Everyone's Gone to the Movies
A place for reviews, lists, and other movie musings
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
REVIEW: The World's End
The World's End (2013): Dir. Edgar Wright. Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Rated R (Language, robot blood). Running time: 109 minutes.
2 stars (out of four)
The World’s End
starts promisingly as a the-boys-are-back-together comedy, slips into sci-fi
mediocrity roughly a third of the way in, and ends with a slapdash epilogue so
lazy, it feels like an insult, or maybe a mistake. The film was directed by
Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, who previously collaborated
on the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead and the (even better) tongue-in-cheek buddy cop movie Hot
Fuzz. In both of those earlier films, as
well as this one, Wright and Pegg meld the comedy of small town caricatures
with more conventional genre-movie entertainment.
Their films also have a wry, distinctly British wit. They
aren’t afraid to go for the jugular (sometimes literally, by way of decapitating
a character), and for the first half hour or so, The World’s End appears willing to mine some good, uncomfortable
laughs from its reunion of middle-aged blokes.
The organizer of this class reunion is Gary King (Pegg), a
hyper, alcoholic mess of a guy. On a whim inspired by some mid-life crisis
combo of boredom and desperation, he decides to get his old mates from high
school back together for an epic pub crawl called the Golden Mile. Twelve pubs
in one night, a pint (or more) in each one, is no easy feat for anyone,
certainly not a group of men pushing forty. As teenagers, their first attempt
at the Golden Mile left them passed out in a field somewhere between pubs nine
and ten, getting sick all over themselves (which is also to say it was a
smashing success).
The friends are played by a charming and accomplished group
of actors that include Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Nick
Frost, again taking up his usual sidekick role beside Pegg (though, for the
first time, as the straight man), plays Andy, Gary’s former best drinking buddy
turned teetotaler. An incident from his and Gary’s post-grad years has made him
swear off booze (as well as his friendship with Gary), but darned if his old
friend can’t drag him back out for one more night.
Andy and the rest of the guys eye the former leader of their
group with a mixture of morbid fascination and deep concern. He hasn’t changed
a bit. He even still drives “The Beast,” his 1989 Ford that coughs black fumes
at the slightest bump in the road. For a while, they enjoy the nostalgia of
being in his company, but the sadness of his situation soon sets in. Watch the
worried looks Considine and Freeman exchange when they realize Gary has been
jamming out to the same cassette tape since high school, some twenty years ago.
The first act of the film is rich with moments like that
one, suggesting that The World’s End is
heading for bold, uneasy comedic territory. Pegg’s performance walks a careful
tonal tightrope. Gary is the type of eternally upbeat guy who wants you to have
a blast but just ends up depressing the hell out of you because it’s painfully
obvious how in denial he is.
But an earnest set-up is wasted with a hard left turn toward
science fiction that, this time around, feels forced rather than inspired. A
plot about extraterrestrial robots taking over the guys’ hometown has potential
for satire (they also find that the once colorful characters of their favorite
pubs have been homogenized as a result of corporate buy-outs, a fate that
mirrors the alien takeover) but it belongs in a different movie.
The World’s End’s
jarring shift of gears also allows it to duck out of dealing with the more
complex and interesting issues its characters face, such as settling into
middle age, dealing with alcoholism and the effects of nostalgia.
Instead there are a lot of fight scenes, which are hectic,
decently choreographed, squirt blue synthetic blood all over the actors, but
are nothing special, really. I find it hard to recommend The World’s End even as simple-minded fun when you can just rent
2011’s way cooler, more inventive and way better alien invasion movie Attack
the Block (also produced by Big Talk
Productions, the same company that produces all of Edgar Wright’s films).
Fans of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz may be
satisfied enough with The World’s End but I’d be surprised if it attained anything near the cult fandom of
those movies. There are enough good scenes and chuckle-worthy jokes to remind
you of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s earlier successes but the movie ultimately
becomes as weary as Gary King does to his friends. You wish it would dispense
with the distractions, grow up and deal with something real.
- Steve Avigliano, 8/28/13
Thursday, August 22, 2013
REVIEW: Blue Jasmine
Blue Jasmine (2013): Written and directed by: Woody Allen. Starring: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg. Rated PG-13 (Booze is drank and things are said). Running time: 98 minutes.
4 stars (out of four)
When we first see Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), she seems well
put together. Elegant, riding in first class, lounging in her chair like she’s
just bought the world on credit, she dishes the details of her divorce to the
elderly woman seated beside her. Gabbing all the way to baggage claim, you
might call her overly chatty or brazenly forthcoming with personal details, but
she certainly presents herself as a picture of poise.
Blue Jasmine, the new
film written and directed by Woody Allen, depicts the steady unraveling of this
woman’s persona. Bubbling just underneath her designer clothes and meticulously
maintained golden blonde hair is a twitchy, desperate woman who, we learn, has
just suffered a nervous breakdown and appears to be on the verge of another.
