Monday at the Movies - February 18, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  On the dock for today, two films marketed as comedies – but which one is actually funny?

The Dictator (2012) – Look, I’m a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, both his prankumentary style (which he perfected in 2006’s Borat) and his more traditional character work (with which he stole Les Misérables).  On the surface, The Dictator ought to be a delightful blend of those two – a scripted comedy about a hapless Middle Easterner with a ludicrous accent.  Instead, what you get is a confused and barely-funny satire of... well, the film never quite focuses on one target long enough for a sustained take on Arab dictatorship, college yuppie liberalism, or American democracy.  Any one of these could be the subject for a clever comedy, but the odd melding of the three leaves us uncertain who we’re supposed to root for.  Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen with his usual enthusiasm, but he’s pumping air into a disappointingly lifeless script which is, for vast stretches, entirely without laughs.  Many of the gaffes are predictable, elongated beyond their worth, or just plain unfunny, and even Cohen’s trademark disappearance behind the character isn’t enough to engage the audience.  There are a few chuckles to be had – cameos by John C. Reilly and a self-deprecating Megan Fox gesture toward a palpable and intriguing direction for the film – but mostly the film seems unsure what it wants to be and tries to be all those things at once, making for a very disunified whole.  The film is a lot like Ben Kingsley’s role therein (yes, Sir Ben costars):  you don’t quite know how so many talented people got into such a mess, but you’re disappointed that they’re not doing better work.

21 Jump Street (2012) – Nothing about this movie screams success; in fact, nothing about the film should work.  A remake of an ’80s TV show, 21 Jump Street stars Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as undercover cops in a high school where new illegal drugs are being distributed.  I repeat:  no part of that sentence has really ever worked in a movie before.  Yet there’s something about 21 Jump Street that is surprising in a very good way:  the movie is very funny, rather clever, and just downright better than it ought to be.  Hill and Tatum have tangible chemistry as partners, best friends, and pseudo-brothers; they play off each other like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do in Shaun of the Dead (among others), exploiting each other’s foibles while working together to accomplish their goals.  The film is incredibly self-aware, with many characters acknowledging and poking fun at the fact that Hill and Tatum look far too old to be high schoolers, but the film’s greater strength is its funny script given life by a bevy of talented supporting cast members.  It’s almost enough just to mention their names – Nick Offerman, Ellie Kemper, Rob Riggle – because their work is reliable and solid.  (Kudos also to Ice Cube, who practically steals the show as a self-conscious walking stereotype who shouts about Miranda rights and “Korean Jesus.”)  And yes, that original 21 Jump cast member makes a fun appearance, too.  A surprisingly entertaining entry from a team that’s never really delighted me before, 21 Jump Street deserves more than the casual brush-off its premise usually elicits.

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

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 - February 27, 2012

Welcome to Week Nine of “Monday at the Movies.” Last night was Oscar night, and I realized I only saw one out of the nine nominated Best Picture films, but there seemed to be a few other films that cropped up in the acting categories. I’ve already reviewed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Rango, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so here are two more Oscar-nominated films from the past year.

Bridesmaids (2011) – Touted as “The Hangover for ladies,” Bridesmaids is something more than that because, rather than repeat a line of gags (as funny as those are in The Hangover), the film goes for an actual story anchored by a series of absurdly escalating vignettes around wedding planning. Because it was billed as “for ladies,” I was surprised by how much bathroom humor was present (saying something, I think, about gender politics in 2011) – not that I don’t find that kind of humor extremely funny, as when bad Brazilian food induces Maya Rudolph to defecate in the middle of the street (beneath the folds of a wedding dress, for those who have delicate constitutions). Melissa McCarthy snagged a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her outgoing and outrageous performance as raunchy bridesmaid Megan, although I’m not sure that anyone expected the nomination; it’s certainly strong acting, but nothing about it screamed “Oscar!” for me. In part, that’s because the ensemble cast in the movie is also strong – Jon Hamm as a sleazy beau, Rose Byrne as the one-upping aspirant to the “maid of honor” title, and the sweet and clean-cut Ellie Kemper who doesn’t quite get enough screen time. It’s ultimately not as rewatchable as The Hangover, but it’s not two hours that I regret spending in the first place.

Hugo (2011) – I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m a huge Martin Scorsese fan, and the promise of his first 3-D movie was enough for me to give the entire visual gimmick a second try. Here’s another case of a film being billed as something it isn’t – I was told this was Scorsese’s “children’s film” made for all-ages as distinct from his other, more violent work. But the film is actually Scorsese’s love song to the work of early cinema pioneers like Georges Méliès, whose Voyage to the Moon plays a pivotal role in the film. Young orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in a train station with his late father’s few belongings, including a mysterious key-operated automaton. The key comes into his life around the neck of Isabelle (Chloe “Hit Girl” Moretz), leading Hugo into a brave new world populated by cinematic dreams and hope for a magical future. I don’t want to spoil many of the little delightful surprises tucked into this deceptively complex film, but beyond the remarkable ensemble cast (including Sacha Baron Cohen as the sneaky station security, Michael Stuhlbarg as film historian René Tabard, and Sir Ben Kingsley as a train station toymaker) there’s a particularly strong soundtrack offered by Howard Shore, catchy and whimsical without losing sight (or sound?) of the powerful emotions the film elicits. As a meta-reflection on the magic of the movies, Hugo doesn’t disappoint and will leave audiences wistfully and blissfully satisfied.

