Dave On Film

Review: Chronicle

2012-02-03T07:00:21Z

When a high school loser gains superpowers through an encounter with a mysterious crystalline structure, will it help him become happy, popular and successful or will it amplify his dark side and give his anger an outlet so he can lash out against his hurtful world, gradually increasing in power until nothing can stop him and he goes on a rampage? That's the concept behind Chronicle, but the film ends up an all-too-predictable formula film built around "found footage" cinematography and a series of completely inexplicable relationships.

The loser in Chronicle is Andrew (a sullen Dane DeHaan), who is bullied at his nightmarish high school, beaten and abused by his alcoholic ex-firefighter father (Michael Kelly), and has not a single friend. In an attempt to create a psychological barrier, Andrew acquires an expensive video camera and videotapes everything that happens in his life. The entire film is shot from either the point of view of Andrew's camera, that of video blogger Casey (Ashley Hinshaw) or surveillance cameras that are on scene during the later action scenes.

The other two main characters in the film are Andrew's cousin Matt (Alex Russell), who has an inexplicably warm, supportive relationship with Andrew, and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), a popular athlete who is running for school president when the film opens. Given the cliché horrible high school that they attend, rife with bullies and completely unsupervised (we never see a single teacher or adult in any of the school scenes), the two handsome, popular boys befriending perpetual loser Andrew was the most baffling story element of the film.

The common underlying theme of this genre is redemption and it's a satisfying hero's journey to watch the troubled child gifted with some amazing powers, learn to tame them - and his own dark impulses - and ultimately become a happy adult. By deliberately not taking us on this journey, Chronicle creates a tension that is never resolved, something that left the audience unsatisfied and disappointed with the good vs. evil finale.

I wanted to like Chronicle. I like films about teens who gain powers and learn to master them and create their own life -- kinda like The Karate Kid -- but the predictability, the formula, the cliche-ridden storyline made the movie more of a series of impressive special effects in search of a story than anything else. Definitely skip this in the cinema and its worth as a rental depends on how much you care about storyline.

]]> The Blair Witch Project, the cinematic style of found footage has run its course, yet we're still seeing films exploiting it for a cinema vérité effect. It was tired when we saw it in Apollo 18 last year, and it's even more tired in Chronicle. Used sparingly -- as it was brilliantly used in 127 Hours -- it can be very effective. Perhaps I should cut freshman director Josh Trank some slack in his first cinematic outing, but less awkward framing, fewer creepy cut-outs and scratchy audio would have been a welcome improvement to the movie.

The high school world presented in the film is also right out of a 50s drama, unrelentingly unpleasant with a parade of bullies and jerks. High school isn't necessarily the best time of your life, but by having not a single nice person, not a single fellow loner to commiserate with, it just felt too much like a story element intended to push the film along rather than part of the complex world that Andrew, Matt and Steve inhabit. For that matter, where were Matt and Steve when Andrew was constantly being bullied, punched, and harassed?

Steve and Matt try to rescue a hapless driver, from Chronicle

The film begins to improve when Matt goads Andrew into attending an off-campus party that's more of a rave, with hundreds of attractive teens dancing, waving glow-sticks and getting drunk. Predictably, he brings his video camera and we get to see him being beaten up by a guy who (correctly) assumes that Andrew is videotaping his girlfriend and takes offense. Enter Steve, handsome, popular, and athletic, who helps Andrew clean up his surprisingly durable camera and videotape a pit that they've found in the woods.

The descent into the pit and encounter with the mysterious crystalline structure that certainly appears to have some living organism within is one of the best scenes in the film. Creepy and effective, it's a mini-horror film scene, but all too soon it cuts to black and we switch to the three boys exploring their newly found telekinetic powers.

A gripe, though: Every time they use their telekinetic powers, they get a nosebleed. Later, Matt gets nosebleeds because Andrew is using his power, even more weird. But what is it with these bloody noses that it's such a stock element of telekinetic power? Is there some otherwise unknown cinematic law that requires great mental exertion to cause your nose to bleed? It was used effectively in the creepy Scanners, but since then it's fallen into the category of tired cinematic trope.

Once they realize that they have these psychic powers, the next thirty minutes of the film prove the best, as the three boys learn the limits and capabilities of their power, including some predictable - and realistic -- pranks, including making a leaf blower turn on to blow up a girl's skirt and animating a stuffed animal to frighten a young girl, reaching its zenith with Andrew performing astonishing feats of magic at a school talent show. Immediately thereafter the film loses its way as Andrew has one bad experience after another and withdraws into his own angry world and realizes that he can use his telekinetic abilities to wreak revenge. Think Carrie, but with less imagination.