Allen often writes neurotic characters into his scripts,
usually as a stand-in for his own anxious persona, but Jasmine is a far more
complex character than the typical dyspeptic types found in so many of Allen’s
comedies. Her problems run much deeper than phobias and a surly worldview; her
life of luxury has been violently ripped out from underneath her, a fact she
attempts to avoid with corrosive self-deception.
Through conversations and flashbacks, we learn that Jasmine’s
husband Hal (Alec Baldwin), a hugely successful entrepreneur, has been
convicted of fraud. His empire, including Jasmine’s cushy Park Avenue
lifestyle, turns out to have been built on lies and deceit, and has
subsequently been snatched away by the U.S. government.
Now broke and hopelessly lost, Jasmine turns to her
couldn’t-be-more-different sister, Ginger (a charmingly dizzy Sally Hawkins),
who graciously takes Jasmine in despite their past. (Ginger and her ex-husband
Augie (Andrew Dice Clay, somehow both gruff and cuddly) were collateral damage
in one of Hal’s schemes.) Jasmine will live with Ginger and her two young boys
in their modest San Francisco apartment, at least until she gets her feet back
on the ground.
The film’s tone ducks and weaves with Blanchett’s
performance. One moment, Blue Jasmine is
a social comedy, the next it’s an unnerving portrait of mental illness. The
comedy comes largely from Ginger, her new mechanic boyfriend Chili (Bobby
Cannavale with a hilariously long strand of hair slicked behind his ear), and a
spare handful of the people who enter and exit their lives. (Louis C.K. has a
nice supporting turn as a competing love interest of Ginger’s.)
These characters are a rowdy and deeply flawed bunch, and
from Jasmine’s condescending, undeservedly privileged vantage point, they seem
painfully uncultured. On a lunch date with Ginger, Chili and his dopey pal
Eddie (Max Casella, getting the biggest laughs of the movie), she doesn’t just
order a vodka. She orders a Stoli with a twist of lemon.
But these people are also full of life. Compare them to
Jasmine, who walks around in a fog of misery, bumping into men both good and
bad (Peter Sarsgaard as a widowed and heartbroken man with great ambitions, and
Michael Stuhlbarg as an unsavory dentist).
All the while, Jasmine’s past follows her around like a
malignant shadow. The story of Hal’s crimes is more than just fabulously juicy
gossip; it is part of her identity. It’s how she gets introduced at parties.
She can’t escape it.
Woody Allen has juggled the comedic and the tragic before,
but rarely with such a deft touch. He has an ear for idle conversation and his
social dialogue is as on point as ever. But he also shows an unprecedented
boldness by presenting Jasmine as a very real, very complicated individual. The
script hits some decidedly minor notes. Sometimes these moments are offset with
comedic relief. Sometimes the laughs come from a less comfortable place.
Allen is a terrifically prolific filmmaker (he’s stayed on
pace at a movie a year for more than four decades), though not a very
consistent one (his films fall all over the map in terms of quality). Blue
Jasmine ranks in the highest tier of his
work and is perhaps his best film since 2005’s simmering noir thriller Match
Point. It’s a smart, compassionate and
funny film, anchored by Cate Blanchett’s remarkable performance. Jasmine is
wretched but also vulnerable, bitter but sadly disillusioned. There is much
that is buried deep inside her and Woody Allen proves a fearless excavator.
- Steve Avigliano, 8/22/13
Monday, July 15, 2013
REVIEW: Before Midnight
Before Midnight (2013): Dir. Richard Linklater. Written by: Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Based on characters created by: Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Xenia Kalogeropoulou, Walter Lassally, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Panos
Koronis, Ariane Labed and Yiannis Papadopoulos. Rated R (Language, nudity). Running time: 109 minutes.
4 stars (out of four)
In 1995’s Before Sunrise,
a young American man named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets a young French woman,
Celine (Julie Delpy), on a train. They talk, are caught off guard by the spark
that lights between them and get off the train together, spending the whole
night talking and walking through Vienna. They talk about the Big Things –
life, love, childhood, religion, sex – and, as young lovers do, they fall for
each other.
They agree to meet again one year later but, as revealed in
2004’s Before Sunset, they never do. In
this second film, they bump into each other and stroll around Paris, falling
right back into it. They look back on the years past, reflect on the changes in
their lives and wonder, “What happened?” If Before Sunrise captured the young, romantic idealism of its
characters, Before Sunset found
them grappling with the disappointments of life.
In Before Midnight,
Jesse and Celine (Hawke and Delpy, reprising their roles for a third time) have
taken a considerable amount more control over their happiness, but there remain
things that will forever be outside their control (not the least of which being
each other).
The final scene of the second film, a wonderful scene
brimming with sexual tension, ended on a bit of a
will-they-won’t-they-how-much-will-they cliffhanger, so it would be fair to
call any description of where Jesse and Celine stand at the beginning of Before
Midnight a spoiler. If you feel this way,
skip the next paragraph.
