REVIEW: Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly (2012): Written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Based on the novel Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgens. Starring: Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn. Rated R (Killings and robberies, and countless profane discussions about same). Running time: 97 minutes.

1 ½ stars (out of four)

I’m always in the mood to go to a diner and drink a cup of burnt coffee. It never runs me much more than a dollar, the waitress serves it on a saucer and, if you go to my diner, it comes with a small mountain of half-and-half packets served on a saucer of their very own. I can’t explain why but I just enjoy it.

I’m also always down to see a movie about small-time crooks, hit men and seedy jobs carried out for quick cash. These movies can also be about the cops who chase those crooks down and arrest them but they’re usually better if they’re not.

Killing Them Softly is one such movie about crooks. These particular crooks like to talk and they talk so much that there isn’t any room for the cops aside from a siren here and a “Hands behind your back” there. That’s fine by me; I happen to especially enjoy movies where the crooks talk more than they shoot.

Killing Them Softly was written and directed by Andrew Dominik, who also made the methodical and brooding western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He’s a man who likes his genres and he lavishes this particular genre film with a style that is alternately flashy and gritty.

In one moment he lingers on a shot of Brad Pitt, who plays a calm and collected hit man with slicked back hair and Aviator shades, exhaling a slow gust of cigarette smoke. The next moment, Mr. Dominik gets good and close to a pool of blood spilling out from a newly dead body and onto the blacktop of a parking lot. And at least once he slows down a kill shot so we can appreciate some splattering brain matter for all its disgusting beauty.

The last time I saw a genre movie this in love with itself was Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive. That movie was a little too obsessed with its aesthetic pleasures – the 80’s synths, the sports cars, Ryan Gosling’s jawline – but was gorgeous enough that I didn’t object to the total irrelevance of its plot. Killing Them Softly isn’t nearly pretty enough to pull that trick off.

And Andrew Dominik isn’t nearly the master stylist he thinks he is. Come on, Andrew, you’re going to play “Heroin” while a junkie shoots up heroin? That’s amateur no matter which way you cut it.

Killing Them Softly is an insistently showy movie and its artsy experimentations get distracting. Notice that the film is set in the fall of 2008 amid the financial crisis. Clips of George W. Bush and Barack Obama are shown or heard in the background of practically every other scene, bluntly and needlessly reinforcing the desperate times its characters live in. Listen to the sound design (and believe me, the movie really wants you to listen to its sound design) and notice how laughter in the background of a bar scene is foregrounded at key moments in the dialogue. Well, I assume they were key moments. I kind of stopped paying attention.

The dialogue, by the way, is just as showy, relying too much on repetition and rhythm, and featuring little in the way of verbal ingenuity. It’s okay to let the characters gab on about whatever is on their mind but their conversations should crackle with life. The dialogue here circles around and around with dizzying tediousness.

And if talk is going to be a greater focus than action, the movie has to be willing to punch things up once in a while with a little energy and excitement. Killing Them Softly is only 97 minutes long but drags on at a glacial pace. I now have firsthand proof of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

There are a few spare moments in the film when things click and Mr. Dominik gets it right. Scenes between a pair of amateur criminals, Frankie (a wonderfully twitchy Scoot McNairy) and Russell (an equally fun Ben Mendelsohn, spaced out and looking truly awful as the aforementioned junkie), have a grungy giddiness to them and enliven the otherwise stale proceedings. Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini, meanwhile, are criminally underused and the movie completely wastes an appearance from the great Richard Jenkins, the current sitting King of Character Actors.

Brad Pitt lends the film as much of his charm and magnetism as he can muster but Killing Them Softly isn’t very interested in satisfying its audience with the thrills they expect from a movie like this. It’s too self-absorbed to cede any control to its star, preferring instead suck the wind out of a perfectly good tale of crime gone wrong by acting like an art film that is too good for its own material.

I can appreciate a crummy cup of joe as much as anyone but don’t serve me burnt coffee and call it a cappuccino.

- Steve Avigliano, 12/6/12

REVIEW: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011): Written and directed by Terrence Malick. Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken and Laramie Eppler. Rated PG-13 (some thematic material). Running time: 138 minutes. 