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

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.

Brüno (2009)

Vassup? Ich bin tempted to write zis whole review mit ze Bruno accent, but it's not as easykrugen as it bin looken. Ich am going to sprechen sie Englisch now.

Prank-umentary (have I just coined this term?) comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, one of the funniest people in Hollywood today, brings his homsexual Austrian fashionista Bruno to the big screen. In the tradition of Borat (the abbreviated title), Bruno melds interviews gone awry with scripted narrative to give us a heartwarming (maybe) story about one man's quest to be famous. Along the way he meets Paula Abdul and attempts to seduce Ron Paul (both of whom seem oblivious to the fact that they're being goofed on), adopts an African child (with an outrageous "traditional" name), confuses Hamas with hummus, and falls for his hapless assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten, who's asked to push more boundaries than Ken "Azamat" Davitian was in Borat).

It's impossible not to compare this to Borat, which as far as I'm concerned was comedic gold and possibly the funniest movie of 2006. Bruno is still very funny, but it's no Borat. For starters, Bruno places more of a premium on scripted action and gross-out sexual humor than Borat did; interview scenes and "candid camera" scenes are fewer than in Borat and often seem more contrived (an adopted African child going through baggage claim, for example). That the situations are contrived, though, isn't a total negative; some of the biggest laughs from the film come when Cohen puts himself in extremely outlandish situations - a gay deprogramming session yields perhaps the side-splittingest moment when a preacher explains why men need women (hint: surprisingly, it has nothing to do with any Biblical command). And, though Cohen does a fantastic job as Bruno, his accent slips in a few places, and he never makes the character as endearing as the naive Borat was.

Kudos to Cohen, though, for continuing to pull the wool over his "victims." After Borat, I wondered how he'd manage to go undercover again with his newfound notoriety. Chalk the film's cloaking ability to Bruno's "lesser known" status in the Cohen catalogue and to general ignorance (as well as journeying to the Ali G-less regions of the fashion world and the Middle East, here dubbed "the middle earth"), but how the heck did he fool Abdul, Paul, and a room full of CBS execs? Scripted or not, Bruno pulls off the laughs it's seeking even if it does strain a titch of credulity.

If you really have to ask, Bruno is rated "R for pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language." The real offender here is the sexual content, which pushes envelopes that Borat's nude wrestling scene only fanatasized about mailing. Though most of the offensive material is blacked out, the scenarios are as gross as is probably legal, with Bruno injecting himself into situations involving separately a pygmy airplane steward, a television show with a thick veneer of gay pornography, a swingers party with a particularly virulent dominatrix, and more than abundantly disturbing trysts with the less than attractive Lutz. This, combined with some narration about the acts that will make you chuckle more than cringe (the visuals take care of the latter for you), definitely isn't for the kids. Then again, the elderly couple sitting next to me seemed none too amused, for that matter.

Trailer Park: Bruno (2009) [Red-Band Trailer]

If there's one thing Sacha Baron Cohen does really well, it's create a character so involved, complex, and immersive that no one seems to know he's acting. Ali G and Borat are perhaps the Superman and Batman, which makes Bruno the Wonder Woman of his "big three" characters.

Bruno would like it that way. He's probably got the wonder-corset in his closet.

Cohen's mock-docs are as polarizing as Michael Bay movies - you love them or you revile them. I've been a fan since I discovered Da Ali G Show on HBO late one night, though Bruno was never really one of my favorites. The character's very esoteric, pushing lines in a way that Borat only approached; Borat never really interviewed the naive Middle Easterners he lampooned, as Bruno does with the bigwigs of the fashion industry. What's spectacular about these films isn't just the situations Cohen gets himself into and how quick on his feet he is in reacting to them, but we love seeing the reactions of people he encounters. There's plenty of this in the trailer, with Ron Paul, a (mostly) pixellated hookup, and angry audience members who are less than amused by Bruno's antics.

I like how this trailer does a similar thing to what Jackie Brown's trailers did - feature praise for the previous film (Borat, Pulp Fiction) while turning the self-applause on its head by giving us something different than what we might expect. What's for dang sure is that this one looks just as funny as Borat, redeeming in some ways the character of Bruno for me.

And I love the casual nature with which Bruno replies, "Zat is such a Samantha thing to say."

Bruno ist bin in theaters July 10.