Status: In limited release (opened 10/16/09)
Directed By: Lone Scherfig
Written By: Nick Hornby
Cinematographer: John de Borman
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, Alfred Molina
Not that the two movies have much in common besides this, but the introductory credits sequence of An Education reminded me of that of Jackie Brown. Both depict their main character, a strong and confident woman, beginning her day, with perfectly defining music playing on the soundtrack (Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street” in the latter case, Floyd Cramer’s “On the Rebound” in the former). Jenny (Carey Mulligan) of An Education is a teenage schoolgirl in 1960s London, who like many schoolgirls fancies herself mature beyond her years. She and her friends smoke cigarettes, speak what little French they’ve learned in school, and hang out in cafes while discussing how the boys their own age are oh-so uninteresting.
Lucky for Jenny, she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), who offers to give her a ride home from orchestra practice in the rain one day. David is older, but not too old, and rich and charming too. He seems innocent enough; he offers to help, shows Jenny a good time, and charms her parents into letting her spend more time with him. Her father (Alfred Molina), in particular, takes a liking to David. Previously he’d been obsessed with her getting into Oxford, but now he starts to think that maybe if she has a man like David to take care of her, Jenny doesn’t need to go to college afterall.
We don’t have a hard time seeing where David’s coming from. He’s not exactly Humbert Humbert: Jenny’s attempts to appear sophisticated and clever and charming are thoroughly successful, and a girl in her final year of secondary education is quite a different type of nymphet than the 12-year-old Lolita. That’s not to say that the relationship here feels at all appropriate—though I don’t feel too creepy for admitting that I empathized completely with David’s feelings for Jenny (Carey Mulligan is actually 24). And as an actress, Mulligan is pretty amazing. She gains our sympathy and then torments us with it quite effectively.
The tone of An Education is playful for the first two-thirds of the film, and yet there’s a stinging sensation in the back of our minds that something must be up. The story builds a subtle kind of tension that we as an audience are hardly even aware of until it becomes palpable enough to boil over. The screenplay effectively establishes this build-and-release, and it’s satisfyingly sneaky in doing so. Written by Nick Hornby, who is usually the one having his books adapted into movies (High Fidelity, About a Boy, Fever Pitch), the script here is based on a memoir
The real story of this movie, though, is Carey Mulligan, and her portrayal of Jenny. She’s the kind of girl we all knew when we were that age, the one who everybody at school talked about, whose exploits seemed a little too far-fetched to be believable, even if we knew they were true. There’s a lot of range in the spectrum of Jenny, and Mulligan is truly amazing in her ability to convey it all. An Education is highlighted by her performance, but at the same time it’s complemented with a range of characters that flesh out the story and add sufficient depth to tell Jenny’s story realistically. It’s an enjoyable little movie with a lot to offer.
Status: In theaters (opened 2/12/10)
Directed By: Joe Johnston
Written By: Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self
Cinematographer: Shelly Johnson
Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt
I suppose it’s sort of unfair to fault a remake for being unoriginal, but the bottom line with The Wolfman is basically that it feels like every other werewolf movie that’s preceded it. Maybe this is because the original—1941’s The Wolf Man— has been frequently imitated, or maybe it’s just because there’s not much that can be done with a werewolf story. The one novel attempt I can think of is the Jack Nicholson vehicle Wolf, which didn’t really work. This newest incarnation of The Wolfman is much more traditional: it takes place in the late 19th century, in England, and centers around local legends that turn out to be true. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence, the estranged son of a landowning nobleman, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins). As the movie opens, Lawrence’s brother has been found maimed to death in the woods, and he’s received a letter from his brother’s finacee (Emily Blunt) beseeching him to return home to help investigate. (Lawrence, it seems, has been in America since he was a child, which works out well for Del Toro, who happens to be able to do a serviceable American accent.)
Lawrence reconnects with his father, and finds the old man to be aloof and mysterious, to say the least. His investigation leads him to a band of gypsies. There’s always gypsies in a story like this. They know all the legends, and how to interpret them. Lawrence eventually, it should go without saying, contracts the curse. Director Joe Johnston does a good job of slowly revealing Lawrence’s werewolf persona—it’s more startling to only see him in glimpses in the dark than it is to get a fully-lit view of him, but of course eventually that must happen. And when it comes down to it, any werewolf movie is going to end up with a guy in a mask jumping around and howling at the moon, and maybe that’s why it’s hard to do much of anything unusual with them. So it goes.
Gwen (the fiancee) does some digging of her own. She finds a book—there’s always a book—that gives a quick overview of how werewolves work, and what it takes to stop them. How convenient. The local constable (Hugo Weaving, in his dominant baritone) gets in on the chase. At times the werewolf is out in the open, being chased through the streets or across the rooftops. At others, he’s lurking in the forest, and the smallest rustle elicits a nervous jump—not just from Gwen, but from the audience, too. And sometimes we’re expecting a werewolf to jump out of the shadows, but it ends up only being Sir John’s dog. When we’re most poised to be scared, it’s always the dog.