Between the tired use of a "found footage" cinematic style, the completely inexplicable relationships between the boys -- including completely glossing over why popular athlete Steve spends every day with Andrew and Matt rather than with his gorgeous girlfriend -- and the crassly obvious "yup, we left it open for a sequel" ending, Chronicle ends up a disappointing film, one that felt more like a series of impressive special effects in search of a story than a well-thought-out teen angst movie.

"Ferris Bueller's Day Off" Superbowl Advert

2012-01-30T22:54:12Z

The original film Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of the most joyous celebrations of adolescence ever made. Now, 26 years after the film was released, Matthew Broderick has come back with a teaser TV advert for the 2012 Superbowl that ties into the original movie? Terrific.

There are tons of hidden objects and Easter eggs in this extended Honda advertisement too, so watch it a few times and leave a comment identifying some of what you've found and how it ties into the original movie. Enjoy.

Oh, and do wait until the end. Really. Then go home.

Review: Soylent Green

2012-01-30T01:45:15Z

New York City is home to nine million residents and it's a bustling place, but the iconic 1973 sci-fi thriller Soylent Green posits a grim future where NYC has exploded to 40 million people and there's insufficient food and space for everyone. Unless, of course, you're rich and can afford to live in the protected community of the privileged, in which case you have every modern amenity, including a beautiful woman who comes as part of the "furniture".

The film revolves around the mysterious assassination of elite Soylent Corporation board member William Simonson (Joseph Cotten), and the subsequent investigation by NYPD Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston). Thorn shares a run-down, cramped tenement with his friend Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson, in his last film role), a tired researcher who figures out that the widely consumed soylent green can't be made out of sea plankton because the oceans are dying.

Simonson's mistress Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young) and bodyguard Tab Fielding (Chuck Connors) are both conveniently away when Simonson is murdered: does Fielding know more about the attack than he's letting on? Meanwhile Shirl grows fond of Thorn and lets him use the apartment, including offering him the experience of a shower with real hot water, an air conditioner that cools off "like winter used to be" and food in more abundance than he can ever remember seeing.

Soylent Green is primarily a warning of the dangers of overpopulation, but there's a thread of dystopic cynicism that still rings true, a mistrust of the motivations behind corporate activities and some equally striking commentary on religion and its Marxist function as the opiate of the masses, including when a beleagured priest (Lincoln Kilpatrick) explains to Thorn "we don't see no rich people at this church any more" and particularly late in the film when Roth is euthanized.

One of the most striking images in this film is when hundreds of people riot after being told that the government has run out of soylent green at a distribution center. Filmed with a yellow filter to give it an aged, gritty appearance, the scene is that much more shocking when crowd control turns out to be "Scoops", garbage trucks modified to pick up rioters and truck them away.

Symbolically, garbage trucks appear again later in the film in an even grimmer fashion, as Thorn hops aboard one to learn what happens to the body of his beloved friend Roth. With overtones of Nazi concentration camps, the solution to feeding the populace is grim indeed.

Dystopic sci-fi films can age poorly, but Soylent Green ranks up as one of the best films of the 1970's, a shocker with striking, upsetting imagery and a stark solution to the continued challenges of overpopulation. If you have a chance to see it, do so. It's well worth your time. Just skip any soylent foodstuffs your friends offer you afterwards.

Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2012-01-03T17:02:23Z

While I quite enjoyed the 2009 Guy Ritchie reinvention of the fabled observant detective in Sherlock Holmes, applying the same formula in this newer film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows proved more a boring, tedious exercise in special effects and self-conscious film making and less an engaging and narratively ingenious film.

In the original books by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes is a fastidious, rather odd bird with extraordinary knowledge and powers of observation. Famously able to deduce things from the tiniest speck of dust or wrinkle in a hem, he was the anti-hero, someone who was generally unlikeable but brilliant. Reimagined by directory Guy Ritchie and action star Robert Downey Jr. (think Iron Man), Holmes is completely different in A Game of Shadows and looks more like a homeless vagabond than a celebrated detective.

As with the books, the narrative is from the perspective of his long-suffering companion and friend Dr. John Watson (Jude Law), who applies his medical background and experience to aid in solving particularly perplexing mysteries. Except in A Game of Shadows, there's not much mystery, there's not really a case, there's no client, and the story unfolds in an increasingly baffling and incoherent manner.

