REVIEW: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011): Dir. Stephen Daldry. Written by: Eric Roth. Starring: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Caldwell. Rated PG-13 (Intense emotional themes but nothing offensive). Running time: 129 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The images of 9/11 are indisputably among the most indelible and powerful of our time. They hardly need any assistance to have an emotional impact. Indeed, when some additional effect does accompany them – a soft glow around the edge of the frame, slow motion, dramatic music – like in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a mopey melodrama directed by Stephen Daldry, they actually cushion the images and dampen their impact. The harrowing, indescribable feelings of those individuals who lived through that day are transformed into more familiar, more digestible shades of sadness, which allow us to leave the theater feeling an undue sense of catharsis and resolution.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a Very Serious movie about a Very Serious subject. Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) lost his father, Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks), in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a day young Oskar refers to as “The Worst Day.” We see their impossibly heartwarming father-son relationship through flashbacks and Thomas Schell is a clear frontrunner for Father of the Year. (Oskar even refers to him as “the greatest father in the world” late in the film.)

When he was alive, Thomas played a game with his son they called, “Reconnaissance Expedition,” which involves Oskar searching about the city for clues to riddles his father has created for him. In order to solve the riddles, he must wander around Central Park, retrieving artifacts and talking to strangers. The film’s image of New York City is an overwhelmingly and unrealistically friendly one. (For every grumpy person that tells Oskar to kiss off and go away, there are ten who welcome him with open arms and provide him with a genuine life experience, a proportion I would argue is closer to its inverse in reality, but whatever.) Even the homeless are pretty cheerful.

One such riddle, which is left unsolved at the time of his father’s death, has Oskar looking for a mysterious sixth borough of New York. After the Worst Day, the project is forgotten until a year later when Oskar discovers a new clue: an envelope marked “Black” hidden inside a blue vase in his father’s closet. Inside the envelope is a key. What does the key open? Does the key signify a new Reconnaissance Expedition? Or is it meant to help Oskar discover what and where the sixth borough was?

Oskar takes a shot in the dark and (correctly) assumes the key belongs to someone with the last name Black. He sets out to talk to everyone in New York City named Black – there are over 400 in the phone book, never mind the unlisted ones – and ask them if they knew his father. Along the way he meets a kind woman (Viola Davis) and her ex-husband (Jeffrey Wright), jokes with his building’s doorman (John Goodman) and strikes up a friendship with the mute, old man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell). Oskar’s mother (Sandra Bullock), an emotionally vacant woman following the Worst Day, pays disturbingly little attention to where her son goes all day long. A last minute twist tries to paint her as Mother of the Year, but I didn’t buy it.

Oskar is a certain breed of movie child, remarkably insightful and poignant at all the right moments. He is the kind of child who at times acts strikingly like an adult but then falls back on childish emotions, usually when convenient for the plot. Newcomer Thomas Horn, a very articulate and talented young actor, was apparently discovered on Jeopardy’s Kids Week, which should give you an idea of the type of kid he is. In the film, Oskar explains he was tested for Asperger’s syndrome but that the tests were not definitive. The film is less ambiguous and portrays Oskar quite clearly as having the disorder. He is a mathematical thinker, able to create complex organizational systems but is also prone to emotional fits and social anxiety.

Mr. Horn’s performance is impressive and I do not doubt that it is an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s syndrome. As the story’s protagonist though, is Oskar maybe too precocious? I want to tread lightly here because I do not wish to be insensitive but I wonder, does director Stephen Daldry occasionally manipulate Oskar’s condition to increase the film’s weepy quotient? When Oskar monologues about the chaotic nature of the world around him, is the film using the boy’s power of articulation to further drain our tear ducts? Would a less cogent child have the same emotional impact?