It turns out there are actually two werewolves terrorizing fair Blackmoor, and The Wolfman’s climax is the inevitable battle between them, which Megan compared—accurately, and unfavorably—to the similar point in the Wolverine movie. Guys in hairy make-up, that’s more or less all it is, no matter how accomplished the actors underneath the costumes might be (and they are), or how good the CGI transformation effects might be (and they are). And as if to compensate for this fact, a movie like this always seems to know that it needs to go a bit over the top with everything else. Here the score, by the great Danny Elfman, is even a bit overbearing, and the violent imagery is cranked up to an almost absurd level of gore. It all goes with the fun, though: The Wolfman is a movie that makes no claims to be anything other than what it is—guys in wolf suits and all.
Status: In theaters (opened 1/8/10)
Directed By: Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig
Written By: Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig
Cinematographer: Ben Nott
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Claudia Karvan, Willem Dafoe
It’s not hard to imagine what the initial spark of inspiration for Daybreakers must’ve been; there have been several releases in recent years that successfully turned the zombie-movie genre on its head in one way or another: 28 Days Later… made the zombies fast, Shaun of the Dead made them funny, I Am Legend [re]made them the majority. And for the past couple of years, vampires have been “in”—beyond the teenage girl craze of the Twilight movies and the decidedly adult guilty-pleasure craze of True Blood, there was also the very unique Let the Right One In from 2008 (a movie which, incidentally, I probably would’ve picked as the best film of that year, had I seen it prior to making my list).
So take all of these examples (and many more) together and it seems like the time should be ripe for a novel take on a vampire movie. (And in the interest of accuracy, I should mention that Daybreakers has been several years coming, though I think my reasoning above still holds when applied to its eventual theatrical release date.) The novelty in this movie—written and directed by a couple of Aussie twins known as the Spierig Brothers—is that vampires have become the majority. They’ve gone mainstream, so to speak; nearly everybody in this fictional near-future world has been “turned,” and the environment in which they live reflects it: the whole society functions at night, nobody fears death (smoking, it seems, has made a huge resurgence in popularity), and human blood is the most precious commodity. As with any alternate-reality film, learning about the specifics of Daybreakers‘ world provides for an enjoyable and intriguing first act—although I did think the Spierigs tried a little too hard to be clever on occasion. This vampire population, for instance, uses a “Subwalk” to get around during the day, leading me to wonder why they wouldn’t just take the train—it’s still underground, and thus out of the sunlight, right?
But no matter, what we’re here to learn about as Daybreakers opens is that Edward (Ethan Hawke) is a hematologist working for the premier supplier of human blood, a company called Bromley Marks. His boss is Bromley himself (Sam Neill), and everybody’s worried about the dwindling human population, and the impending blood shortage it implies. Edward begins to wonder if there might be a cure for vampirism, but Bromley doesn’t want to hear about that—harvesting and selling human blood to the vampire population has made him wealthy and powerful. Edward meets a couple of humans, Audrey (Claudia Karvan) and Elvis (Willem Dafoe), who believe they have discovered the cure he’s been looking for. And then the story is set up, and everything gets wonky.
Crucial to any story like this are the rules under which it operates, and its adherence to them. Daybreakers starts out abiding by this formula: There was some sort of plague of vampirism, which has resulted in most of the world being “turned.” Check. Such a large percentage of the population has become vampires that human blood is now in more demand than can be satisfied. Check. Vampires can turn humans into other vampires by biting them. Check. Vampires are immortal, unless they’re exposed to sunlight, or are the unlucky recipient of a wooden stake to the heart. Check and check. But then… well, it turns out that vampires who don’t consume enough blood turn into these weird-looking bat-like things. Okay, I’m willing to buy that. And, well, the sunlight doesn’t always kill them. And then there’s the way in which the cure that Dafoe’s character has discovered actually functions. To reveal the specifics would be to both spoil some of the movie’s surprises and also to demonstrate my lack of understanding of them, because frankly, it gets pretty hard to keep up with. There’s at least one twist too many, and the rules change too frequently, all for the sake of repeatedly turning the tables and catching the audience by surprise.
This is, admittedly, sort of a novel way to approach a vampire movie. The attempts at shock come not as much from scary things jumping out of the dark to startle you—though that does happen a few times—but rather from the story modifying itself as it goes in an attempt to change things up from the vampire lore we’re used to. This would all be well and good if it could just make up its mind about how the world of Daybreakers works, but it’s all so malleable that the audience can’t keep track of which rules are in effect at any given point.
It’s the kind of movie that makes you almost feel bad for the actors in it. Hawke and Neill give performances that almost feel out of place because they’re trying to take them too seriously. Willem Dafoe, on the other hand, is sufficiently over-the-top with his twangy Southern ex-vampire, in a tongue-in-cheek way that makes it hard to believe he kept a straight face when given his lines. The production value, too, is sub-par; I’ll never understand why movies at this current stage of technological development insist on using CG fire effects when it looks so damn bad, but Daybreakers can be chalked up as yet another example of one that’s fallen into this trap. There’s an over-reliance on CGI in general, in fact: one early scene involving an attempt by Hawke’s character to cure a fellow vampire went so far out of its way to use poorly incorporated graphics instead of regular old make-up effects that it took me out of the movie.
