and Gluck and company – particularly his leads – achieve both by leaps and bounds.

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

Monday at the Movies - June 4, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-One of “Monday at the Movies,” another lackluster week in the domain of the Cinema King.

The Beaver (2011) – The Beaver is a cautionary tale, but the warning it carries bears no relationship to the movie you may have seen.  Rather, it’s an advisory not to trust the marketing campaign of a film.  If you’re expecting a kooky comedy in which Mel Gibson sorts through his psychological problems and reunites with his family thanks to the help of a lovable British beaver puppet, you’re out of luck.  The Beaver is extremely depressing, albeit with good performances all around.  Gibson communicates his character’s illness effectively, leading the viewer to feel on edge as he falls further from sanity, while Jodie Foster as his wife (and the film’s director) is appropriately earnest.  Cinema King favorite Anton Yelchin’s hatred of his father seethes off the screen, and his chemistry with valedictorian Jennifer Lawrence is perceptible and plausible (after an initial clichéd first encounter).  And perhaps there’s a very good movie in here somewhere, an honest depiction of mental illness led by an allegedly troubled actor, and perhaps this is merely a case of expectation misaligned with reality; that is, maybe my preconception of the movie got in the way of my appreciation for the film.  What I can say, though, is that The Beaver was a very unpleasant and uncomfortable viewing experience, making me squirm in more than a few places and grimace in others.  If this is what Foster was intending, job well done, because this is a very depressing movie.  But if we’re meant to be inspired by the film, mission not accomplished.

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) – Ordinarily TV movies aren’t quite under the purview of the Cinema King, but we have a bit of a Hemingway thing going on here lately.  After being disappointed by the (mis)use of Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I was gratified to see that HBO was working on a biopic about Hemingway’s tempestuous marriage to Martha Gellhorn.  Even better news:  Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman – a talented cast, mind you – were headlining.  (Recall, I was clamoring loudly for Clive Owen to succeed Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.)  So much for the good news.  The bad news?  The result, Hemingway & Gellhorn, is unorganized and meandering, focusing more on character than on plot.  Ordinarily this would be fine, but the characters here are too static to be interesting.  Owen and Kidman are very compelling and capture the essences of their characters, but they neither do anything very interesting nor evolve in any significant way.  The same is true for other big names who appear briefly – Tony Shalhoub, Robert Duvall, David Strathairn, etc.  Consequently, we have a novelty act that wears off once you realize it’s careening around the globe without purpose.  Worse, the film muddles history by implying that Gellhorn’s divorce from Hemingway caused his suicide years later, a move which seems to contradict the film’s attempts to canonize Gellhorn.  Ironically, the film finds many characters telling Hemingway that a film adaptation of A Farewell to Arms failed to capture his work accurately; similarly, our great Hemingway film, it seems, is yet to be.

The Ides of March (2011) – Continuing the trend of people who should be doing better work, George Clooney (who did so well with Good Night and Good Luck) directs Ryan Gosling (whose work was a surprise gem in Lars and the Real Girl) in this fable about American politics.  Gosling plays an idealistic campaign worker who falls for the American dream pitched by Clooney’s candidate, but Gosling is jaded by a series of revelations about the way the political scene really operates and drops his idealism for cynical throat-cutting and backstabbing.  Again, a fantastic supporting cast – Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, even President Logan – turns in good performances all around (Hoffman especially is, as always, engaging) but is criminally underused in yet another story that goes nowhere.  Literally.  The film ends just as it’s picking up steam, and all we’re left with is yet another film that offers up the trite moral “American politics is a dirty game.”  With so many interesting characters assembled, one wishes the writers had pushed the material at least one step beyond what we already know.  It’s not that The Ides of March is a bad movie; what we have is entertaining enough, but there’s no “pay off.”  It’s a lot of sound and fury, but it signifies nothing, ending as only a tale told by an idiot can.  If I can channel my inner Gene Shalit for a moment, “Beware The Ides of March.”

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  (And hopefully things turn around before July 20, because that’d be a heck of a dry spell otherwise.)

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

For starters, let's say that Craig Gillespie's Lars and the Real Girl is nowhere near as disturbing as its premise might lead you to believe. The relationship between Lars (Ryan Gosling) and his sex doll "girlfriend" Bianca (humorously credited "as Herself") is much more innocent than one might initially predict, and it's a whole heck of a lot funnier.

Lars is your lonely Everyman, bouncing between a nondescript cubicle and the garage behind his brother's house (brother Gus and his wife Karin are played by Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer, respectfully, obviously). Despite (or perhaps in spite of) an obvious romantic tension with coworker Margo (Kelli Garner, who positively glows), Lars purchases Bianca, around whom he crafts an elaborate relationship. Recognizing this as a legitimate psychological delusion, the town plays along.

This whole sex doll business is, one has to admit, a little beyond the norm of your average film fare. Yet screenwriter Nancy Oliver does a marvelous job of keeping it within the lines of cinematic plausibility, aided in no small part by a completely infatuated performance by Gosling, who really shouldn't be thought of "that guy from The Notebook" anymore. In a lot of ways, Gosling's Lars Lindstrom is like Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain - completely enamored with a lifeless nobody. It's not difficult to see why the townspeople play along with the Bianca facade; Gosling looks at Bianca as though she's real, as though she's the girl of his dreams.

Poor Margo. Kelli Garner is completely adorable as the would-be love interest, the quintessential girl-next-door, if only he knew. With perhaps her biggest exposure since her turn as Faith Domergue in Scorsese's Hughes-biopic The Aviator, Garner is definitely someone I'll have to keep on my radar - similar words about whom I spoke in reference to Emily Mortimer in The Pink Panther, who will break your heart here when Bianca falls ill.

I wasn't expecting to like this movie just as much as I did. It's a sweet film, emotional, guided by a few great performances. My gripe with this film is the unbelievability factor; other than Gus and a few religious figures, no one really shows any problem with accepting Bianca as a member of the community. Does this town love Lars so much that they're willing to elect Bianca to the school board? As Geoffrey Rush said in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, "It does strain credulity, at that."

Otherwise, I'd have to give Lars a "Recommended Viewing" certificate, if only for making sex dolls so gosh darned interesting.