Mr. Daldry is not an untalented director and he creates a number of lovely, small moments with his characters. The way Oskar hides under the bed and scratches at the floor on the Worst Day. The gentle kidding of a father who never condescends to his son. Unfortunately, he is not as adept in working the larger mechanisms of the story. The film is too long and its pace dwindles to a crawl in its midsection.

I was also disappointed to find that the driving forces of the film – the riddle Oskar’s father left him, the significance of the key – are not satisfyingly resolved and the film mostly shrugs them off as serendipitous necessities of the plot. Of course, in a film like this, the destination is less important than the journey. I’m not sure the journey is much more meaningful though. The movie dispenses some vague lessons about the beauty of life but nothing that warrants evoking the images of the smoke billowing from the Twin Towers or the Falling Man. There is no need for us to shy away from these images but it is imperative that we do not misuse them either.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/30/12

REVIEW: Red Tails

Red Tails (2012): Dir. Anthony Hemingway. Written by: John Ridley and Aaron McGruder. Story by: John Ridley. Starring: Nate Parker, Davi Oyelowo, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Daniela Ruah and Bryan Cranston. Rated PG-13 (Aerial battles and explosions). Running time: 121 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Red Tails is an unabashedly corny war movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of black fighter pilots who fought in WWII. In it, American soldiers shout things like, “Take that, Mr. Hitler!” and the Nazis are limited to snarling, “Show no mercy!” from their cockpit, translated for our benefit with subtitles. What makes Red Tails appealing is how unshakably positive it is. That is not to say the film downplays the racial tension of the time – this is a central focus – but rather that the film is not interested in depicting these prejudices as merely oppressive. The movie is about a group of black soldiers who ignore what the white higher-ups were saying about them and became American heroes.

Red Tails was produced by George Lucas, who also financed the film out of his own pocket. If the dogfights sometimes remind you of Luke Skywalker’s scuffles with Imperial Tie Fighters, that is only because Star Wars was influenced by WWII movies of the 40s and 50s, the same films that Red Tails emulates. (An early cut of Star Wars is even said to have used clips of aerial battles from these films in place of unfinished special effects.) This film pays homage to that part of cinematic and American history, even retaining those films’ plucky innocence. I say innocence. Others might say naiveté and others still will call it childishness. Regardless of how you label it, the effect is the same: giddily exciting heroism.

The Tuskegee Airmen were real people and are fictionalized here as a thoroughly likable bunch. There is Martin “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker), their stoic flight leader whose drinking habit is the only blemish on his impeccable character. His best pal, Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oyelowo), is a showboat, always going for the glory even when his orders dictate otherwise. The rest are known primarily by their nicknames painted on the sides of their planes: Junior (Tristan Wilds), Joker (Elijah Kelley), Neon (Kevin Phillips). For the most part, you can guess their personalities by their nicknames. Cuba Gooding Jr. also costars as the Major on base.

The soldiers kid around on the ground and we learn a bit about their lives and friendships but not a whole lot. The character accorded the most non-fighting scenes is Lightning, whose blossoming relationship with a young, Italian woman (Daniela Ruah) in a nearby town is sweet and quietly romantic in an old Hollywood sort of way. (Again, you may substitute these adjectives with “insipid” or “trite” if you are feeling cynical.)

The true heart of Red Tails, however, is in the sky. The dogfights are fast-paced and energetic, and I enjoyed the way the characters’ personalities effect how the battles play out. When Easy commands his boys to attack a German train, he orders them to swoop in from the side but Lightning stubbornly disagrees. He wants to shoot at it head on. Just how reckless this is is difficult to visualize until you see him do it.

One of the most interesting threads in Red Tails features Terrence Howard as a Colonel who meets with an all-white group of military officials in Washington to discuss the progress of what one of these men (Bryan Cranston) calls to as an “experiment.” He refers to Tuskegee Airmen when he says this. The U.S. government at the time was skeptical that black soldiers would be as effective in battle as white soldiers. One published study (excerpted in on-screen text before the first scene) finds that the inferior skills and cowardice of black men make them unreliable in war.