Daybreakers, basically, wants to be something it’s not. It’s a movie about vampires, but it’s not really a horror movie—it’d rather be a mystery about how this particular brand of vampirism works. And then it gets so wrapped up with that idea that it outdoes its own cleverness along the way, to the point of not actually revealing much about the mystery it began with. What’s left is a movie that has some fun and intriguing moments here and there, but doesn’t really satisfy on any front.
Status: In limited release (opened 12/16/09)
Directed By: Scott Cooper
Written By: Scott Cooper
Cinematographer: Barry Markowitz
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal
There are some stories that’re good enough to be told many times without getting old. Crazy Heart falls into this category; its story is nothing particularly novel, but it’s told well enough that we don’t mind knowing where it’s going, and more importantly, following along on its well-known path is nonetheless an enjoyable experience. Adapted from Thomas Cobb’s book of the same name
When Bad meets a beautiful music reporter who’s half his age (Maggie Gyllenhaal), he’s instantly smitten with her. She inspires him to try to improve his life. But oh, just when it’s looking like their unlikely coupling will pan out after all, he hits the proverbial rock bottom and screws up his chances with her (or does he?), and has his real awakening. His story becomes one of redemption, of finding one’s place in life after having already given up on it, of finding a purpose that had previously been lost. Sound familiar? Sure it does, but it’s a compelling story and it’s told well. We know the road Bad is headed down all too well, but we still want to see him travel it.
The primary reason for this, of course, is Jeff Bridges. He’s the kind of actor I can’t imagine anybody not loving—he was The Dude, after all. Bad Blake is quite a different character from the iconic Lebowski, but Bridges’ embodiment of him is just as defining. He not only gets to show off his acting abilities, he gets to sing, too—and can he. (You can sample this and his many other talents at his whimsical website, jeffbridges.com.) Bridges hangs it all out as Bad, and his performance, his depiction of this fully-realized character, is the movie’s main draw.
The supporting cast is equally up to the task of filling out the rest of the requisite parts. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the typical Maggie Gyllenhaal role, and she does so in her typically endearing and strong Maggie Gyllenhaal fashion. Robert Duvall, too, shows up in a role that he seems like he’s been playing a lot in recent years, but his character adds a needed dimension to the story at just the right time, and he too is typically charming. Most impressive, though, is Colin Farrell as Bad’s former protege who has now far surpassed him in popularity and success. The Irishman plays a believable Texan, a character stuck trying to reconcile his aspirations with his loyalty. There are but a few scenes between Bridges and Farrell, but they’re all pivotal ones, and they flesh out the storyline as much as do Bridges’ key scenes with Gyllenhaal. Farrell, too, gets to show off some surprisingly serviceable country-singing chops.
Scott Cooper has generally good instincts for a first-time director. He knows enough to make Bridges’ musical performances a centerpiece of his film, but he also knows not to linger too long on them. We get a sense of how Bad performs at various stages throughout the movie, and we feel like we know what it’s like to be in his audience, but we don’t become restless in our desire for the story to keep moving. It’s mostly slowly-paced, but this fits with the overall mood, which Barry Markowitz’s cinematography complements well: it utilizes the Southwestern vistas to effectively establish Bad’s lonely place in the world, while at the same time showing how that same desolation can appear beautiful once your outlook on life has changed. The overall structure of the movie, though, feels a bit awkward, mainly due to a somewhat protracted third act. It almost seems like Cooper runs out of patience after painstakingly setting up Crazy Heart’s resolution, and then rushes his way through it when it finally comes.
This is okay, though, because as I said, the story here is one we feel like we know already, and we only need a nudge to assume in which of two possible ways it’s going to play out. What gives Crazy Heart its identity, though, is its great acting performances, which are only overshadowed by its great music, by Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett. They’re the kind of songs that seem like old standards, even though they were written specifically for the film. When the great acting and the great music are combined—particularly when we get to see Jeff Bridges croon out some of these songs—it’s a film that’s hard not to get into; you can’t help but want to allow it to take you down its road.
Status: In limited release (opened 12/11/09)
Directed By: Tom Ford
Written By: Tom Ford
Cinematographer: Eduard Grau
Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore
You wouldn’t know it from the cheesy romantic comedies he usually appears in, but Colin Firth is a terrific actor. Particularly to American audiences, he tends to be billed as a Hugh Grant type—a snarky, handsome Brit who the leading lady can’t help but fall for—but in A Single Man, he gets a chance to show his real range, and he takes full advantage of the opportunity. It’s nearly a one-man show, and Firth completely commands the audience’s attention throughout.
