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

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

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

REVIEW: Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 (2013): Dir. Shane Black. Written by: Drew Pearce and Shane Black. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley. Rated PG-13 (Comic book explosions). Running time: 130 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

“You know who I am,” reads a name tag worn by multi-billionaire and generally charming egomaniac Tony Stark (played for a fourth time by Robert Downey Jr.) in Iron Man 3. After two Iron Man movies and last summer’s super-crossover mega-hit The Avengers, there will be few in the audience who do not already know this character.

This flippant, you-know-the-deal attitude runs throughout the film. The script, written by Drew Pearce and director Shane Black, takes a number of shortcuts, assuming (correctly) that we have seen enough superhero movies in the last ten years to fill in the blanks.

When an international terrorist known as The Mandarin (a bearded Ben Kingsley looking like Osama bin Laden) hijacks the nation’s TV stations, we only need to see a brief glimpse of viewers’ shocked reactions. The rest we can remember from when the Joker did the same in The Dark Knight. And when a brilliant geneticist named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) begins talking about tampering with human DNA to enhance the body’s regenerative powers, we know to be suspicious of him after seeing the mad scientists in Batman Begins, Captain America and just about every Spider-Man movie.

We have also heard enough of those concisely worded nuggets of advice that were so eloquently doled out by Michael Caine’s Alfred in the Batman movies. So Iron Man 3 does not subject us to any more of those. In fact, the characters in this film are particularly dismissive of that sort of pithy, fortune cookie wisdom. (The movie even takes an unintentionally silly moment to decry the very existence of fortune cookies.)

Part of this resistance to flowery phrases and grand themes comes from the brazen playboy persona of Tony Stark, who has no patience for sentimentality. The rest is the result of this movie’s sheer laziness. Like most of the Marvel Avengers movies before it, Iron Man 3 is almost pompously devoid of any real substance. This light-as-popcorn approach has worked in the past, notably in the first two Iron Man movies, but it is becoming less effective. This movie cannot cover up its own hollowness.

And as for Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. is still the best part of this franchise but there are signs his shtick is getting old. We can predict the rhythms of his witty comebacks before he says them and his dialogue feels written when it used to feel ad-libbed. We do see a few new angles to the Tony Stark character – he has a terrifically badass moment of James Bond gadgetry wearing not a suit (iron or otherwise) but a black hoodie, and he even does a bit of Sherlock Holmes sleuthing (a role Robert Downey Jr. is very familiar with) – but little real character development. There is a sudden shift in the final scenes that tries to give the character an arc but it feels forced and I didn’t buy it.

So should you spend your money to see this movie in theaters? Marvel Studios has gone through a great deal of effort and untold millions in marketing to convince moviegoers that every film in the Avengers franchise is essential and should be watched in order. This is, however, little more than a way to hide the fact that these movies’ plots are virtually interchangeable, that they are derivative of one another, and are each wholly disposable entertainment.

This is not to say that Iron Man 3 is bad entertainment but that at this point in the series a critical review of it is less applicable than a Consumer Reports checklist:

Love Interest: Good. Pepper Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, underused.

Villain(s): Fair. Mostly forgettable.

Sidekick: Poor. Colonel James Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, underused and unimportant.

Humor: Good. Frequent and usually funny.

Action scenes: Fair. Muddled and difficult to follow but plentiful.

If you are shopping around for a decent superhero movie at an affordable price, Iron Man 3 is a solid option. If you are looking for a movie that surprises and engages, this is not your movie. This movie is… Well, you know what this movie is.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/6/13

REVIEW: Pain & Gain

Pain & Gain (2013): Dir. Michael Bay. Written by: Christopher Markus and Stephen Feely. Based on the magazine articles by Pete Collins. Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris and Rebel Wilson. Rated R (Brawn, boobs and bad words). Running time: 129 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

There’s a good satire somewhere in Pain & Gain, a based-on-a-true-story (loosely) crime caper about three bodybuilders who kidnap a filthy rich sonofabitch and steal all his money and assets.

The mastermind of the operation is Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), a personal trainer at a Miami gym who sees a deserving victim in Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), a high-rolling client. Kershaw is a grade-A asshole. He doesn’t appreciate what he has. So says Lugo, at least. If someone were to rob the guy, there’s no question he’d have it coming. Following a tough-love motivational seminar from a dubious authority named Johnny Wu (Ken Jeong), Lugo becomes convinced that the only way to get what you want in life is to be a doer. Getting what you want is, after all, the American Dream. He hatches a plan.

His pal and fellow employee at the gym, Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), is down for it. Doorbal has just come back from the doctor where he found out his steroid use has made him impotent. There’s a cure, a serum injected directly into the penis, but it’s expensive. Maybe a kidnap-and-robbery heist is exactly what he needs.

But they need one more guy if this tricky scheme is going to come to fruition. Enter Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), an ex-convict and former coke addict with a chest as wide as a pick-up truck. Doyle is going to take some convincing. In prison, he found God and reformed his life. He cut out booze and drugs, and now preaches the word of the Lord. Doyle believes in second chances, another proud American principle. Old habits die hard though and for reasons that are neither convincing nor entirely clear, ­­­Doyle joins the team.

The only hitch in this trio’s plan is, of course, that they’re all idiots. The kidnapping is amateurish and sloppy but – astonishingly – they pull it off. That's when the real trouble starts. These scenes have a lot of comic potential and though the film gets its share of laughs, director Michael Bay does not have the light touch and deft comedic timing to get the most out of a good script. He doesn’t always give the space for a joke to land and I wonder what this film might have been like in the hands of a director who knew how to milk the material for everything it was worth. The scenes don’t have time to breathe; Mr. Bay hurries things along, spending more time on action than on the witty banter between the crooks, which should have been at the heart of this movie.