Another nine years have passed since their reunion (for us
and for them), and we catch up with Jesse, who is now divorced and dropping off
his son from that marriage (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) at an airport in Greece. The son is
returning to the States after spending the summer with his father and Celine,
who now live together in Paris with twin girls, though they remain unmarried.
They are vacationing in Greece, staying in the home of a friend.
For the first time in the series, other people join in on
Jesse and Celine’s long, reflective conversations. In one of the centerpieces
of the film, they have dinner with a widow and a widower (Xenia Kalogeropoulou
and Walter Lassally), a married couple (Athina Rachel Tsangari and Panos
Koronis), and a pair of young lovers (Ariane Labed and Yiannis Papadopoulos)
who are about the same age as Jesse and Celine when they first met.
Over dinner, they discuss the difficulties of sustaining a
loving relationship and the complications of sex. Each generation has their own
expectations and experiences that they bring to the table. The conversation is
lively and boisterous, full of kidding and teasing until Natalia, the widow,
who has remained largely silent up until this point, quietly interjects and
does nothing less than explain life.
The first two-thirds of Before Midnight, which includes a stroll through a small village and
expands on themes explored in the earlier films, is on par with its
predecessors in terms of wit and insight. But the scene that follows in a hotel
room takes the movie to a level of greatness that surpasses even those
wonderful films.
The hotel room is intended to be a romantic getaway but soon
becomes the setting for a passionate and furious fight. Jesse and Celine dig
into one another, sometimes cruelly, touching on a range of subjects that includes
careers, fidelity, parenting methods, their sex life and more. A untouched well
of fears, anxiety, jealousy and contempt is released during the feud, which is
also perfectly paced and superbly choreographed by director Richard Linklater.
I hope I’m not making the film sound like a miserable
experience. Really, it is warm and heartfelt; even at the height of Jesse and
Celine’s argument, the movie has the undeniable vitality of life. Has there
ever been a screen romance as complex, honest and absorbing as theirs? The
movie is exciting because it feels so real and so true. Watch during that hotel
room scene how a biting one-liner lands like a sucker punch, as funny as it is
hurtful. Maybe you will be reminded, as I was, of scenes from your own life that
defy any single emotion but are in fact rich with layers of feeling.
The performances of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reflect this
complexity. Jesse and Celine are complicated, multidimensional people. They
have changed since the first two movies, and yet, at their core, they have not
changed at all. It is fascinating to consider how these characters have
evolved, and impressive how Linklater, Delpy and Hawke have so authentically
crafted that transformation (the three of them wrote the screenplay together).
With Before Midnight,
Linklater boldly and ambitiously continues a thrilling cinematic experiment
that began eighteen years ago and shows every sign of continuing for another
eighteen. The philosophical and romantic musings of these characters are intellectually
stimulating and emotionally invigorating. To watch these movies is to watch
life unfold before your eyes.
On one hand, I have gone through a great deal of changes in
the last nine years, and yet, on the other hand, I am the exact same person. I
look forward to regrouping with Jesse, Celine and myself in another decade or
so to see where we all are.
- Steve Avigliano, 7/15/13
Monday, July 8, 2013
REVIEW: The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger (2013): Dir. Gore Verbinski. Written by: Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio. Based on The Lone Ranger by Fran Striker and George W. Trendle. Starring: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper and Helena Bonham Carter. Rated PG-13 (Guns blazing). Running time: 149 minutes.
2 stars (out of four)
The Lone Ranger is
two-and-a-half hours long. If you’re wondering why an action reboot of a 1950s
TV show (itself based on a 1930s radio serial) needs to be so long, you may
find enlightening the fact that the director, Gore Verbinski, is the man who
squeezed a total of seven hours and forty-three minutes’ worth of high seas adventures out of an eight-and-a-half minute theme park ride.
In all fairness, there are a few sequences in The Lone
Ranger that gallop along with such jubilant
energy you may be willing to forgive the bloated excesses of the film, which
too often feels as though it is wading through molasses.
The best of these scenes is the climactic fight on a pair of
speeding trains on parallel tracks. Set to the triumphant march of the William Tell Overture (the TV show’s theme), the battle adheres to Looney Tunes laws of
physics and is an absolute thrill, though figuring out what exactly is
happening and why might prove difficult. The scene is the climax of a jumbled
and needlessly complicated plot and features no less than a half dozen
participants. But as long as our heroes keep leaping, swinging and dueling,
nothing matters except the chugga-chugga-choo-choo nonsense of the action.
During the film’s quieter passages, however, it is hard to
muster much enthusiasm for the characters who populate this wild west world or
understand their murky motivations. You know a script is weak when you’ve got
Tom Wilkinson playing a corrupt politician, Barry Pepper as a mustachioed Army officer and Helena Bonham Carter as a one-legged prostitute, and your mind
still wanders during the exposition.
But credit should be given to Armie Hammer who, it turns
out, has charisma to match the impressive bone structure of his chiseled jawline.
He is likable as John Reid, the dopey lawyer-turned-vigilante of the film’s
title. He seeks to bring to justice (not revenge) to his brother’s cannibalistic
murderer (William Fichtner, chewing the scenery and at least one man’s
cardiovascular organ).