The film takes place in the 1960s, and Firth’s character, George, is an affluent college professor who happens to be homosexual. As the story opens, we learn that he has recently lost his long-time partner in a car crash, and his attempts to cope with this loss form the crux of the film’s arc. His flimsy support system consists of his neighbors (Ginnifer Goodwin among them), with whom he has a casual yet uneasy relationship, and his long-time friend Charley (the always-great Julianne Moore). The majority of his coping is done in private, though, and it’s really amazing how much Firth conveys with little more than changing facial expressions and subtly-delivered dialogue.
A Single Man is based on a book
Ford’s adaptation does an artful job of conveying George’s troubled emotions, though he does get a little carried away at times. There’s a water metaphor that is repeated throughout the film, and it’s mostly effective until it’s used one time too many. More subtle—and more effective—is Eduard Grau’s cinematography, which matches and complements George’s changing moods admirably, most notably by increasingly washing out the color saturation of the film as George contemplates and gets closer to suicide, and in contrast by turning everything bright and vibrant when he decides that he wants to live. There’re similar effects employed to help distinguish between George’s painful memories (bland and dim) with the times when he’s happy in the present (bright and colorful), such as in a pivotal scene with Charley where they reflect upon their lives and their failed attempts at finding happiness. The most effective device Ford uses, though, is to depict gays in general, and George in particular, as invisible, going not only disrespected but flat out unnoticed by their fellow citizens.
All of this works because of Firth’s performance, which runs the gamut of the emotional spectrum and conveys not just conflicted feelings and inner turmoil but a full realization of a human being with whom we can empathize. Following my above description of the film you might not believe me if I told you it was uplifting and joyful at times, but it is, and these moments counterpoint those of despair and gloom effectively. I think my favorite scene, though, was a pained phone call, where Firth tells his character’s entire story without uttering a word. It’s moving and difficult to sit through, so strong is its impact. Firth has been nominated for an Oscar for this role, and it’s quite well-deserved. More than just a showpiece for this performance, though—great and impressive though it is—A Single Man is a resonant tale told by a filmmaker on a mission to engage his audience while getting his point across, and Tom Ford does so quite effectively. This is one of those small movies that may be hard to find in your local listings, but it’s worth making the effort to seek it out.
Status: In theaters (opened 12/25/09)
Directed By: Guy Ritchie
Written By: Michael Robert Johnson and Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg
Cinematographer: Philippe Rousselot
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong
Pre-Sold Franchises—that’s what Hollywood execs call a movie that’s based on an existing property. The thinking goes that by securing the rights to an already well-known setting with familiar characters, they can be virtually guaranteed a certain number of butts in the seats. Sequels, remakes, reboots, and adaptations all fit into this category, and are generally considered a safe investment of production dollars. Sherlock Holmes is Guy Ritchie’s chance to tackle a pre-sold franchise, offering him the opportunity to bring 100-plus-year-old characters to new life with his frenetic filmmaking style. It’s sort of a period version of Snatch., but the results are a thoroughly enjoyable film with surprisingly broad appeal.
The take on Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) by Ritchie and his screenwriters is one that assumes we’re already familiar with the character and his ever-present sidekick Dr. Watson (Jude Law), and enjoys playing with that fact. We don’t get the ever-present pipe, but we do see it on infrequent occasions. Ditto for the trademark hat, toned down here and joked about via direct reference in the introductory scene, as if the screenplay is saying, “Okay, let’s just acknowledge this up front so that the cliches don’t get in the way of the fun we’re about to have.” And so it goes. The plot involves an evil master of the occult named Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) who plans to take over late-19th-century London, and Holmes’ attempt to stop him and bring him to justice. Along the way, the detective’s long-lost love (Rachel McAdams) shows up and becomes involved in the story as well. It’s a classic-style detective tale, one that’s believably rooted in the 1800s and yet somehow still lets you know that it knows that you’re watching it in the 2000s.
Ritchie’s stylistic flair is present here, though it’s more toned down than in some of his previous films, presumably to lower the barrier to entry and capture the attention of all of those pre-sold audience members. He allows for a couple of storytelling devices that embellish the straightforward storyline in creative ways, the most prominent and most enjoyable being his onscreen depiction of Holmes’ analytic mind. Just as the action gets going, we see it in slow motion, as Holmes imagines things playing out while planning his moves and thinking the sequence through in his characteristic level of detail. We then go back to the start and see things occur in realtime, witnessing the fruits of Holmes’ mental labor as the set piece unfolds. This is slightly confusing the first time it’s used, but by the film’s climax Ritchie has done an effective job of acclimating the audience to the technique, and it serves to pull you into the action in an impressively sympathetic manner; we not only root for Holmes, we follow his train of thought in intimate detail and get to feel like we’re in on his rapid-fire planning as well.
Downey’s Sherlock is about what you’d expect: humorously self-deprecating and yet cocky at the same time. He’s professionally insecure, though he’d never admit it, and his demeanor with women is likewise more outwardly self-assured than his track record would indicate. Law plays Watson as the stick-in-the-mud realist who can’t help but get caught up in his associate’s adventure. They’re counter-pointed by the larger-than-life Blackwood, who is of a singular mindset and a singular evilness, though Strong’s depiction avoids going too over the top. And Rachel McAdams makes for a good damsel with an agenda of her own—we’d expect no less from a twisty-turny mystery.