The story revolves around Holmes uncovering a plot by the nefarious Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris) to start a world war and then profit by selling arms and ammunition to both sides. Holmes rival and love interest Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) appears for a short time, to be replaced on screen with the more interesting Gypsy fortune teller Madame Simza (Noomi Rapace). Watson has just married Mary (Kelly Reilly) and it's during their honeymoon that Holmes intervenes in a plot by Moriarty to murder Watson, conveniently sidetracking Mary for the rest of the film and forcing Watson to reluctantly take on this, their last case together.

The special effects are impressive, but even there the innovations of the first film are overused in this sequel to the point where it's bizarre and at one point even breaks the narrative wall. Near the end of the film, Holmes plots out the specific moves he'll use in a fight against arch-enemy Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), who then looks at Holmes and says "two can play at that, sir" and similarly plots out, in graphic slow motion, his anticipated moves in the upcoming scuffle. But how does Moriarty know that Holmes was figuring out his attack?

I've always been a fan of the enigmatic, brilliant Sherlock Holmes, but I think that from a cinematic and narrative perspective Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows leaves a lot to be desired. It's visually pretty, but there's much that doesn't make sense and Ritchie and Downey have created a completely new Holmes that has nothing to do with the fictional creation of Doyle and while it's entertaining, it's also overly long, tedious and confusing as heck. I'd wait until it's on DVD and make sure you've got some popcorn to munch on during the overly long later scenes.

Review: The Iron Lady

2012-01-02T16:30:25Z

On the surface, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher might not seem like a good subject for a biopic. She wasn't flamboyant, there's no romantic back story, and she was more known for her steel will than her diplomacy. In these politically charged times, however, The Iron Lady is surprisingly timely, with its profile of the greengrocer's daughter who rose through -- fought her way through -- the British political ranks to become one of the most powerful women in the Western Hemisphere.

The narrative roughly follows her personal history, starting with her school years and showing how she rose to become the first female Member of Parliament, then Prime Minister of Britain for eleven years, during which time she wrestled with the recession of the 1980s, the birth of the European Union, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, a massive miner's strike, the Argentine fight over the Falkland Islands and the bombings and rebellion of the Irish, including frequent bombings -- emotionally portrayed in the film -- from the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

As Thatcher, Meryl Streep is superb. From her makeup and wardrobe to her speech and the behaviors and mannerisms of a woman in her forties, fifties and older, Streep vanishes in her portrayal of the Iron Lady and it's a wonder to behold in an era where films are about their stars as much as they are about the characters in the movie. It's the anti-Tom Cruise, if you will.

The film opens with a touching scene where Thatcher is retired, her husband Denis (well played by Jim Broadbent) has passed away a few years earlier but is still very much a tangible, physical presence to her, and she has avoided her minders and gone down to the local grocers for a pint of milk. Shocked at the price, she comes back and discusses it with Denis. Except he's been dead for a few years at that point to everyone but Thatcher. Dementia? Yes, but also seemingly the logical consequence of a life well spent on public service, though her daughter Carol (Olivia Colman) might not entirely agree when her Mum's still correcting her in public.

In addition to a fascinating and reasonably neutral political narrative that focused on Thatcher and the cost her family paid in her single-minded devotion to her service to Britain, The Iron Lady was surprisingly touching and more than once I felt a wave of emotion sweep over me as I watched her children fight for attention, a beloved advisor killed in an IRA bombing, or her long-suffering husband Denis sit on the sidelines as he realized yet again he couldn't compete with her passionate love of service.

Still, the best part of The Iron Lady is Streep's performance. It's truly that good. The film itself is a touching and engaging biopic, but will ultimately be of more interest to students of history and those who seek a sense of the battles she had to fight as the first woman Member of Parliament and the first female head of a Western Power. Well worth watching in this context, it's a reminder of the power of cinema to let us peek into the life of a powerful, amazing woman.

Review: The Way

2011-11-28T18:37:35Z

There's no more essential story than that of the Hero's Journey, and when you combine that with a tale of redemption and spiritual awakening, you should have all the ingredients necessary for a moving, powerful film. That was what Emilio Estevez undoubtedly had in mind when he adapted, directed and gave himself a key role in the film The Way.

The titular Way refers to El Camino de Santiago, an ancient 800km pilgrimage from France to Spain, and the reluctant pilgrim is Tom (Martin Sheen, father of Emilio Estevez), who has flown to France from his comfortable suburban life to claim the body of his 40-something son Daniel (Estevez), who has died unexpectedly on the first day of his own journey towards Santiago de Compostela.

As with many men of his generation, Tom has poured all his wishes and dreams into his only child, Daniel, and the few scenes where we see them converse are hard to watch as each hovers in his own corner, afraid of really seeing the other for whom they truly are and acknowledging that love isn't about approval and expectations, but something a lot deeper.