4 stars (out of four)

The Tree of Life, the latest from writer/director Terrence Malick and winner of this year’s top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, seeks to explore nothing less than the existence of God and life itself. The film makes no attempt to hide its artistic pretensions or theological overtones, but it also surprises us in its emotional directness as it follows an American family in 1950s suburbia. This is an ambitious film with great heart to complement its philosophical pondering.

In the opening scenes, we learn about the death of one of the family’s three sons. He was a soldier and has died in battle. Filled with grief, his mother (Jessica Chastain) prays and asks the ever-vexing question, “Why, Lord?”

In an attempt to answer that question, the film takes us back to the beginning of time and we witness the origins of life. As Malick shows us celestial wonders and the development of the first single cell organisms, one might be reminded of the gradual pacing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Indeed, the structure and approach of Malick’s film resembles 2001 in several ways. Both films begin their narratives in prehistoric times and end on decidedly abstract notes. Much like 2001, The Tree of Life contemplates the cosmos in an attempt to understand man’s place in the infinitude.

This portion of the film may get too abstract for some, but the patient viewer will find a wealth of genuinely human moments on the other side of the film’s ambitious prologue. Malick always returns to the humanity of his characters, symbolic though they may be. We see the fragmented memories of an infant, Jack, who grows into an adolescent (Hunter McCracken) and later an adult (Sean Penn) in the present day. As Jack ages, the film’s scenes become longer and gradually, a narrative forms. We learn about Jack’s contempt for his strict and authoritarian father (Brad Pitt), and the jealousy he feels toward his artistically gifted younger brother (Laramie Eppler). These relationships are not revealed in grand, dramatic scenes but through more intimate, familial moments – a conversation at the dinner table, a trip into town.

There is more, but the narrative defies summarization, itself trying to summarize the total experience of life. The film is fascinated by the impossibly large as it meditates on life, the universe and everything, but also takes the time to focus in on the smallest of details.

Each of these details are captured beautifully by Malick and his director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki. Malick and Lubezki highlight the beauty of the natural world and find similar marvels in our man-made surroundings. The sun peeks through countless shots as the camera continuously moves upward, sky bound. Like the film’s characters, the camera is always looking to the heavens for an answer.

Structurally, the film does not unfold in scenes as much as interwoven moments that are connected by images and ideas rather than plot. Select shots remind us of others that came earlier and Malick invites us to consider all of the previous moments as new ones occur. Pulling these separate moments together, Malick creates a tapestry of life that occasionally drifts through dreams and fantasies with poetic vigor.

The performances in Tree of Life are uniformly strong which is impressive since Malick’s primary focus here is not on acting. Pitt, Chastain, and first-time actors McCracken and Eppler give their characters depth, conveying a great deal through subtle expressions and mannerisms. Many of the film’s major turning points hinge on nuances in the actors’ performances and yet the film never calls attention to the acting. Malick creates the illusion of dropping in on private moments.

At one point in the film, Jack does the same, watching a domestic quarrel through the window of a neighbor’s house, a self-referential moment that provides a key to understanding the film. We catch intimate glimpses of this one family only to find details that recall our own lives. The film captures people during the self-discovery of their humanity and watches as they find those discoveries alternately thrilling and terrifying.

The Tree of Life is a lyrical film that has the ambition and emotional richness of a great novel. It asks the Big Questions: How can God allow for suffering to exist alongside life’s beauties? To what degree should love and faith guide our lives? For what purpose were we created? In short, “Why, Lord?”

- Steve Avigliano, 6/15/11

REVIEW: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds (2009): Written & Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger. Rated R (strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality). Running time: 153 minutes.

4 stars (out of four)

Just two years ago, it seemed as though Quentin Tarantino, in his second decade of filmmaking, had resigned to reviving forgotten cult movie genres. The Kill Bill films, while brilliant in their own respect, emphasize style as much as they do plot, and are essentially pastiches of the many B-movies Tarantino has assimilated through a lifetime of movie watching. Death Proof, his contribution to the exploitation throwback Grindhouse, is trashy fun with a feminist bent, but its ultimate goal is still emulation. There was even talk of him making a kung-fu film to be shot entirely in Mandarin that never came to fruition. Inglourious Basterds too bares the director’s love of movies, but it also allows Tarantino to return to what he truly does best: storytelling.