Mr. Howard, with characteristic poise and composure, denies the validity of these offensive claims. He must give half a dozen speeches in this film, either in defense of the Tuskegee Airmen or to inspire them, and man, what a great speaker he is. When he talks, you listen.

And the Tuskegee Airmen, they can fight. Red Tails, which was written by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder, and directed by Anthony Hemingway, is often cheesy and clichéd. There is nothing cheesy about the heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen though and George Lucas and Co. pay tribute to them not with gritty realism or brutal violence but with a dashing, old-fashioned, action picture. And why not? Red Tails turns back the clock to 1944 and gives these men the movie they never got back then.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/27/12

REVIEW: The Artist

The Artist (2011): Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller. Rated PG-13 (Nothing offensive). Running time: 100 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The sudden rise of talkies in the late 1920s causes trouble for the career of a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) in The Artist, an awfully cute exercise in nostalgia written and directed by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius. In loving homage to the silent era, The Artist itself is a silent film complete with a whimsical score by Ludovic Bource on the soundtrack and title cards that pop up onscreen with dialogue. Unfortunately, this clever premise amounts to little more than a gimmick. There is not enough story to sustain the film’s 100 minutes and this playful tribute wears its welcome.

Exiting the theater after his latest film’s premiere, George Valentin (Dujardin) poses for the cameras. A fan (Bérénice Bejo) drops her purse at his feet and Valentin, the flirt that he is, takes the opportunity to ham it up even more for the papers. He grabs hold of her and she – Peppy Miller is her name – even plants a kiss on the actor’s cheek. The cameramen go nuts for this and pictures of the impromptu smooch are on the front page of every newspaper. Mr. Hazanavicius delights in depicting a pre-paparazzi Hollywood when the press only took flattering pictures of celebrities.

Taking full advantage of her fifteen minutes of fame, Peppy Miller charms her way into a bit part in George Valentin’s new movie that is currently shooting in a Hollywood backlot. She and Valentin flirt onset but Valentin is unhappily married to an icy woman (Penelope Ann Miller) and in this rose-colored view of 1927, infidelity is not an option. So the fling fizzles before it begins and the two move on.

Flash-forward to a few years later: The talkie has arrived and the studio head (a cigar chomping John Goodman) informs Valentin that he will have to transition to the new medium if he wants to remain a star. Valentin is outraged. Silent film is not dead, he says. And to prove it he will finance and star in his own film. The movie, an adventure picture, bankrupts Valentin and he becomes depressed. The advent of sound is great news to Peppy Miller, though. The young actress’s name now fills the marquees and audiences line up around the block to buy tickets to the latest Peppy Miller romance.

Valentin meanwhile drowns his sorrows in booze. His only friends are his dog (Uggie, the Jack Russell) and his driver (James Cromwell). Here, the film gets bogged down with redundant scenes of Valentin moping about unemployed and it becomes clear that Mr. Hazanavicius is stalling for time. Scenes drag on longer than they need to and a number of scenes could have been cut entirely. He clearly has a love for old Hollywood and diligently recreates the visual style of a silent film but when he begins padding his story, the retro-conceit loses its charm.

There are a few self-conscious winks aimed at modern audiences – one character flips the bird and a few shots feature visual flourishes that would have been too technically sophisticated at the turn of the century – and often the whole film feels as though it is winking and smiling at you. But The Artist lacks energy. What should have been a lively celebration of Hollywood’s past grows tedious and repetitive. There is so much potential here for Mr. Hazanavicius to pay tribute to the many genres of the silent era but he curiously limits himself to an underdeveloped story that cannot support a feature-length film. Instead of giving us a dozen scenes of Valentin wallowing in his misery, why not fill that time with more lively material, like a dance number? (The movie does end with a tap dance but it’s too little, too late.)