Unfortunately, the parallels of real life paternity only work for so long and within ten minutes of The Way, it's painfully obvious that Martin Sheen is terribly miscast in the role of the confused, withdrawn, grieving father. He just doesn't have the acting range to convince us that he is a man deeply grieving the loss of his only child, something that no parent should ever have to experience and that should create a profound, breathtaking sadness. Sheen's a one-note actor and while being "distant" or "disconnected from his feelings" could work for the first part of his ultimately inexplicable journey along the entire 800km Camino de Santiago, by the end of the film it's embarrassing to watch him react to the overt religious overtones of his pilgrimage with no more emotion than he'd have ordering a cappuccino at his favorite Starbucks.

There's a warm, thoughtful and moving film waiting to be made from the Jack Hitt book, but Estevez didn't capture it with his banal script and Sheen was just, well, awful. Skip this one, even if your "enlightened" friends tell you how deep and profound it was...

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The obvious parallel to this book is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories about pilgrims on the road to Canterbury Cathedral, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1500's. In The Way, the pilgrims are Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), a bitter Canadian divorceé who is caustic and thoroughly unpleasant, Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), an overweight, jovial Dutchman who is happy to share his endless supply of drugs and seems mostly to be on the journey to whet his endless appetite, and Jack (James Nesbitt), a goofy Irish writer who has lost his ability to write but not his touch o' the blarney.

Each is on their own quest: Sarah wants to heal the core hurt of her life though she tells everyone the pilgrimage is about stopping her smoking addiction, Joost wants to lose weight so that his wife will love him again, and Jack wants to find his writing muse, so he can go back to being a successful writer. Tom? His journey is to understand and ultimately accept the decisions that Daniel made as he grew up, and to let him go and forgive himself for his dogmatic and unsympathetic parenting.

"Tom", "Sarah", "Joost" and "Jack", left to right, from "The Way"

Yes, they're all archetypes and as each reveals their personal journey, it's all so predictable that at any point viewers could pause the film and write down the rest of the story and ultimate ending. Surprise! Sarah laughs before the film's over, admitting that she's going to continue smoking after all, Joost accepts himself and his appetites, Jack -- who is ostensibly the author of the film itself -- regains his muse and Tom? Tom reaches the end of the path and flies home to his optometric practice. Has he changed or attained any enlightenment at all? It's darn hard to tell.

And that's the fundamental problem with The Way. The story is beautiful, the scenery is lovely, and Estevez clearly has a future as a director, but ultimately the script is too weak to carry the film, the dialog is too frequently cliché and insipid, and Sheen is completely miscast at the heart of the movie. It just doesn't work.

Review: Hugo

2011-11-23T07:00:13Z

Once in a while, a film comes along that defies simple explanation. The story proves complex, the characters unexpectedly nuanced, and the entire narrative experience is beyond anything you expect. Hugo is just such a movie, a story that succeeds as a children's fable in the spirit of childhood fantasies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and City of Ember, and simultaneously offers a surprisingly deep and profound exploration of love, family and what it means to be human.

Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a scruffy orphan who lives in forgotten spaces hidden in the walls of Gare Montparnasse, a bustling train station located in the center of Paris. It's 1931 and memories of The Great War are fresh, even as everyone tries to resume their normal lives.

How Hugo became an orphan is a major story element and at one point we meet Hugo's father (Jude Law), a watchmaker and tinkerer. His mother has long since vanished, and Hugo clearly adores his happy, upbeat father. They tinker with an automaton that they've salvaged from a museum until his father dies in a mysterious fire. Hugo is then adopted by his alcoholic Uncle Claude (Ray Winstone) and moves to the station. His job: keep the station clocks working.

Hugo is caught attempting to steal a small clockwork mouse by the gruff, unhappy Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), who takes Hugo's notebook, insisting that the young urchin work for Méliès to recompense him for the goods previously stolen. Méliès? Yes, that Méliès, one of the pioneers of cinema and most famously the director of the ground-breaking 1902 silent film Le voyage dans la lune.

The intertwining stories of Hugo's experience at Gare Montparnasse getting by on his own wits while outwitting the comical and tragic Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), his budding romance with delightfully perky Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) and his earnest passion for repairing the automaton in the hopes it hides a secret message from his father all combine to create an extraordinary -- if occasionally long-winded -- fantasy world and heart-warming film. Highly recommended.