Michael Bay’s flashy style gets in the way too. The script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely has bite but by amping up the energy at every possible moment, Mr. Bay misses opportunities to dig into his character’s inept interpretations of the American Dream. The superficiality of Doyle’s born-again religious transformation, Doorbal’s obsession with his shlong, and the whole group’s fixation on body image are all ripe with satirical potential but the movie is not interested in pursuing or exploring these ideas. It prefers instead to indulge in the more shallow pleasures of a good chase scene (and there are a few pretty good ones here). The movie is too juiced up for its own good.

But Pain & Gain does show off the comedic skills of its stars, particularly Dwayne Johnson whose nimble work as a heavyweight dunce is a lot of fun. Rebel Wilson as Robin, Doorbal’s girlfriend, admirably checks off the film’s dirty jokes box, and Tony Shalhoub is excellent as the mean and nasty love-to-hate-him victim. Ed Harris also makes a welcome appearance late in the film as a private detective. Anchoring the cast is Mark Wahlberg, who is capable of effortlessly shifting gears from action hero to comedian. He is an impressive physical specimen in this movie but remains an endearing and likable everyman.

Too bad that the skills of this cast are held back by their director. A more subtle filmmaker than Michael Bay might have really let them rip but what can you do? The characters in Pain & Gain are always talking about the importance of getting what you want but sometimes you have to settle for what you’ve got.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/2/13

REVIEW: To the Wonder

To the Wonder (2013): Written and directed by: Terrence Malick. Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem and Romina Mondello. Rated R (Fleeting glimpses of breasts). Running time: 113 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Offhand, I can only recall one instance – no, wait, I’ve just thought of another – when a character walks at a pace faster than an idle stroll in To the Wonder, Terrence Malick’s dispiritingly limp new film. As Mr. Malick’s ever-moving camera swirls about his subjects, you may find yourself wishing someone would take a sure step forward and walk with something resembling purpose and conviction.

But this is not a film that places much value on certainty. To the Wonder, though it is not to be confused with the imperative Lil’ Jon refrain, does actually feature its share of characters moving to the windows. Standing beside the windows of homes, churches and motel rooms, they sometimes caress and kiss one another but more often they simply gaze outside looking for… for what?

For happiness, I suppose. Also empathy and love. The film’s characters are trapped inside themselves, longing for a lasting and meaningful connection to another person. This is, at least, how I saw the movie but it is abstract enough to invite multiple interpretations.

To the Wonder follows, in mostly linear fashion, a relationship in decline. A French woman (Olga Kurylenko), abandoned by another man some years earlier, decides to move to a rural Midwestern town where she and her daughter (Tatiana Chiline) will live with an American man (Ben Affleck). Terrence Malick also interweaves memories from the past, chases tangents by following the lives of other townspeople and ends on what I understood to be a fantasy.

We never learn how the two met but it is soon clear that the romance is now gone and the love was perhaps never there to begin with. Ben Affleck’s character as we see him is cold and detached. He is usually down for some fondling (beside one of those windows) or sex but we can see from the anguished expressions of Olga Kurylenko that something vital is missing from their relationship.

This man remains at a distance, not only from Ms. Kurylenko, but from us as well. His presence looms large over the film but we never get a sense of his internal emotions, not even when he is alone. He wanders through the muck and dirt of construction sites, apparently surveying the damage being done to the town’s water, which has been tainted by chemicals, but no expression ever crosses his face. Is he weary? Defeated? Indifferent? Mr. Malick does not offer any clues. Ben Affleck has hardly any lines in the entire film; he just walks around stone-faced and vacant-looking.

Call it an artistic gamble, an experiment, a bold choice, but it drains the emotional power from the movie. And with the heart of the film missing, its curious diversions are all the more frustrating. The midsection of the film, which depicts a romance between Ben Affleck and an old flame played by Rachel McAdams, adds nothing new. He is the same with her as with Ms. Kurylenko. An opportunity to flesh out a new side to this opaque character is lost.

Javier Bardem, as a priest, walks around town, speaking with and blessing the impoverished. Some are physically deformed from the contaminated water. His scenes in this ostensible leper colony offer some fascinating images worth chewing on and mulling over but they feel too disconnected from the rest of the film. It is difficult to know what to make of them.

And this is what makes To the Wonder such a tantalizing but ultimately underwhelming film. Mr. Malick is known for shooting lots of material and whittling it down to its final form in the editing room, and the results are usually mesmerizing. His films are lyrical suites of images and naturalistic moments caught on film; structurally, they resemble musical compositions more than narrative storytelling. But something is missing this time.

You get the sense that the raw material of To the Wonder has potential to make a very strong movie but that Terrence Malick has cut the film in a way that dampens this material’s impact and mutes the emotions. There are at least a dozen breathtaking shots in To the Wonder and I find myself thinking about the film days later, recalling images from it the way one does a dream. All the more disappointing then that the actual experience of watching To the Wonder was such a chore.

The exception is Olga Kurylenko who, particularly in the film’s second half, gives a forceful performance. She is lonely and desperate for love, and cannot understand why the man who invited her to live with him continues to deny her any kind of real intimacy. In one scene, a friend (Romina Mondello) visits her and the two stroll through the wide streets of this flat Midwestern town (leisurely of course). The friend yells out. Where is everyone? Is this whole town dead? Where is the life? The passion? All valid questions.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/2/13