Getting just as much if not more screen time is Johnny Depp
as Tonto, the wise-but-dumb Injun sidekick to the Lone Ranger. Tonto talks in
fortune cookie phraseology and practices all kinds of goofy hokum, trying the
Lone Ranger's patience and very often saving their skin. The character, a
mostly inoffensive caricature rooted in decades’ old stereotypes, is a jokester
who pokes fun at the white man’s hypocritical ways and acts as a catalyst for
much of the film’s action. Johnny Depp, a gifted comedic actor, has a lot of
fun with the role.
There’s a weeping damsel too who I very nearly forgot to
mention. Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) is the widowed wife of the slain brother and
(naturally) a romantic interest for the Lone Ranger. Keeping with the sexist
traditions of the genre, the movie uses her as a prop. She spends half her
screen time wringing her hands, gripping a scarf and holding back
tears.
The Lone Ranger is a
genial, good-natured waste of time, as pleasant as it is forgettable. And if
you see it on a hot day, you’re guaranteed to get your money’s worth of air
conditioning.
- Steve Avigliano, 7/8/13
Friday, June 28, 2013
REVIEW: Monsters University
Monsters University (2013): Dir. Dan Scanlon. Written by: Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird and Dan Scanlon. Featuring the voices of: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Charlie Day, Dave Foley, Sean Hayes, Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Joel Murray and Peter Sohn. Rated G (believable college shenanigans but astonishingly still 100% family-friendly). Running time: 104 minutes.
3 ½ stars (out of four)
There are movies that are good kids’ entertainment and there
are movies that are simply good entertainment. Monsters University is good entertainment. I laughed out loud more
during it than any animated film in recent memory and, as a relatively recent
college graduate, even felt a nostalgic pang or two for my campus days.
A prequel to Disney/Pixar’s 2001 film Monsters Inc., it tells the story of how Mike and Sully, our
monster heroes from that movie, met in college and further explores the monster
world. A bit of backstory is necessary to understand that world but Monsters
University does a nice job filling you in
if it’s been a while since you saw the first one.
In Monsters Inc. we
learned that the monsters that hide under children’s beds and in their closets
are not the result of overactive imaginations or side effects of an undigested
late night snack. They are very real and exist in their own world, using the
energy from children’s screams to power their society. The geographic and
metaphysical relation between this world and the human world remains a mystery
but monsters are able to freely travel from the Monsters Inc. headquarters to a
given child’s bedroom through a specially designed door that acts as a portal.
The monsters themselves vary in shape, color and size. Some
have wings and claws, others have tentacles and multiple heads. Mike Wazowski
(voiced by Billy Crystal) is round and green, and his single eyeball takes up
nearly his whole body. When we first see him in childhood flashback, he is no
bigger than a volleyball. A puny runt by any monster’s standards, Mike is in
awe of the Scarers, the professional scream team at Monsters Inc., who he
catches a glimpse of on a school field trip to the facility.
You’re too small, you’re not scary enough, you’ll never be a
Scarer, Mike’s classmates tell him. He sets out to prove them wrong by studying
relentlessly and working hard to get into Monsters University. A student can
study all sorts of subjects at MU but anyone who’s anyone is in the Scare
Program. The terrifying, dragon-like Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren)
personally oversees the program. She interrupts Professor Knight’s (the always
professorial Alfred Molina) Scaring 101 class to lecture the incoming freshmen
on a strict, new exam at the end of their first semester. Fail it and you’re
out of the program.
That’s no sweat for James Sullivan (John Goodman), a shaggy,
blue-haired beast with a ferocious roar. Looking leaner than his older self in Monsters
Inc. (and in an inspired touch, styling the
fur on his head in a faux-hawk), Sully comes from a family of Scarers. He
assumes he’ll be able to coast through college on the legacy of his family
name.
A fierce rivalry forms between Mike and Sully, which ultimately
lands them in hot water with Hardscrabble. In order to redeem themselves, they
must team up and win the Scare Games, an annual tournament held by MU’s greek
life. Helping them is Oozma Kappa, the lamest monster frat on campus. These new
characters include the two-headed Terri and Terry (Sean Hayes and Dave Foley),
a many-eyed blob named Squishy (Peter Sohn), the oblong furry freak Art
(Charlie Day) and Don Carlton (Joel Murray), a former salesman with a moustache
shaped like bat wings who is going back to school to learn “the computers.”
The rivals-the-pals story is a bit familiar but it’s
executed well here and the pleasures of Monsters University are in the embellishments. There are endless sight
gags in this exquisitely animated film and the script is genuinely hilarious at
times. I continue to be impressed too with Pixar animators’ abilities to create
complex emotions on their characters’ faces. There are several key turning
points in the plot conveyed by a subtle glance or facial expression.