The Artist does have one truly astounding scene: a dream sequence that comes after Valentin learns his studio will no longer produce silent films. As he sits in his dressing room, the world suddenly starts making noise. His footsteps are audible on the wooden floor. Cars are heard out the window. The dog barks. But when Valentin opens his mouth to speak – nothing. He screams but no sound comes out. Its an arresting moment but occurs early in the film and nothing that follows matches its ingenuity. The Artist is a nice idea but simply cannot sustain itself beyond a handful of clever scenes.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/22/12

REVIEW: Carnage

Carnage (2011): Dir. Roman Polanski. Written by: Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza, based on the play "God of Carnage" by Yasmina Reza. Starring: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Rated R (Language). Running time: 79 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

In Carnage, a new film directed by Roman Polanski and based on a play by Yasmina Reza, two couples meet in an apartment to discuss an incident involving their sons, Zachary and Ethan. Zachary hit Ethan with a stick in the playground and now Ethan needs surgery to replace two missing teeth. But there is no need for these four adults to get embroiled in their sons’ feud, they say. They’re bigger than that. Ethan’s parents (played by Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) invite Zachary’s (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) over their apartment to have a civilized conversation about how to proceed. The central irony of Carnage is that the parents are no better than their children. Indeed, they may be much, much worse.

Over the course of their conversation, tensions escalate and their talk moves away from cordialities and into a heated debate that touches on their marriages, parenting styles and the specific handling of a situation involving a hamster. Mostly though, the couples verbally tear each other apart until everyone is thoroughly miserable.

This potentially tedious premise is actually a lot of fun thanks largely to the actors, who dig into the material with great zeal. The script, written by Mr. Polanski and Ms. Reza, sometimes labors too hard to keep its characters in one room long after any sane individual would have left. The couples’ discourse has an undeniably stagy quality but the skilled cast is able make the whole affair seem perfectly natural.

Penelope (Foster) and Michael (Reilly), the host couple, are middle class New Yorkers pushing toward the upper middle. Michael has a small business selling furniture supplies and Penelope is an intellectual currently working on a book about “the Darfur tragedy.” John C. Reilly is an absolute joy to watch in the role. He is the perfect picture of geniality and good humor in the face of social discomfort, dispensing pleasantries and lame jokes that mostly fall on deaf ears. As the afternoon wears on, Michael sheds his role as peacekeeper and we see him for the short-tempered, stubborn man he is. Penelope is a little less multidimensional and gets a tad shrill by the end but is convincingly portrayed by Ms. Foster.

Kate Winslet gets the more fun role as Nancy, a stuffy, uptight lawyer who shows her true colors after a few drinks. Her husband, Alan (Waltz), is also a lawyer. He works for a pharmaceutical company that is currently in the midst of media fallout surrounding a drug’s side effects. Alan was able to spare enough time in his schedule to meet with Penelope and Michael but is constantly on his phone conducting business calls. Ms. Winslet plays nicely off Christoph Waltz. Every time the incessant ringing of Alan’s phone interrupts the couples’ conversation, Nancy shoots daggers at him while her lips contradict her with a polite smile. Mr. Waltz is great fun too; Alan is the voice of reason in the group, though his wisdom often comes in the form of condescending, cynical remarks.

Throughout the film, allegiances shift from couple against couple, to a battle of the sexes, and back again. Michael and Alan find common ground in their stubbornly chauvinistic ideas of masculinity and marriage. That is, until Alan makes fun of Michael’s humble business and the war returns to one of social class.