]]> Hugo defies this dismal convention with the experienced directorial touch of Martin Scorsese, and every character in the film is interesting, believable and a welcome addition to the story, from the handicapped Station Inspector (dryly and wittily played by Sacha Baron Cohen to the bakery owner Madame Emilie (an impossibly sweet Frances de la Tour), whose budding romance with Monsieur Frick (Richard Griffiths) is neatly paralleled by both the growing relationship between Hugo and Isabelle and with Madame's dog and, eventually, Monsieur's dog.

At a deeper, more profound level, Hugo's passion to rebuild his automaton is both literally and figuratively the heart of the story. Indeed, the 2/3 scale human-like clockwork figure can't work until a heart-shaped key is inserted into the center of its chest, a key that Isabelle is unknowingly wearing, having borrowed it from her guardian, Jeanne (Helen McCrory), Méliès life-long companion and true love.

It is in Hugo's earnest, heartfelt quest for meaning that the film operates on a deeper level. He has lost his parents to tragedy, and just as France is recovering from the horror of The Great War he too is trying to understand his place in a world defined by the arrival and departure of steam engines and the simple predictability of clockwork and giant gears. As he seeks understanding, the gears turn, the hands tick and he travels a road towards family, love, and life itself.

Hugo (Asa Butterfield), the automaton and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) from "Hugo"

In addition to the superb performances -- and fun cameos, keep a close eye! -- the visual style of Hugo is astonishing, a magical, gleaming world of giant gears keeping everything moving forward, hundreds of faceless passengers marching through the station, bright, lively costume colors, and an extraordinary attention to detail that makes this a film worth studying when released on DVD. Most appealing were the sequences that likened the bustle of Paris, particularly the great traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, to the neatly ordered ticking of a watch.

Having been so lavish in my praise, I also have to offer a criticism: if you don't love cinema, if you aren't well versed in the early history of movies and silent films, there are a number of overly long sequences that verge on boring. For children taken to this film based on its "children's story" positioning in trailers, these passages are going to be a chance for the little ones to squirm uncomfortably, yawn and wonder when the "real film" is going to start again.

With that said, I loved Hugo. it's one of the most delightful, most cinematic films I have seen in ages and I'll definitely see it again. Even the 3D was well done and added to the magic of the film (a definite rarity), and the Parisian soundtrack by veteran composer Howard Shore perfectly fit the mood and underlying whimsy of this surprisingly profound and thoughtful film. Go see it. And if you love cinema, go see it a second time.

Review: The Three Musketeers

2011-10-24T16:04:01Z

The Alexander Dumas book The Three Musketeers is one of the most exciting books of its era and still offers a thrilling adventure with the coming-of-age tale of D'Artagnon leaving home to join up with the fabled Musketeers, acting in the service of King Louis XIII against the evil Cardinal Richelieu. Sword fights, treachery, beautiful women, honor, it's a truly epic tale.

Which is why it's been adapter to cinema again and again, with predictably mixed results. In fact, this Paul W.S. Anderson production is the 28th time the Dumas story has made it to the screen, and there are rumors of another adaptation to be released early in 2013.

With a story this familiar, it's necessary for the writers to come up with a new twist, a take that weaves in the three Musketeers -- Athos, Porthos and Aramis -- and the familiar characters of Richelieu, Milady de Winter, the Duke of Buckingham and Rochefort with something new, something that'll capture our modern sensibilities. For this version, it's an airship that the Duke of Buckingham (a completely wasted Orlando Bloom, in a surprisingly minor role on screen) uses to visit King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox). The King must have an airship of his own, but evil Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) instead secretly builds one for his own nefarious purposes, having stolen the plans from the Duke by way of the feminine wiles of the equally evil Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich).

Then there's the acting. While the cast was strong and each has turned in solid performances in films like Lord of the Rings, Inglorious Bastards, Death at a Funeral, Robin Hood, and The Book of Eli, none of them brought much more than minimal effort to The Three Musketeers, and it really hurts the film, ranging from Fox's painfully foppish performance as King Louis XIII to Jovovich's disengaged attempt at one of the great femme fatales of the big screen, Milady de Winter.

This is a completely forgettable version of a tremendously entertaining story and I strongly encourage you to check Netflix or the local video store for one of the many superior productions that preceded it. Yes, there are some nice visual effects, but not enough to justify a $10 ticket. You've been warned.

]]> The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. There are also a ridiculous number of plot holes and anachronisms, including one scene where Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen) toys with a modern butterfly knife. A style of knife that isn't produced until at least a hundred years later. Did the prop-maker just not pay attention to the setting at all? Then there's the scene where D'Artagnon (Logan Lerman) finds that his horse has received a written citation from Aramis (Luke Evans) for despoiling the city street. Unsure what it means, Aramis explains to him that "it's a ticket". What the heck?