And it is this emotional sensitivity, a Pixar trademark for
nearly two decades now, that makes Monsters University such a satisfying experience. The script, written by
Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird and Dan Scanlon (who also directed the movie),
has no shortage of wit and humor but it also has heart. This is a compassionate
story about the importance of hard work and of realizing that your shortcomings
may actually be strengths if viewed from a different angle.
These are excellent, positive messages for a kid in the
audience and when these themes are expressed as gracefully as they are here,
they ring true no matter how old you are.
- Steve Avigliano, 6/28/13
Saturday, June 15, 2013
REVIEW: This Is the End
This Is the End (2013): Written and directed by: Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. Starring: James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera and Emma Watson. Rated R (Language and assorted apocalyptic debauchery). Running time 106 minutes.
2 ½ stars (out of four)
There are so many references and in-jokes in This Is the
End, an end-of-the-world comedy written and
directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, I can’t imagine the movie will be
very funny even just a few years from now. Still, if you see it on a Friday or
Saturday night in the next couple of weeks (a comedy like this is always more
enjoyable with a packed house), you’ll get your money’s worth of laughs.
And if you already think the guys in this movie are funny,
then seeing This Is the End in theaters
is a no-brainer. When all hell is (literally) unleashed on the world, a group
of Judd Apatow regulars hole up in Hollywood hoping to outlast the apocalypse.
Everyone plays themselves, or rather, caricatured, sometimes
self-deprecating versions of themselves. For some of them, the movie is an
opportunity to reinforce an already established persona. Seth Rogen, as always,
is the affable stoner. He has a remarkable ability to give you the impression
that he is already your friend. James Franco is the playboy. He’s the
charismatic jerk who hosts the epic banger of a party in his newly bought
mansion on the night of the rapture.
Other actors use the movie to play with their celebrity
personas. Jonah Hill, wearing a diamond earring in his left ear, is effeminate
and full of himself. Apparently still high off his Oscar nomination from a few
years ago, the Hill character sees himself as a cut above the rest of these
lowbrow comedians. Like many of the other actors in the movie, Hill is one of
those guys people always accuse of playing themselves in every movie. Here, he
actually does play himself and it’s one of the most individually distinct characters he’s
ever played.
Michael Cera has a memorable cameo, playing against his
usual awkward adolescent character as a coke-sniffing womanizer. Emma Watson
shows up too to prove she’s more than Hermione Granger. (About a dozen more
actors and stars have cameos, some of which are inspired.)
Danny McBride was never an actor I particularly liked but
here, maybe for the first time, I understand what it is that people like about
him. His comedic timing is on point and he is relentlessly, cheerfully
tasteless. After a while though, I remembered why it is I can only take him in
doses. His sense of humor is exhaustingly crude and cynical. It can be a bit
much.
For my money, Craig Robinson made me laugh the most.
He’s been stealing scenes in supporting roles for the better part of a decade
now and is always a welcome presence in a movie. Perhaps the most likable and
relatable guy here, Robinson squeals like a little girl in the face of danger
and is delighted to find that drinking his own pee isn’t so bad. He can switch
back and forth between straight man and goofball in a way few comedians can.
Then there’s Jay Baruchel, who usually plays the whiny,
goody two-shoes of the group. In This Is the End, he plays the whiny, goody two-shoes of the group. With everyone else
so gleefully playing into his type or against it, why isn’t Baruchel allowed to
join in on the fun? Did Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen think the movie needed a
moral center for the audience to relate to? Someone who scorns the vain lives
of Hollywood celebrities? The movie does not need that and would have been more
fun without it. Similarly, his bromance with Seth Rogen (in the film, the two
are childhood friends reuniting for a weekend of smoking weed at Rogen’s place)
is tired and weighs the movie down.
These scenes aside, This Is the End is a lot of fun. These actors are great at banter
and the biggest laughs in the movie come not from the gross-out gags but the
slick, fast-paced dialogue. At one point, bored in Franco’s fortress of a home,
the guys decide to make a homemade sequel to The Pineapple Express. The best thing about This Is the End is that it feels like a movie made by a bunch of
friends. All the CGI demons and other hellish effects made possible by the
movie’s big budget aren’t necessary. This Is the End puts its stars front and center. They’re having a
good time and you will too.
- Steve Avigliano, 6/15/13
Saturday, May 25, 2013
REVIEW: Frances Ha
Frances Ha (2013): Dir. Noah Baumbach. Written by: Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig. Starring: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Summer, Adam Driver and Michael Zegen. Rated R (Cursing and frank talk about sex). Running time: 85 minutes.
3 stars (out of four)
The best moments in Frances Ha, a light and breezy new film directed by Noah Baumbach and written by
Baumbach and Greta Gerwig (who also plays the titular Frances), are the little
ones – snatches of overheard conversations, the offhanded reactions and
interactions of its young and cheerful characters. When Frances Ha works, it feels as though Baumbach and Gerwig are
skipping stones across the film’s shimmery surface. In one particularly
jubilant scene, as she prances and pirouettes down several blocks of Manhattan
sidewalk, Gerwig evens seems to mimic that exact motion.