Though the cast is great, and it’s hard to imagine Robert Downey ever taking a back seat, the real star of Sherlock Holmes might be its set design and special effects. Although some of the dialogue and details of the plot have a bit of a winkingly anachronistic bent, the world in which the film is set is an incredible recreation of 1891 London. Most impressive is London’s Tower Bridge, still under construction, which looms in the backgrounds and provides a constant presence before serving as the setting for the film’s climactic showdown. There’s also an incredible scene in a massive ship factory, with seamless CG effects that are on par with anything Avatar has to offer. The ship, and what happens to it, reminded me also of a scene involving a plane in the first act of Knowing, another film from 2009 that had effects so good they seem to have been overlooked.
You know what you’re getting going into Sherlock Holmes, and you also know you’re in for a few surprises. The plot has twists and clever bits of detective work, as expected, but what we haven’t seen before is Holmes being involved in this particular brand of fun. Downey is almost snickering throughout the movie, and we are too because Ritchie lets us in on the joke. We know we’re watching a Sherlock Holmes movie, and we mostly know what that entails, but it’s the additional touches that give it a style of its own beyond the prerequisites. It’s a sit-back-and-enjoy movie, and enjoyable it is.
I’ve gotten behind with reviews again, so I’ve got a few to catch up on so that I can get to the all-important best-of-the-year and best-of-the-decade recaps, for which I’m sure there is considerable demand.
Status: In limited release (opened 11/25/09)
Directed By: John Hillcoat
Written By: Joe Penhall
Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee
There have been some great examples of pitch-perfect adaptations lately: in 2009, we had Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, and in 2007 we had the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece No Country For Old Men. The latter has particular relevance to John Hillcoat’s The Road, as they are both based on books by Cormac McCarthy. And where the film version of The Road falters—which it does, though infrequently—it’s in the cases where it eschews the model established by the Coens in their matter-of-fact earlier adaptation. The poster I’ve selected at left is a good example; it proclaims that In a Moment, The World Changed Forever, and if you’ve read McCarthy’s novel
What it is about is survival, and it’s pretty narrowly focused on it. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, though the specifics of the apocalypse are never described and are never shown, other than a few brief flashbacks of how it affected one family. The world in which The Road takes place is post-apocalyptic because it just is, not unlike how Anton Chigurh in No Country is evil just because he’s evil, without explanation or rumination on the hows and the whys of it. This, to me, is the most effective aspect of McCarthy’s writing; his tales focus on emotions and primal instincts, and often on the potential for darkness in men’s souls, but they do so without commentary on these matters, preferring to accept them as facts of the world that must be dealt with and don’t necessarily demand further explanation than that. (His gimmicky lack of punctuation, on the other hand, only serves to annoy me… but I’ll digress because that’s outside the scope of my topic here.)
The film, as the book, is about an unnamed Man and his Boy—the always-reliable Viggo Mortensen and the impressive young Kodi Smit-McPhee, respectively—as they travel through a barren gray wasteland. They collect and hoard food and supplies as they find them, carrying all of their possessions in a cart that they push along as they go, convinced that if they could only reach the shore, they’d find something worth surviving for. Along the way, they encounter a few other survivors, all of whom are depicted by impressively heartfelt cameo appearances; Robert Duvall’s and Michael Kenneth Williams‘ performances particularly resonate. There’s also Charlize Theron, who shows up in the infrequent aforementioned flashbacks, and provides an extra bit of emotional strife to an already-gloomy story.
That ever-present gloom, I think, is the biggest thing holding The Road back. It’s about a father who loves and wants to protect his son at all costs, yes, but more than that it’s about a world without hope, and it does almost nothing to make a case in defense of hope, or even to suggest that hope is a thing worth having. It’s bleak from its first frame to its last, with little respite from the singularity of its emotional impact. It has very little—if any—”arc.” It’s effective at conveying this gloom, though, thanks to the thoroughly heart-wrenching performances from its two leads, but also thanks to some really impressive special effects. They’re the kind that create a believable world and thrust you into it without ever drawing attention to themselves to take you out of it.
Joe Penhall’s screenplay does a good job of conveying the tone of Cormac McCarthy’s book, and is at its best when it remains true to its source material. It commits the all-too-common sin, though, of literalizing subtle thematic elements from the novel, the most glaring being a motif about “carrying the fire” (you’ll see what I mean). Overall, though, this is a respectable adaptation, in line with those previous greats I mentioned at the start of this review. The Road isn’t quite good enough to stand beside Watchmen or No Country, though, but it’s not the fault of the adaptation process for the most part. Rather, the story itself that this movie is based upon simply isn’t one that lends itself particularly well to a film adaptation in the first place (and again, I’ll restrain myself from getting into my opinions of how it works as a book to begin with). It effectively conveys sadness, but without much of a discernible message or point to be made behind it. What it does it does fairly well, though; it’s just that what it does isn’t something I think most audiences would be particularly drawn to.
