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: The Ides of March

The Ides of March (2011): Dir. George Clooney. Written by: George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon. Based on the play, Farragut North by Beau Willimon. Starring: Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright and Evan Rachel Wood. Rated R (language and some sexuality). Running time: 101 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

In the months building up to a presidential election, the 24-hour news machine can feel so much like entertainment – politicians debate on live TV and commentators subsequently debate the candidates’ worth with sensationalized talking points and colorful graphics – that a film about the primary election process may almost feel redundant. Released in time to coincide with the growing media hullabaloo that marks the start of the 2012 presidential race, The Ides of March, a soapy political thriller directed by George Clooney, is less interested in the candidates of its fictional political world and the issues they discuss than the web of campaign managers and advisors who pull the strings behind the scenes.

At the center of that web for Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) is a talented young campaign manager named Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) and Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a campaign veteran and Myers’s boss. These two are responsible for getting the aforementioned media machine to work in Morris’s favor – that is to say, their favor – and ensuring a victory at the polls. Assisting them is a team of hard-working interns, including Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), daughter of DNC chairman Jack Stearns (Gregory Itzin).

The film focuses on a coveted primacy race in Ohio where Morris holds a tentative lead over Arkansas Senator Ted Pullman (Michael Mantell). An endorsement from one Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright), a powerful figure in the Democratic Party, would all but seal the nomination for Morris. That is, unless Pullman secures Thompson’s support first.

Posing a threat to the Governor and his team is Pullman’s campaign manager, Tom Duffy (a wonderfully gruff Paul Giamatti), who has his eyes on Myers. He wants Myers to jump ship on Morris’s campaign and work for him, but Myers is an idealist. He believes in Morris. This idealism prompts the derision of Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei), a New York Times writer who pries Myers and Zara for leads about their campaign strategies. She reminds Myers that Morris is a politician like any other and dismisses his faith in Morris as little more than starry-eyed naiveté.

Clooney’s Morris is a bit of an idealized figure. A staunch liberal, Morris proclaims that he is not a religious man but believes in the people’s right to practice any and all faiths. He calls for an end to America’s addiction to foreign oil, for industry-minded emphasis on burgeoning technologies, and for a revised economic system that ensures Americans pay their “fair share” of taxes. He is a frank, good-humored, sane and reasonable man. He is, in other words, an utterly unelectable figure in anything resembling the real world. Morris is a sort of Übermensch for Clooney, a romantic vision of his ideal politician. The improbability that such a politician could ever make it as far as Morris does in pursuit of the Presidency is not addressed in The Ides of March.

This unlikelihood is not so important to the film’s success, however, because Clooney’s ultimate message transcends political partisanship. His focus is not on the warring ideals that are currently causing our political system to sputter and stall but on the even dirtier infighting between career-minded advisors.

In its second half, The Ides of March flirts with soap opera levels of blackmailing and dirty laundry, which serves both to widen the film’s appeal to less politically-savvy audience members while also limiting the credibility of its arguments. Clooney need not go to such overdramatic lengths to illustrate how American politics are driven by personal ambition, though such sensational additions do make for an exciting movie.

As a director Clooney is sharp and confident and he stays focused on his cold perspective of the political game. The film’s visual style complements this; steely grays and blues are offset by the red and white stripes that necessarily pervade the background of a given shot.

The cast, it should go without saying, is exceptional. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives lessons on how to command the screen with characteristic effortlessness, and the ubiquitous Ryan Gosling continues to make a strong case for being the most reliable star of his age. (Your move, Leo.)

So although The Ides of March is a more than capable film, executed with skill and efficiency, it is also a difficult film to embrace. Clooney presents an unforgivingly cynical portrait of American politics but offers little in the way of hope for the future. If one wants to stay in the business of politics, ideals must be compromised (or thrown violently out the window as the case may be). Such news should hardly come as a revelation to anyone; what we need now are some suggestions on how to improve the state of things.

- Steve Avigliano, 10/10/11

REVIEW: Source Code

Source Code (2011): Dir. Duncan Jones. Written by: Ben Ripley. Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright. Rated PG-13 (some violence including disturbing images, and language). Running time: 93 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Source Code is a superb thriller that presents a simple premise, delivers fully what it promises and then, amazingly, keeps going into unexpected but entirely satisfying territory.

That simple premise is of course explained in a lot of sci-fi mumbo jumbo that is not as complicated as it sounds. A U.S. solider, Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), wakes on a train to find that he is not himself. The woman across from him (Michelle Monaghan) knows him as a friend from work despite his insistence that they have never met. After eight minutes of understandable confusion, the train explodes and he wakes once more, this time strapped into a cold, steel box filled with wires and computer monitors.

With the help of a fellow military captain (Vera Farmiga) who communicates with him through one of these monitors, he realizes he is part of a special mission. He must investigate a train bombing that has already happened, and he does so by entering the body of one of the train’s passengers. A military scientist (Jeffrey Wright) has found a way to recreate the last eight minutes of a person’s life so that a soldier may enter that body and interact with the world as it was during that time.

What follows is a sort of fast-paced take on Groundhog Day. Stevens must relive those eight minutes until he is able to find the bomber. As though he needs the pressure, he is told he must do so before a second attack is made later that day. In the mean time, Stevens is free to interact with the recreated passengers on the train, altering the course of those eight minutes until, as always, the train explodes.

Don’t examine the film’s inner sci-fi workings too closely. In its brief 93 minutes, Source Code grazes over a number of technical details but thankfully uses its time to pursue of more interesting things. The implications of this technology are explored in a number of fascinating ways. How real is this alternate reality? If Stevens successfully stops the bomb and saves the passengers onboard, will the simulation continue beyond eight minutes?

This is the second feature from director Duncan Jones, whose wonderful Moon (which he also wrote) asserted him as a new talent, bringing the smarts and science back into science fiction. Working from a script by Ben Ripley this time, Jones again delivers a thriller that is both big on ideas and terrifically entertaining. The script, equally indebted to Hitchcock and Phillip K. Dick, is brainy but finds a nice balance between its metaphysical ponderings and its explosions. Source Code has its share of action but these scenes are out of necessity of the plot; the story dictates the action here, not the other way around.

The cast is strong too. Jake Gyllenhaal has become a reliable leading man in recent years and does solid work here as a thinking man’s action hero. Like the heroes of Hitchcock who are unaware of what they are getting into until they are already well into it, Gyllenhaal gains the audience’s sympathies early on and keeps us on his side as he figures out what is going on. Farmiga and Wright have the tough job of hinting at the film’s secrets (and there are a few) without giving them away. Neither character is terribly complex or deep, but both actors give strong, nuanced performances.

When more often than not, today’s action movies prefer to numb our minds rather than stimulate them, Source Code is a welcome break from the noise. The film as is thrilling as it is thoughtful, and its cerebral finale turns out to be even more tense and exciting than the excellent action that precedes it. What more could you ask for?

- Steve Avigliano, 4/04/11