More than that, though, there's the whole storyline of warships of the air, invented by Leonardo da Vinci, with the plans long-hidden in a secret Venetian crypt with defenses more suited to Indiana Jones than Milady and her billowing dress. Those plans are stolen by the Duke of Buckingham and he creates one of these airships then flaunts it to King Louis XIII on a visit. As you can see from the publicity still below, the airships are makeshift hot air balloons with the incredibly heavy weight of a full wooden ship -- complete with cannons! -- harnessed below.

Airships from the daft 2011 film The Three Musketeers

Besides all the reasons that this wouldn't actually fly, it also produces an extended aerial battle scene between the Musketeers -- D'Artagnan, Aramis, Athos (Matthew Macfadyen) and Porthos (Ray Stevenson) -- and Milady all on the Duke's ship, which they've stolen without a peep from the British, and Rochefort and his minions on the larger French airship that seems so much like a rip-off from the far more entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean series that the French airship literally has a silver skeleton figurehead. Was it sitting around the prop department?

For any adaptation of The Three Musketeers to work, the cast needs to balance the passion and youthful zeal of D'Artagnon with the jaded experience of the Musketeers, who represent the other end of the road of honor, obedience to the crown and adventure. Is a life of service worth the rewards at the end, when the political winds can completely change your fortune? Unfortunately, the performances, particularly that of young Logan Lerman, do not speak of honor and zeal as much as pigheaded ego and pride. He just didn't demonstrate any actions that would explain why the other Musketeers would bring him into their world.

And that's ultimately the great failing of this version of The Three Musketeers. The production team has managed to take a wonderful story and turn it into a demo reel for a special effects house, replete with anachronistic scenes, a wobbly narrative and action scenes that are completely unbelievable even as they show off the latest CG capabilities. A completely forgettable version. Just skip it.

Review: Take Shelter

2011-10-21T15:28:54Z

Something really bad is coming, an impending apocalypse and only Curtis (Michael Shannon) can see it on the horizon. His Mom was institutionalized after a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia when he was ten, however, so are his dreams a prophecy of the future or his own mental facilities starting to fail?

Stuck in the chaos is his loving wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) who want to support him and tries to understand what he's going through, but can feel his distance and fear, and can't avoid his increasingly bizarre, erratic and random behavior. When Curtis spends the money they need for their daughter's cochlear implant on an expanded storm shelter in their rural Ohio backyard, it's the last straw and Samantha leaves. But is he right? Is there a storm heading their way?

Take Shelter is a powerful film about mental illness that uses a very atypical narrative approach. There's a level of ambiguity throughout the film that leaves you wondering whether the apocalyptic visions are foreshadowing the future or whether we're witnessing a blue collar construction worker in rural America break down, day by day.

It's all too easy for a filmmaker to oversimplify the anguish and confusion of a mental illness, just as alcoholics "just stop drinking" in movies, or bigots "just see the light" and reform. Were the film to have just a slightly shorter running time and ended just a few minutes earlier than it does, Take Shelter would be a powerful and provocatively ambiguous movie about mental illness, but the final scenes that suggest one ending, then switch to another, highly ambiguous one hurt the story a bit too much for me to recommend this without reservation, though I still felt it was quite compelling.

]]> Take Shelter with hints that daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart) hasn't always been deaf but with no explanation of what happened for her to lose her hearing. Her deafness is a metaphorical reflection of Curtis' challenge with seeing and experiencing what really is happening around him rather than the troubled vision that plague him both awake and asleep.

Since film is already a dreamlike medium, there's a self-reflective element to Take Shelter that also serves as a metaphor for the entire experience of viewing a movie. When Curtis dreams of his dog attacking him then buys a doghouse so that Red can sleep outside after having been an indoor dog his entire life, is Curtis acting with admirable forethought and caution or is he losing the ability to differentiate between reality and his dream state? And what does that say for us, the cinematic audience, as we walk out and discuss the film with our friends?

The production team does a splendid job of evoking the rhythms and values of small-town America too, where corn fields come up to the edges of backyards that themselves flow into one huge parklike space undivided by fences or property borders. Driveways are dirt, cars park on the lawn, and people do yard work and retrieve newspapers in bathrobes. Family dinners happen with a palpable weight of obligation and when everyone sits around and glowers at each other, it's just another Sunday.