Carnage is a brief film without much of a resolution. Once the two couples have sufficiently ripped each other to shreds, it ends. Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza manage to keep things light by not making the audience complicit in the vengeful feud onscreen. We are afforded a comfortable seat from which we can laugh at the characters’ indecencies without worrying whether we would fare any better in their places. Before you know it, the movie is over and we have emerged unscathed and entertained from the preceding whirlwind of negativity and anger. Mr. Polanski and Ms. Reza’s approach ensures that Carnage is not a terribly illuminating film but it is an enjoyable one.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/22/12

REVIEW: Contraband

Contraband (2012): Dir. Baltasar Kormákur. Written by: Aaron Guzikowski, based on the film Reykjavík-Rotterdam, written by Arnaldur Indriðason and Óskar Jónasson. Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Caleb Landry Jones and Diego Luna. Rated R (Gun violence and bad words). Running time: 110 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Marl Wahlberg has a mess to clean up. Back in the day he was an untouchable smuggler, hiding drugs, cars and more on freight ships and his reputation has earned him status as a legend among a younger generation of smugglers. This includes his brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), who has just royally screwed up a job running cocaine for a guy named Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi). When U.S. Customs board the ship, Andy is forced to dump the coke in the water. Briggs wants to be repaid for the lost goods so Andy turns to Mark Wahlberg who agrees the only solution is to run one last job and use the money from it to repay Briggs.

Needless to say, Mark Wahlberg’s wife (Kate Beckinsale) is not pleased with this plan. They have two young boys now and he runs a small, successful business selling and installing alarm systems. But Mark Wahlberg has to do what Mark Wahlberg has to do. So he and his old, smuggling buddy, Sebastian (Ben Foster), prepare for the job just like old times. They get on a freighter to Panama City where they’ll pick up a few million dollars worth of uncut counterfeit bills and bring the funny money back to the States.

Don’t worry, Mark Wahlberg tells his wife. Nothing will go wrong. But we know something will go wrong because we wouldn’t be watching the movie otherwise. As it turns out, a lot of stuff goes wrong and the last third of the movie becomes so convoluted that it’s hard to even figure out how this job was supposed to go right.

Director Baltasar Kormákur doesn’t do much to clear things up. Poor use of handheld cameras and muddled editing sometimes keep us from understanding exactly what is going on. There are too many subplots and ulterior motives, and Mr. Kormákur attempts to weave everything together into a frenetic climax but the result is mostly just confusing and we soon lose patience with the film.

Anyone seeing this movie is doing so for one reason: to watch Mark Wahlberg be a badass, something Contraband does not deliver nearly enough of. He does beat the living bejesus out of a handful of guys but a movie like this should be giving him every opportunity possible to pummel thugs and toss off one-liners. Instead, long passages of the film go by without any action.

During these scenes, Mark Wahlberg is like the eye of a storm; he is calm and levelheaded but you get the impression he could blow his cool at any moment. Few actors can get as much mileage out of not doing anything the way he does, but when the movie drags its heels, the minimalist approach is less effective and starts to look lazy. He has been much better before and here mostly relies on the tough guy persona he has developed in other movies.

The supporting cast is filled with talented characters actors who do their best to bring depth to otherwise forgettable roles. Giovanni Ribisi, boasting some truly bizarre facial hair and a hard to place accent, plays the crime boss Briggs way over the top, and J.K. Simmons shows up, huffing and puffing, as the ship’s captain. Diego Luna is also memorable as the paranoid cartel leader, Gonzalo, in a handful of scenes.

As the sole female representative in this macho bash, Kate Beckinsale has a thankless role; she is tossed around and beaten, occasionally getting a moment’s rest to clutch her children and look panic-stricken. She is an object used for the film’s convenience to motivate Mark Wahlberg to run faster and shout louder.