Status: In theaters (opened 12/18/09)
Directed By: James Cameron
Written By: James Cameron
Cinematographer: Mauro Fiore
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang
You wouldn’t have a very hard time convincing me that Avatar was not, in fact, actually written and directed by James Cameron, but rather by an ambitious fan of his previous films. That fan remembers the highlights, but he doesn’t remember what made them highlights in the first place. He remembers some of the sharp dialogue, but hasn’t the writing ability to equal it, so he sticks with cliches from other movies he’s seen. He knows the basic pieces and characters of your typical action movie, but he doesn’t want to bother with having to explain how they all fit together; better to just throw everything you can think of onto the screen and assume the audience will kind of get what you were going for, since they’ve seen it so many times before.
That old piece of Ebert wisdom to which I often refer applies to Avatar as much as any other movie I can think of: it knows the music, but not the words. I have a pretty hard time believing that this was Cameron’s Chinese Democracy; it doesn’t seem at all like a story he felt compelled to tell, spending over a decade slaving over its details in order to bring his vision to life. Rather, it feels like a showcase for a couple of technological advancements he wanted to force into happening, and just as was the case when George Lucas tried such a feat, the result is a movie that feels half-assed in its conception, with special effects being the main—and only—draw. It seems only right that I discuss the visuals before even bothering with a story synopsis, as it’s clear that’s how Cameron approached the film himself.
Due to some scheduling confusion, when I saw Avatar on its opening day, it was the non-3D version. And as much as the thought of having to sit through its two-and-a-half-hour-plus running time made me wince, I felt like I couldn’t really comment on it unless I’d gotten the full experience, so I went and saw it again two days later. Besides, as someone who’s interested in the technology of film as much as I am the art of it (and who sees the two as being intimately connected), I felt like I had to see what “the future of movies” looked like. I’m glad I did; it earned the movie a full additional star from me. My earlier skepticism was only half founded: while the flim’s plot and story-telling devices are certainly nothing special (and, in fact, they’re considerably below par), the 3D technology employed for its production really is ground-breaking. Whereas previous 3D movies I’ve seen (Coraline, Up, A Christmas Carol—all of which were completely animated) liked to use the effect primarily as a gimmick (although, as CK pointed out, Up was the most measured such use), in Avatar it is an integral part of the film itself. Previous 3D offerings have mostly relied on creating distinct planes of depth, with the occasional object sticking out of the screen into the audience (the “woah, look out, it’s coming at you!” effect), and I’ve largely agreed with Ebert’s assessment of such technology. The 3D effect of Avatar, however, is almost completely continuous; it’s not used so much to selectively make things pop out of the screen, but rather to add depth to everything you’re seeing, making it feel like an actual world. It really does immerse the viewer in the movie, and it’s for that reason that my second viewing was much more enjoyable than my first. Seeing this movie in 2D, you’re aware of the fact that several shots are framed so as to provide maximum perceived depth for the viewer, but since you’re not getting the effect it feels hokey and distracting. In 3D, though, such shots effectively convey the scope of the world in which the film takes place, while adding to the audience’s sympathy with the characters as well.
That’s not to say that it’s flawless. This is a significant landmark in the development of this recent iteration of 3D movies, but it’s not the final product. They still haven’t figured out how to keep things looking right when they’re at the edges of the frame, especially those that you perceive as sticking out of the screen. Motion can also be awkward at times, making things blurry in a way that seems to “pull apart” the stereoscopic images, which is really distracting. This is most pronounced when the camera is panning and objects come into and out of the frame as it does so. (Note: I’m not sure if this only happens with my eyes, or everybody’s, but until the technology is advanced enough that it is effective for every audience member all the time, it still has some ways to go.) Seeing this movie in 3D, nonetheless, is a very impressive experience, and while I don’t know if it’s as “revolutionary” as the advertising would like you to believe, it’s certainly a very significant evolutionary step of this technology.
It’s a good thing, too, because if it weren’t for such technological achievements, Avatar would be a pretty awful movie. The plot is paper-thin and ill-conceived, the characters are bland and clichéd, and the dialogue is so bad it made me cringe on multiple occasions. This is probably James Cameron’s poorest screenplay (even counting Titanic), but as I said, it’s obvious that he wasn’t really concerned with the script in the first place. It takes place about 150 years from now, and humans are trying to mine a material called “unobtanium” (yes, that’s really what they call it) from the planet Pandora. It’s pretty strange how little people have changed in those 150 years; they still smoke cigarettes, for instance, and gun technology hasn’t advance much except that they’ve gotten a little bigger. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is an ex-Marine who signs on to control an avatar, which is a body of a native Pandoran—a Na’vi—that he operates while in a sort of trance (and when his avatar sleeps, that’s when he wakes up). He’s sent to befriend the Na’vi, in order to convince them to leave their home so that the company he works for can access all of that precious—and ridiculously valuable—unobtanium that’s to be found under the tree in which they live. He keeps a video log, which conveniently serves as the film’s narration. Worthington is respectable for the most part in this role, although he’s asked to act the fool on several occasions, and he sometimes forgets to speak with an American accent (as was also the case in Terminator Salvation).