The movie, which recounts a year or so in the life of the
hopelessly quirky twenty-seven-year-old Frances, an understudy in a dance
company, only sputters when it slows down and grasps for something a little
weightier. An early scene, in which Frances and her boyfriend (Michael Esper)
break up, has a few funny lines but mostly feels assembled from similar scenes
we remember from a hundred other movies and sitcom episodes.
But then there’s a scene like the one when Frances and Miles
(Adam Driver), a friend-of-a-friend she meets at a party, go on a first date.
Their awkward and halting dialogue has a kind of screwball grace to it, and
Frances’s ensuing mad dash to an ATM is gleefully slapstick. Driver, who plays
a much gentler version of the self-absorbed charmer he plays on HBO’s Girls, has just the right rhythms to parry with Greta
Gerwig, whose wonderfully flighty Frances is always cutting herself off
mid-thought or rambling on about nothing. I would love to see a longer, more
traditional romantic comedy between the two.
But though the tribulations of dating in the city as a
twentysomething take up a considerable amount of focus in the conversations and
musings of the movie’s characters, the romance at the center of Frances Ha is not a heterosexual one. The break-up between
Frances and her boyfriend comes when he invites her to move in with her. She
can’t, she explains. She has to continue living with her current roommate and
best friend Sophie (Mickey Summer) at least until the end of their lease. And
besides, they’re probably going to renew the lease after that, so it’s kind of
impossible.
More than once Frances and Sophie joke that they are like an
old lesbian couple who don’t have sex anymore, but unlike the guys who are in
man-love with each other in, say, a Judd Apatow production, these young women do
not feel the need to be self-consciously and kiddingly homophobic. They are
open and honest about their affection for one another, lying on each other’s
laps and occasionally sharing a snuggle in bed. They say “I love you,” not “I
love you, girl.”
This is refreshing to an extent but mostly just reflects the
gender difference in attitudes toward same-sex friendship. And while Frances
Ha admirably works to provide counterbalance to the
increasingly unbearable number of bromances in movies today, its girlmance
isn’t terribly different. It’s a plot device to keep its stars together rather
than in the arms of their respective boyfriends and fiancés who just don’t get
them the way they do. The scenes between Frances and Sophie are undeniably
sincere but also familiar. (Later, Frances’s flirtation with a
new roommate and platonic friend Benji (Michael Zegen) has a more fresh
chemistry.)
Frances Ha is more
giddily free-spirited when Frances breaks free from her second half and makes a
nice, cute mess of her life. Greta Gerwig’s performance is sharp and clever in
the way it pokes fun at the immaturity of Frances while also embracing and
cherishing the character’s innocence. Aided by cinematographer Sam Levy, who
paints the film in nostalgic black-and-white, the twenty-nine-year-old Gerwig
seems to be looking back on recently passed years of her life with a knowing
smile.
Noah Baumbach treats the material with this same warm,
backward-looking affection. Frances Ha
has a candidness that is fun and funny, and jazzy style that skips from one
scene to the next. Baumbach pitches the film’s tone somewhere between Girls and Annie Hall-era Woody Allen, though without ever reaching the heights of either. Frances
Ha does not have enough depth or complexity
to be a statement about life in your twenties rather than just a fleeting
snapshot of it. Baumbach and Gerwig are content to simply cast out a net and
reel in authentic moments. They don’t catch many keepers but you can feel that
they still had a great time fishing.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/25/13
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
REVIEW: Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013): Dir. J. J. Abrams. Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. Based on Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry. Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, John Cho, Alice Eve, Simon Pegg, Peter Weller and Anton Yelchin. Rated PG-13 (Bloodless action). Running time: 133 minutes.
4 stars (out of four)
Star Trek Into Darkness
is a perfect summer movie. It is smart, fast-paced and emotionally engaging,
grabbing your attention in the opening moments and refusing to let go until
it’s over. Scene after scene, it surprises and thrills. You can’t help but get
drunk off its relentlessly exhilarating energy.
The film, which is J. J. Abrams’s second Star Trek feature, begins by following what I feel is one of
the cardinal rules of any great action movie: Open with a scene so good, a
lesser movie would have used it as its climax. Captain James T. Kirk (Chris
Pine) runs through the blood orange jungle of an exotic planet, chased by
spear-throwing natives with chalk white faces. A mostly self-contained episode,
this first mission involves dropping First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) into
an active volcano and sets the tone for the rest of the film, which oscillates
between edge-of-your-seat suspense and comic levity.
This is a delicate movie alchemy and too many directors get
it wrong, overloading their films with convoluted, disorienting action and
occasionally punctuating the monotony with ham-handed one-liners. But J. J.
Abrams makes it look simple. The comedy flows easily from his cast and the
action is never difficult to follow. There is a clear sense of space and Abrams
plays with it.
Take one scene, for example, when the starship Enterprise is
under attack. The ship spins through space, tossing around the crew inside.
This forces our heroes to run along walls and ceilings as the ship turns.