This is the sort of movie where nameless Spanish characters shout subtitled lines like, “Move! Move!” It is a routine cool guy action flick that tries to complicate things late in the game and only succeeds in muddying a simple formula. Contraband is based on a 2008 Icelandic film that starred Mr. Kormákur and maybe the many plot strands worked better in a European thriller. In an American action vehicle for Mark Wahlberg, they needlessly clutter the movie and distract from the main attraction.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/15/12

REVIEW: War Horse

War Horse (2011): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Richard Curtis and Lee Hall. Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbach, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell, Celine Buckens and Niels Arestrup. Rated PG-13 (Mostly bloodless war violence towards humans and horses alike). Running time: 146 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

My experience with horses is extraordinarily limited. The only time I recall riding one, I was around ten years old and it seemed huge to me. In hindsight I was probably riding a pony but never mind that. My brief equestrian foray left me with two indelible impressions of the animal: its strength – “Don’t pull its tail or it’ll kick you in the face and kill you,” an instructor had gently advised me and the other young riders I was with – and its smell. While no attention is given to the latter in War Horse, the former is more or less its main theme.

You don’t have to be a horse enthusiast to appreciate the beauty of War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel set during the First World War (and also recently made into a Tony Award-winning play). Indeed, it would be hard to miss the visual elegance of the film, which is almost relentlessly beautiful. Mr. Spielberg and his cinematographer James Kamiński make wonderful use of the English countryside’s landscapes, the blue skies and green pastures of which remain unpolluted by the sprawl of modern society.

This is a movie designed to be seen not on a TV or, heaven forbid, a phone, but in a theater where its breath-taking wide shots can fill the big screen: A windmill reflected in a pond’s still waters. Files of soldiers marching through a golden field. Charred black trenches lit by momentary bursts of fire and gunshots. A silhouetted horse and rider against the blood-orange sky of a sunset. To seal the deal, all are set to a typically sweeping John Williams score.

Though War Horse is indisputably gorgeous, its story is sometimes less captivating than the images used to tell it. The movie follows a horse, Joey, opening with his birth and tracing his path across Europe as he changes hands throughout the War. The first to become fixated by Joey is a haggard, alcoholic farmer, Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), who buys the horse at a market auction and brings him home to his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine). Ted’s wife, Rose (Emily Watson), scolds him for making such a foolhardy purchase. They need a good workhorse to plow their fields, not a thoroughbred meant for racing like Joey. If they cannot plow the fields, they cannot grow crops and subsequently, they cannot pay their landlord (David Thewlis), an improbably sinister man who revels in the family’s financial troubles.

But how can Rose turn away a horse her son has already so clearly fallen in love with? Albert swears he can train Joey (Albert is the one who christens Joey with his name, though Joey receives a few more names from other friendly humans during his travels) and train him he does. As the leading non-horse in the film, Jeremy Irvine is a passable protagonist. The role of Albert is nothing special and Mr. Irvine seems to have been cast for his pretty face and brilliant blue eyes (which give Elijah Wood’s a run for their money). Still, these opening scenes have a classically Spielbergian feel to them, a wide-eyed and charming innocence.

Once Joey is shipped off to war, however, the film loses some momentum. Had there been more vignettes like the opener, War Horse might have been an overwhelming success but not all of the characters Joey meets or all the situations he gets into are compelling. He charges into battle with a British military captain (Tom Hiddleston), briefly joins a pair of young German soldiers (Leonhard Carow and David Kross), is taken in by a French girl (Celine Buckens) and her grandfather (Niels Arestrup) and eventually finds his way into the trenches.

Steven Spielberg does not depict the trench warfare with anything near the brutal realism of the D-Day sequence from his Saving Private Ryan but he does capture the looming sense of dread in the young soldiers’ faces and there is a stunning moment set to bag pipes when they run out into battle. This segment also features the film’s best scene, a quiet moment when two soldiers – a Brit and a German – meet in no man’s land to untie Joey from tangled barbed wire. The strength of the human drama in this scene eclipses just about every other scene in film.

As you may have guessed from its title though, War Horse is less interested in its human characters than its equine ones. The horses, Joey in particular, are given anthropomorphic qualities such as compassion and self-sacrifice; we can actually understand their motives for behaving the way they do. In one sense, this is remarkable. In another, it’s awfully silly to see a horse glance back longingly at another horse. Whether horses are capable of such emotions I cannot tell you. Perhaps a true horse lover will be enthralled by moments like these.