Curtis (Michael Shannon) turns from the coming storm, from Take Shelter

One of the most dramatic scenes in Take Shelter takes place at a church brunch where Curtis' best friend and solid supporter Dewart (Shea Whigham) is upset to see him, and they get into a scuffle. Curtis cracks and it's the only scene in the movie where we see him angry at the situation he's been thrust into. Is he going crazy, damn it, or is something really, really bad heading their way and he's the only person who can see it and is the only person who is taking steps to protect his family from the storm?

The visual effects help the film without becoming the centerpiece too, which is a nice relief after such banal films as The Happening that also offer visions of nature protesting. Notably, there are scenes where Curtis hears the peal of thunder, yet even he can see that the sky is blue and cloudless. And yet, just a few minutes later, it's pouring and they have to abandon the construction site. What's really going on?

There's much to like in this quiet, powerful film that addresses the challenge subject of mental illness in a fresh and interesting manner. I would recommend it strongly if not for the ending, which throws into question the entire narrative journey and any conclusions that the viewer has made regarding Curtis, his visions, and whether or not there is indeed a storm coming.

Review: Contagion

2011-09-09T17:18:37Z

There are specific genres of films, certain themes, that I find highly appealing, and one of those is apocolyptic events. From the daft The Happening to the cheesy The Day After Tomorrow, if the world's ending, if we're all facing extinction as a species, if something really terrible is going to happen, I'm interested. I think this started with classic old sci-fi like The Day of the Triffids and The Day the Earth Caught Fire, but that's another story.

One of the most powerful - and frightening - of these film themes is global pandemics. Diseases already seem to spread without us fully understanding or being able to control them, and given that they rapidly evolve to become resistant to our defenses, it's not much of a leap to see a very bad future or to imagine that they might be bioweapons or even alien life forms. My favorite film in this genre is the original 1971 thriller The Andromeda Strain, a film that's still anxiety-provoking 40 years later.

That's why I was perfectly primed for Contagion, though was a bit disappointed how cerebral and unthrilling it was for a film marketed as a tense action thriller. Filmed in a documentary style (think District 9) and with an interesting, if occasionally complicated timeline that jumps back and forth, the film is a fascinating primer on how an illness can spread rapidly and how difficult it is to identify, contain and cure.

The film initially focuses on international traveler Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) who returns from a trip overseas to her home in Minneapolis and then, in front of her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) collapses and soon dies. Who did she interact with? What did she touch? How is the as-yet unidentified disease transmitted?

Contagion then moves to the Centers for Disease Control, as represented by Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) and the World Health Organization and its field specialist Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard). Their job: figure out the transmission vector, slow down the spread of the disease and ultimately come up with both a cure and a vaccine. To do that, however, they need to be able to replicate the disease (shades of The Andromeda Strain), which proves very difficult to accomplish.

Meanwhile, people are dying and Alan Krumweide (Jude Law) is causing trouble and creating even more paranoia with his wild conspiracy theories about drug company schemes to make millions, even as he double-deals and insists a homeopathic treatment is the only cure for the H1N1-like disease.

It's not a thrill ride with amazing special effects, but I found Contagion to be a tense and alarming medical mystery with great verisimilitude and a style well matched for its cool presentation of the spread and consequences of a pandemic that rapidly spreads around the globe. And yes, I thoroughly washed my hands afterwards.

]]> The cast of Contagion includes a lot of very talented actors, some of whom get far too little screen time. Most notably, veteran medical thriller actor Elliott Gould plays San Francisco-based disease transmission expert Ian Sussman. An interesting role, and pivotal in the movie as he violates research containment protocols to figure out how to duplicate the disease, but he has maybe six minutes of screen time total. Way too little.

As a blogger I also found the character of Krumweide (Law) interesting. Scriptwriters as a general rule like to exaggerate the antisocial tendencies of nerdy characters (think of Dennis (actor Wayne Knight) in Jurassic Park as an example) and there were definitely scenes where Krumweide was a wild-eyed lunatic, but director Steven Soderbergh also tapped into our collective suspicion of very large corporations with some of the dialog about the conspiracy of big pharma and the self-preservation behaviors of the Army, even as people were dying throughout the United States and around the world.

San Francisco starting to collapse, from Contagion

Pandemics are generally spread through touch or are airborne and Soderbergh does a great job of constantly zooming in on people coughing and touching rails, door handles, glasses, sticking their hands in shared food containers, and otherwise interacting. At one point, we're told that the average human touches their face over a thousand times per day (which I'm a bit skeptical of, actually). We do share germs quite a bit, though, and things that harm your immune system (like HIV) really do pose a major health risk. Listening to people cough in the theater just added to the effect: I can definitely understand the logic of a germaphobe.