Dunbar—er, Sully—takes to the Na’vi culture quite well, and gains their trust. He of course falls in love with one of them, the huntress Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who also serves as his (and our) tour guide to Pandora and the Na’vi society. That society is basically a half-hearted amalgamation of Native American stereotypes; the Na’vi are in tune with their planet (which they call “Mother”), spiritual people who are guided by a shaman, nature-warriors who fight with bows and arrows and whoop and ululate, who feel remorse for the lives they take in order to feed themselves, and who share a very literal bond with the animals they ride. The out-of-control Colonel (Stephen Lang) calls them savages and wants only to annihilate them (without much purpose, I might add—the “unobtanium” provides only the thinnest of excuses for the majority of the film’s action). He does his best impression of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, mixed with every other stereotypical, generic military leader. In fact, pretty much every character in Avatar is either a clichéd stereotype, a blatant rip-off of a character from a more original film, or both. The dialogue is equally uninspired, the jokes falling flat and the attempts at earnestness coming across as unintentionally funny. The worst such examples are the multiple instances of Worthington’s avatar character raising his fist triumphantly and shouting the most un-heartfelt “YEAH!” you’ve ever heard. It’s impossible to even attempt to take seriously.
I usually don’t make out-and-out recommendations for movies, preferring instead to describe my personal assessments of them and leaving it to the reader to decide if he or she agrees with them or not. For Avatar, though, it’s pretty straightforward: if you’re interested in the special effects, particularly the 3D cinematography—both as an exhibition of the current state-of-the-art, as well as an indicator of the direction in which the technology is headed—then you owe it to yourself to see it, and to see it on the big screen. The spectacle will be good enough that the film’s other shortcomings—which is pretty much every other aspect—can be overlooked. Don’t bother seeing it in 2D, though, because in that format you’re forced to focus on the storytelling, which leaves a lot to be desired (not to mention you’ll also be distracted by the obviously made-for-3D components). Personally, I’m kind of glad, in retrospect, that I saw both versions; it was a pretty eye-opening experience.
Status: In theaters (opened 12/4/09)
Directed By: Jim Sheridan
Written By: David Benioff
Cinematographer: Frederick Elmes
Starring: Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire
In my review of The Hurt Locker, I gushed about how it produces an effective take on modern-day wars by making them personal and compelling its audience to sympathize with the soldiers who fight in them. Brothers takes a similar tack, but its focus is much narrower, and as a result we don’t come away feeling like we’ve learned much of anything about the bigger picture. Like The Hurt Locker, it is apolitical in its view of the war (which in this case is in Afghanistan, rather than Iraq). Its aim is not to provide a commentary on war itself, or any war in particular, but rather to evoke an emotional response to war in general and what it does to the people involved.
As the title makes obvious, it’s about a pair of brothers. The younger one, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a ne’er-do-well bad boy who has just been released from prison after serving time for armed robbery. Sam, the older brother (Tobey Maguire), is a Marine who gets deployed to Afghanistan, and is believed to have been killed—and in order to talk about this film at all, I have to reveal that he actually isn’t. He’s captured and presumed dead, and just when his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) is beginning to cope with the loss of her husband—thanks to the help of Tommy—Sam gets rescued and returned home. Thoroughly traumatized by his ordeal, he has a hard time re-acclimating himself to the family life, which is complicated by his suspicions that his brother and his wife have gotten a little too close in his absence.
The screenplay by David Benioff, adapted from the Danish film Brødre, is the kind of writing that you feel is just jerking you around most of the time. When Sam returns home, it’s never made clear what kind of a relationship with his wife he has, as important a detail as this may seem. Do they resume sleeping together immediately? What does he do to re-insert himself into his children’s lives? He’s suspicious of his brother, in particular the role Tommy has taken on in helping out with his daughters and providing companionship for Grace, but the details are only explored by side effect. There’s a brief scene showing that he’s now uncomfortable with his wife seeing his body, scrawny and wounded as it now is, and that’s about it until things come to a head, leaving us to infer the specifics along the way.
The dialogue is also a bit over-dramatic, but the three leads are good enough to keep it respectable. While Tobey Maguire will get all of the attention for pulling the inverse Raging Bull and shedding a ton of weight between his early scenes and his later ones, I actually thought Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal did more to keep the film grounded. There’s a joke (popularized by Tropic Thunder) that playing a retarded person is a surefire way to secure an Oscar nomination, and I think drastic weight gain or loss is in that same category, but Maguire really does an impressive job with his character’s metamorphosis. His costars are even more impressive, though, for the more subtle transitions their characters go through, which are really the highlight of the film.
I may be wrong about one thing: when Sam gets back from Afghanistan, the townspeople repeatedly refer to him as a war hero in a manner that I took to be a bit derogatory (their characters are sincere in saying it, but I found myself wondering exactly what it was he’d done that was so hero-like—you’ll see what I mean—which, actually, may have been the film’s intention after all). Nonetheless, the primary focus of Brothers is on two young men whose lives are moving in opposite directions, and the woman who comes between them. As a film about a love triangle, it’s actually quite tame, and the strong leading cast is really all it’s got going for it, but they are good enough to keep things somewhat interesting.