Watching War Horse is like flipping through a beautifully illustrated history book. It offers an awe-inspiring and romantic view of the past without ever giving you too much of a sense of how it felt to actually live through it. Either you’ll get caught up in Joey’s journey or you won’t. For me, the sheer aesthetic power of the movie was enough even when the story was lacking. It’s probably for the best too that no one mentions the horses’ stench. That might have spoiled the mood.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/13/12

Why They Suck: The Two Breeds of Bad Movies

By now most critics and organizations have published their picks for the best movies of the year. Typically, I wait until February to make my Top 10 list so that I have an opportunity to catch up on holiday releases and movies I missed in theaters. In the meantime though, I’d like to take a moment to discuss a few 2011 films on the opposite end of the qualitative spectrum – the bad ones.

Not all bad movies are made alike and for me the sea of duds divides into two categories: artistic failures and commercial failures. Since cinema is as much a business as it is an art form, all movies must straddle this line. A.O. Scott summarizes the point nicely. “No filmmaker sets out to make a bad movie,” he says, “and no producer or studio executive sets out to lose money.”

Of course, bad movies still get made. Loads of them. And I find that a clunker’s failings can usually be attributed to choices made on one side or the other of the aforementioned balancing act.

The first example in this case study is Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, a truly awful bomb from earlier this year that I chalk up as an artistic failure. True, this orgy of computer animation could not have happened without major studio backing, but it was also the first opportunity Mr. Snyder had to develop an original story rather than work from previous source material. After making a series of hits within the studio system (Dawn of the Dead, 300 and, to a lesser degree, Watchmen), he was given creative license to direct another, this time from the ground up.

The result is a bombastic blast of misogyny that pitifully vies for fanboy love by emulating every known geek-approved genre and blending them into a self-absorbed mess. It is Kill Bill with none of Quentin Tarantino’s levity or reverence for his female leads. Still, Sucker Punch is the kind of disaster that can only come from someone with a bold, if perhaps misguided, vision, and it is endlessly more watchable than the alternative.

Enter Exhibit #2: Green Lantern, a movie that, on first glance, appears to have all the necessary components of a successful superhero origin story. Beneath the surface, however, the film is empty and hollow; it has no heart, no humor. The same may be said of its star, Ryan Reynolds, whose good looks are a shell that hides an utter vacancy of charm. There is no drive, or purpose, or love of the character behind the production.

The movie is the result of a green-lighting frenzy that occurred in the years following Spider-Man’s $100M+ opening box office weekend nearly a decade ago. Every studio had to have a superhero franchise they could bank on for huge profit. Five or six, if possible. Green Lantern is a product designed to sell Burger King onion rings as much as tickets. I would happily rewatch Sucker Punch, the badness of which has a kind of operatic grandeur to it, than endure the stale lifelessness of Green Lantern again.

My point is, both films suck, but one had the potential to not, while the other was doomed to fail. You can feel Mr. Snyder’s enthusiasm brimming from every over-stylized, color-saturated shot of Sucker Punch. This is part of the reason why, when it stumbles, it doesn’t do so gracefully. It smacks hard, face-first on the pavement. But no one can accuse Mr. Snyder of not making bold choices, something the by-the-numbers Green Lantern lacks. His choices are, for the most part, bad choices but he took a chance, a tactic that can lead to great success in a way that playing it safe never can.

I’ll leave open the possibility that Zack Snyder may yet make a great film or, at least, a few very good ones. Even taking into account a hunk of junk like Sucker Punch, he is on the right track. On the other hand, the only good that can come of Green Lantern 2, should it ever get made, will be the return of avocado paste at Subway. (I’m a big guacamole fan.)