Another scene gets a laugh from watching Scotty (Simon Pegg) sprint down the
seemingly endless length of a ship’s hangar. Abrams delights in creating
locations that feel real and lets his characters interact with the space. I’d
bet half my paycheck he played with Legos as a kid.
He also uses this inventiveness to build a large, richly
detailed universe. Even a relatively agnostic Star Trek fan such as myself (in my formative years as a
nerd-movie padawan, I sweat and bled Star Wars) could not help but become completely absorbed by
it. Along with production designer Scott Chambliss, costume designer Michael
Kaplan and countless others, Abrams creates an authentic, believable world. Any
given shot is packed with fun things to look at in the background. You get the
sense that not a dollar of the movie’s massive budget was misspent. Even the
ice cubes at the bar – little spheres of ice that spin when dropped into a
whiskey glass – are cool.
But all of these details and embellishments are merely
decorative, like so many ornaments Abrams hangs on this dazzling Christmas tree
of a movie. The script, written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon
Lindelof, is the fuel that powers this warp speed adventure. Into Darkness is always two steps ahead of its audience; just when
you think you know where it’s heading, it twists and turns back on itself. The
stakes are always high but ever changing. Villains become allies, friends
become enemies and the movie keeps cartwheeling like this until the very end.
Following the wonderfully fun prologue, the plot begins in
earnest with the bombing of a Starfleet building in London. Admiral Alexander
Marcus (an excellent Peter Weller, growling and snarling his lines) assembles a
group of Starfleet commanders and explains who the suspect is: a disgruntled
former employee named John Harrison (a steely and terrifically ruthless
Benedict Cumberbatch). Harrison attacks a second time and flees to the Klingon
homeworld of Kronos. Tensions are already high between Starfleet and the
Klingons, and Harrison believes Starfleet would not dare risk starting an
all-out war by following him there.
Harrison does not take into account, however, the daring of
James T. Kirk, who offers to take the Enterprise and its crew on a covert
mission to Kronos to take out Harrison. Armed with seventy-two of Starfleet’s
newly developed and highly deadly photon torpedoes, the Enterprise blasts off
in hot pursuit of the fugitive.
As the plot rockets down its twisty roller coaster tracks,
the crew members on board the Enterprise trade snappy banter and gently poke
fun at the proceedings. The dynamic between Pine’s Kirk and Quinto’s Spock is
much as it was between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (who has a brief cameo
here). The cocky bravado of Kirk provides a nice foil for Spock’s rigid
adherence to logic and following protocol. They frustrate the hell out of each
other but they also share a deeply rooted respect and love for one another.
The beautiful Lieutenant Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is romantically
involved with the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock and has her own reasons to be
annoyed with him. Think your boyfriend has trouble expressing his emotions?
Just imagine if his species was genetically predisposed to be devoid of
emotions.
Other franchise mainstays include the ship’s doctor, Leonard
“Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), and its chief engineer Scotty (Pegg, relishing the
character’s trademark Scottish brogue). A few, including Sulu (John Cho) and
Chekov (Anton Yelchin) are present too but are featured less prominently.
For some viewers, there may be additional buzz surrounding
this movie beyond the anticipation generated for a sequel by Abrams’s lively
and entertaining Star Trek in 2009.
Earlier this year Abrams was announced as the director of the upcoming Star
Wars: Episode VII. But calling this movie
an audition for Star Wars feels
unfair because Into Darkness, one
could argue, is actually better than at least half the Star Wars movies. Prior to seeing Into Darkness, even thinking such a thing would have seemed
blasphemous to me. (I believe I already mentioned my allegiance to the Force.)
But perhaps the clearest sign of this movie’s greatness is its ability to turn
anyone who sees it into a Trekkie.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/21/13
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
REVIEW: The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby (2013): Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Written by: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Debicki. Rated PG-13 (Flappers' flapping). Running time: 143 minutes.
2 ½ stars (out of four)
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is, among other things, a tragic melodrama, a
portrait of upper-class life in the 1920s, a sharply observant social drama and
a powerful rebuke of the American Dream. But Baz Luhrmann’s new film adaptation
seems chiefly interested in this first one – Jay Gatsby’s story of love lost
and found as melodrama.
The crystallizing moment of Luhrmann’s interpretation comes
when Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) stands on a balcony in his bedroom and
tosses a cascade of pastel shirts onto his former (and now once again) love
Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). The image is one of many lifted directly from
the novel, and realized here in vivid color and gorgeous 3D. It is the
emotional and visual climax to a lovely montage set to the crooning of Lana Del Rey, and is one of
the more effective sequences in the film. The Lana Del Rey song creeps up a few
more times as a theme for the reunited lovers, making this moment the romantic
high point and the idyll Luhrmann wants us to recall when things go sour.
Baz Luhrmann, who wrote the script with frequent
collaborator Craig Pearce, takes the broad thematic strokes of the novel and
hangs one beautiful image after another onto the story.