Status: In limited release (opened 12/4/09); opens wide 12/25/09
Directed By: Jason Reitman
Written By: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
Cinematographer: Eric Steelberg
Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman
Fewer men have accumulated 10 million American Airlines frequent-flyer miles than have walked on the moon. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) wants to become one of that elite group. His profession dictates that he travel almost constantly. He lives out of a carry-on-sized suitcase, staying in a different hotel room every night. He has a side gig doing speaking engagements, where he extols the virtues of a life lived in isolation, free of the metaphorical baggage of possessions and relationships that so many of us carry. He practices what he preaches. To reach the 10-million mile mark requires flying a shade under 350,000 miles per year for 30 years, and he’s dead set on achieving that. When his boss (Jason Bateman) requires him to return to his company’s office in Omaha, where he keeps a studio apartment that’s even less inviting than the hotel rooms he typically stays in, it puts a cramp in his schedule. Even having a tryst with a fellow travel junky, the beautiful Alex (Vera Farmiga), doesn’t dissuade him: instead of altering their travel plans, they compare schedules and look forward to the next time they’ll happen to be in the same city.
Up in the Air is a double entendre of a title for Jason Reitman’s new film: literally, it’s about a guy who flies a lot, but figuratively, Ryan Bingham’s place in the world—and his outlook of it—is undecided, particularly in terms of what he’s looking for in a relationship. (The film’s poster refers to “a man ready to make a connection.”) His company hires a young hotshot, a recent college graduate named Natalie (Anna Kendrick), with some new ideas about how they should run things. To prove that she’s wrong, Ryan takes Natalie on the road with him, to demonstrate for her the disconnect between her theories and the real world. Reitman and co-writer Sheldon Turner’s script is careful to avoid the cliches of the mentor/mentee relationship, although as is always the case in situations such as these, it is inevitable that they both end up learning a bit from each other over the course of their journey. What it’s really about, though, is what they learn about themselves.
I’m being intentionally vague about the details of the story here, because I really think that Up in the Air is the kind of film that you should go into cold and just let it unfold in front of you without knowing where it’s headed. (Even mentioning the 10 million-mile number might be considered a bit of a “spoiler,” albeit not a very big one.) What I can tell you is that it’s an engaging story, one that is extremely well-told, and a film that’s very well-made. It’s shot non-obtrusively by Eric Steelberg, allowing the character performances—which are without a doubt the main draw—to be showcased, but there are a few nice artistic touches thrown in as well (I particularly liked a recurring motif of introductory aerial shots of the various cities Ryan travels to). The editing, too, by Dana Glauberman, is a terrific balance of restraint and the occasional stylistic indulgence—montages of the people Ryan encounters in his travels, and rapid-fire sequences showing how he packs. It all fits an overarching tone of methodical adherence to routine, which gets disrupted when Ryan begins to change his mind about the way he lives his life.
George Clooney is as good as always, embodying his always-perfect balance of winking confidence, cockiness, subtle humor, and emotional vulnerability. He’s matched step-for-step by Vera Farmiga, and watching the two play off of each other is a true cinematic pleasure. There’s a climactic scene near the end where the two actors’ facial expressions tell an entire story all by themselves. (As an aside, I can’t decide whether the makeup and costuming in The Departed did a great job of making Farmiga look younger than she is, or if those of Up in the Air did an equally good job of making her look older, or both, but I think I’m tending to believe that she’s just such a good actress that it’s due to her skill more than anything. My perception of the age of her characters in the two films is that there’s at least a decade between them, and I find that really impressive.)
The supporting cast is also quite good. Most of them are tasked with conveying some serious emotions on screen, and by and large they do so in a way that feels real without getting too cheesy or forced. Jason Reitman, I think, is one of those directors who a lot of people want to work with, and as a result there are actors in Up in the Air’s smaller supporting roles who are used to a lot more screen time (J.K. Simmons, Zach Galifianakis), but they pour themselves into their roles here just as well as they would otherwise. Most impressive, though—and most surprising—is Danny McBride, who I normally view as an annoying buffoon whenever he shows up in a film, but here Reitman reins him in, and he gives a whole-hearted performance that is central to making the movie’s emotional weight work.
Up in the Air is one of those films that has something for everybody. It’s equal parts funny, witty, insightful, heart-wrenching, and touching. Its themes are both very timely—the poor economy, the urge to downsize, the endless march of technology at the expense of traditional “people” jobs—and simultaneously timeless—do we need close relationships with other humans in order to flourish in our own lives? What does it mean to spend time with somebody, or to be intimate with them, if you believe that nothing will ever come of it? Its exploration of these themes is handled maturely, and yet it isn’t so self-serious that it becomes bogged down by them, making for a thoroughly entertaining film that has a few points to make along the way, and does so effectively.