- Steve Avigliano, 1/13/12

REVIEW: The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish, based on the comics by Hergé. Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Rated PG (Swashbuckling and a boozing sea captain). Running time: 107 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Steven Spielberg built his career on turning his boyhood fantasies into Hollywood blockbusters. When you watch the most imaginative of his big-budget adventures – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Minority Report – you get the sense that a young Spielberg might have made the same movie had he had the technical skills and financing at his disposal the adult Spielberg does. The same is true of his buddy, George Lucas. At some gut level just they knew the stories in their heads, full of dashing heroes and journeys to exotic worlds, would make fine crowd-pleasers.

So the pairing of Mr. Spielberg and Peter Jackson, that Kiwi who had the crazy idea he could turn The Lord of the Rings into a trilogy of hit movies, makes sense. They share a mutual love of the French comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin, and set out to recreate on the big screen the rich, vibrant world they had already known for years. Mr. Spielberg would direct the first and, should it be a hit, Mr. Jackson would helm the second installment.

The Adventures of Tintin, which was filmed with motion-capture animation and released in 3D, seems to have all the right ingredients – a boy and his dog discover a clue to a mystery and embark on a globetrotting trek to solve it – but the movie fails to capture the magic that seems so effortless in other Spielberg films.

The boy is Tintin (Jamie Bell) and the clue is a cryptic piece of parchment concealed inside a model ship he bought secondhand from a street vendor. He might have known the purchase would spark trouble after a man named Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) tries to buy the ship off Tintin. Sakharine needs only to utter a few words in Mr. Craig’s ominous, British drawl for us to know he’s the Bad Guy and Tintin wisely keeps the ship for himself, sensing an opportunity for adventure.

And how right he is! Before he knows it, Sakharine kidnaps him and he is onboard a real ship where he meets a drunken sea captain, Haddock (Andy Serkis). Haddock and Sakharine have a longstanding feud that is apparently news to Haddock; their ancestors were rival pirates and Sakharine’s relative cursed Haddock’s after the latter robbed him of his gold. Or something.

The plot details in these sorts of movies are more-or-less irrelevant as long the story takes our heroes from Land A to Land B and back again, which The Adventures of Tintin does. As it turns out, the parchment features as series of cryptic symbols along the bottom that can only be understood when read with two other notes, also hidden inside model ships. So we begin in Europe, where the first two ships are, then hop over to Morocco where the third is. The intervening trip involves travel by boat, plane and motorcycle and there is no shortage of dazzling animated action sequences.

So where does Tintin go wrong? To be honest, I’m at a bit of a loss to say but let’s start with the animation, which, on a surface level, is stunning. How an animator is able to recreate the look of a rainy street or the sun glistening off ocean waves in such a way that looks somehow better than the real thing, I’ll never know. The movie also looks great in 3D; the animation is crisp and sharp, and the added effect of the 3D is seamless.

But the inhabitants of this digital world have an odd quality about them. Because the actual physical performances of actors are being used through motion-capture, the characters of Tintin move like real people. Yet they remain cartoonish; they have big heads, exaggerated features and curvy, rubbery bodies. The strangeness of this look is especially noticeable in the film’s comedy, which is mostly broad and slapstick. The antics of a pair of bumbling coppers (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are limited by the use of real actors. They appear to be cartoon characters but because their bodies have none of the elasticity of say, Wild E. Coyote when he steps off a cliff, their movements appear curiously stiff.

This creepy middle ground between animated people and the real thing kept the movie at a distance for me. A scene such as a motorcycle chase through a Moroccan town, shown in one long take, is breathtaking but also not as exciting as it should be. There is too much of a sense that these are pixels being cleverly manipulated to look like buildings, boats and boy who ducks and dives between them. The movie is visually impressive but only superficially so.

The failings of The Adventures of Tintin are not so great as to shake my faith in Mr. Spielberg’s talent, but the movie does make me realize how much I take for granted the action movies of his that do work. My inner child is always eager to escape into a movie and who knows, maybe Tintin’s next adventure will allow him to do so.

- Steve Avigliano, 01/02/12