The basics of that story will be familiar to anyone who read
the book (or skimmed the SparkNotes) in their high school English class. Nick
Carraway (Tobey Maguire) moves from the Midwest to a Long Island neighborhood
called West Egg for the summer. Intending to relax in a small cottage on the
bay and work on Wall Street selling bonds, he soon gets pulled into the
intoxicating world of his fabulously rich and curiously elusive neighbor, Jay
Gatsby. Gatsby’s mansion towers over Carraway’s modest rental and his
extraordinarily decadent parties roar late into the night.
The financial origins of Gatsby, a newly minted millionaire,
are a mystery to the guests of his parties, who gossip freely and concoct devious
and dubious rumors about the man. Perhaps Carraway’s cousin Daisy, who lives
across the bay in East Egg, knows his backstory. She wears the unmistakable
look of recognition when her friend Jordan (Elizabeth Debicki) mentions
Gatsby’s name one afternoon over tea.
Daisy’s blusterous husband Tom (an excellent Joel Edgerton)
scorns the extravagances of Gatsby’s parties and the flashiness that often
comes with “new money.” Tom plays polo on his expansive estate and gives orders
to his many maids and servants with a more dignified air of entitlement.
Director Baz Luhrmann, who has thrown a few good parties himself, no doubt feels differently. He seems
to have the most fun here when his characters are enjoying themselves too, and
the party scenes boast not only a frenzied, vibrant energy but also a playfully
anachronistic soundtrack (a trademark of Luhrmann’s since 1996’s Romeo +
Juliet). Produced by Jay-Z, the soundtrack
features a few of Jay-Z’s songs as well as covers of recognizable hits from the
past few decades and some original material, including the aforementioned song
by Lana Del Rey (whose frivolous socialite persona would make her a perfect fit
as either a performer or a guest at a Gatsby party).
Fitzgerald scholars (and English teachers across the
country) may react to many of Luhrmann’s creative choices as misguided or even
blasphemous but there is no question the movie feels most alive when Luhrmann
lets loose with his distinctively excessive style. An afternoon in a New York
City apartment with Tom and his mistress Myrtle (a charming Isla Fisher)
becomes just short of an all-out orgy. And you have to respect the movie’s
sheer audacity when Tobey Maguire starts chugging champagne from the bottle as the distorted growl of Kanye West blares on
the soundtrack.
But as brazen and inventive as some of these early scenes
are, Baz Luhrmann is surprisingly deferential to the source material as the
film goes on. The Great Gatsby turns out
to be a relatively straightforward and faithful adaptation. Little has been cut
or altered. The one significant deviation is the bizarre addition of a frame
story that places Nick Carraway in a sanitarium. Having apparently suffered a
mental breakdown, he recounts his summer with Gatsby to a therapist (Jack
Thompson). The therapist advises him to write down his feelings, so Carraway
begins typing a manuscript for a novel. (An unfortunate, groan-inducing moment
occurs in the final scene when Carraway titles the finished manuscript.)
Even this, however, is really just a way to include sizable
excerpts of Fitzgerald’s prose in the voice-over narration. To accompany these
quotations, Luhrmann uses the exceptionally tacky effect of superimposing whole
sentences on screen where the words float toward you in 3D. The script is
almost too respectful of the novel, like a high school sophomore too nervous to
write a bold, original thesis and too intimidated by Fitzgerald’s writing to do
anything but quote it at length and underline the key phrases. Luhrmann means
to pay tribute to some of the novel’s classic lines but by using them as a
stylistic embellishment, he robs them of their soulfulness.
He also makes all the revelry and partying in the first act
so much fun that by the time we get to the meat of the story, the film’s
seriousness feels like a bit of a buzzkill. A number of scenes drag, not
because of any shortage of substantial material (we are talking about the Great
American Novel, after all) but because Luhrmann has not properly set himself up
to explore any more interesting thematic territory than love and infidelity.
The early scenes are fun but lay down none of the necessary groundwork for the
book’s weightier ideas about wealth, class and the hollowness of American
capitalism. Instead, the weepy strings of Craig Armstrong’s score steer the
film toward the big emotions that are Baz Luhrmann’s forte.
And with a cast as strong as this one, those big emotions
can be quite compelling. Leonardo DiCaprio’s easy charisma makes him a natural
choice for the role and he is effective in the more explosive moments of the
last act. But I wonder if he gives away too much too soon. We see Gatsby’s
insecurities and fears on DiCaprio’s face as early as his second scene and the
role might have benefited from a less expressive and more inscrutable
performance. On the other hand, Joel Edgerton is great fun huffing and puffing
with his hands on his hips and a cigar in his mouth. He delivers some
wonderful, bloviating speeches on race, politics and the temperature of the
sun.
Prior to seeing The Great Gatsby I wondered if Baz Luhrmann was a poor choice to
direct this movie. Surprisingly though, it is the novel that holds Luhrmann
back. Forced to contend with the novel’s greatness, an unfair task to ask of
any director, he does admirably but does not make a great
movie. And that’s okay. He still throws a hell of a party.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/14/13
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