At first it seems as if Inglourious Basterds is going to follow in Pulp Fiction’s narrative footsteps; the film is divided into chapters that initially seem disconnected. Basterds however, offers a more linear narrative and its structure is not so much episodic as it is patient. Not until the fourth chapter of five does Tarantino begin to pull the separate threads together. By the time we reach the final chapter and all the main players are gathered in one room together, the payoff is even bigger after such a gradual build. Tarantino resists intercutting the storylines, allowing scenes the time to build on their own terms, and giving each scene a greater dramatic impact. Without cutting away to another scene, there is no break in tension and we get to watch a scene slowly simmer before it boils over.

The opening scene is an excellent example this, setting the film’s pace with a long dialogue scene between high-ranking Nazi Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and a French farmer (Denis Menochet). The dialogue here crackles with tension as Landa takes his time with pleasantries before getting down to business. Also impressive is how this scene, as well as many others in the film, is not only dialogue-driven, but primarily subtitled. As it was in Nazi-occupied France, characters move between French, German and English depending on the setting and company. As the scene gradually unravels, we learn the purpose of Landa’s visit to the farm: to learn the whereabouts of a Jewish family that has been eluding the SS for months. Christoph Waltz, a relatively unknown Austrian TV actor, commands attention from his first moments onscreen, remaining calm throughout his investigation and relishing the tense silence. There is an immediate understanding that this is an intelligent man very good at his job, and his performance retains this foreboding presence throughout the film.

After an impressive opener, the film introduces the Basterds, a rogue troop of Jewish-American soldiers led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt brandishing a Southern accent and some fine comedic timing) whose goal is to instill fear in the Nazis by brutally killing every German soldier they come across. Oh yeah, and scalping them too. The Basterds’ storyline is the stylistic heart of the movie, indulging in flashbacks, montages and even a brief narration by Samuel L. Jackson. Though Tarantino pulls out all his best tricks here, the stylization never eclipses the scenes’ intent. He has great fun with the Basterds but never overdoes anything. As for the scalping, it’s all part of Tarantino’s endless cinematic invention. His characters exist in a self-aware movie world where such things are just a fact of war.

Finally, the movie introduces us to the other major player, French cinema-owner Shosanna Dreyfus, and Tarantino’s requisite strong female character (there’s actually two in this movie). Dreyfus is hiding her Jewish heritage under an alias, but after earning the affection of German soldier Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl, Good Bye Lenin!), she finds herself in a unique position both dangerous and influential. The details of what happens next need not be discussed here. The fun of Inglourious Basterds is the way it unspools in surprising directions and weaves its characters’ paths together.

This being a Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds features great music, albeit less prominently featured than in the director’s previous movies. The soundtrack is often submerged in the background, comprised largely of scores from spaghetti westerns, with the exception of a well-placed Bowie song. It’s all part of Tarantino’s restraint as a director, keeping the focus on a given scene’s action.

Those expecting a historical depiction of WWII should be warned: the war is used only as a backdrop for Tarantino’s story. He is much more interested in the culture-clash dynamics that result when one country occupies another than he is in combat action, and while the film has its share of violent moments, none occur on the battlefield. Tarantino uses history to tell his story rather than the other way around and to say that he takes a liberty or two with historical accuracy is an exercise in understatement. This is a revenge story uninterested in creating a sympathetic view of the Nazis and it plays by its own rules.

Inglourious Basterds combines the inventive stylization and offbeat humor of Pulp Fiction with the maturity and restraint of Tarantino’s underrated Jackie Brown, while also adding a newfound sense of ambition that allows the film to reach heights previously unseen by the director. If this isn’t Tarantino’s best film, it easily stands alongside his best, and he knows it too. He all but calls the film his masterpiece twice, but when a director’s self-assuredness works this well, his cockiness only adds to the film’s charm.

- Steve Avigliano, 9/1/09