Still, the performances were professional and believable but there was curiously little passion and drama in this medical thriller. People might react with quiet disbelief in real life, but when I'm in a movie theater watching a film for entertainment I want it to be more dramatic, more exciting than regular life, and Contagion just isn't that film.

Even with the scenes of society starting to break down as people panic and loot stores, shove each other out of the way to get government-issued food rations and exploit the misfortune of others, there was a distance that made it considerably less frightening. Masked gunmen broke into a neighbor's house across the street rather than trying to break into the Emhoff house.

Do I recommend Contagion? Yes. It's a smart, thoughtful and disturbing thriller. It has some rough edges but compared to the usual banal theater fare, it's well worth your time and money. Just wash your hands afterwards.

Review: "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920)

2011-09-04T13:23:47Z

A silent film from the beginning of cinematic history? We don't even have a good quality print - the best digital restoration available is flawed and has frequent glitches, lines running through the image and more. I'll also admit that I'm not much of a fan of silent films and without focused study my attention wanders and I find something else to do.

But there's something oddly compelling about the nightmarish vision of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with its weird, skewed sets and mythic story of charlatan Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his enslaved somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt) who exhibit at the Holstenwall town fair.

At the heart of things is a surprisingly modern triangle of best friends Francis (Friedrich Feher) and Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) and their mutual love Jane (Lil Dagover). When Alan is mysteriously murdered after Cesare eerily predicts his death while at the fair, Francis is suspicious and investigates, even as the town constable arrests another man for this and another murder, a man who swears his innocence but is locked up nonetheless.

Cinematically, director Robert Wiene offers one of the first examples of a film narrative where the viewer knows things that the characters in the story do not. We see the crimes and the perpetrator even as Francis cannot. Indeed, there's a complex temporal facet to the film too, where it opens with Francis explaining to a stranger what's happened to Jane, his fiancee, which then switches back to the story as it unfolds. Complex elements that we appreciate almost 100 years later demonstrated for perhaps the first time.

Does the criminal meet his moral comeuppance? For that matter, who is the criminal in this story, the somnambulist Cesare who is bewitched by Caligari, or Dr. Caligari himself? In the film world of 1920 there's never a question that crime does not pay, and there's something satisfying about the unambiguous ending.

Silent films with their slow pacing, hand-lettered dialog cards and rough, jumpy prints can be difficult for modern audiences to watch. This is a perfect film to DVR when it shows up again on Turner Classic Movies (that's what I did). Look for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and enjoy a brilliant film from the beginning of cinematic history.

Oh, and if you recognize the name Conrad Veidt, it's because he appears in dozens of films subsequent to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, most notably as Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca...

Review: Seven Days in May (1964)

2011-08-29T03:07:14Z

What if the US military couldn't get behind a Command in Chief who supported a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Russians and instead planned a coup so that it could replace the "dove" president with its own "hawk" leader, General Scott (Burt Lancaster)?

The thoughtful and disturbing film Seven Days in May, written by Fletcher Knebel, Charles Bailey II and Rod Serling, and directed by The Manchurian Candidate director John Frankenheimer explores just this scenario and it's a doozy of a film where you're never sure whether Colonel Jiggs Casey (Kirk Douglas) is paranoid, spinning a fantasy about nothing more than a military exercise scheduled for a few days in the future or blowing a whistle on a carefully planned, widely supported military coup.

What most interests me about Seven Days in May is its snapshot of the paranoia of the Cold War era, where the enemy -- the Soviet Union -- was big, powerful, well-armed and dangerous and where a single nuclear missile could change the balance of world power and spark World War III. It was a dark time in history and comparing it to the abstract psychological war that we're facing now with the suicide bombers and terrorists who have infiltrated our society, it's amazing to see the clarity, the black-and-white situations that are no longer part of the military equation.

And back in 1964 when the film came out, were there thousands of troops secretly training at a military base known as ECOMCON to overthrow the government? As Casey explains to President Lyman (Fredric March) part-way through the film, he thinks the troops will be deployed to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Utah. "Why Utah?" "The telephone company has important relays for all its long lines going through Utah, sir."

Could we ever see a military overthrow of the government? You'll have to watch this dark and frightening movie to find out.

Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-05T20:40:22Z

What if there was a research drug in the laboratory right now that had a good chance of curing Alzheimer's but it needed more testing on animals before it could be released for human trials? And what if that same neurogenesis drug made its research subjects smarter? That's the premise of the exciting and surprisingly thoughtful Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Will Rodman (James Franco) is the lead genetic researcher working on the miracle drug for Gen Sys Corporation, but he has a driving motivation of his own: his father (John Lithgow) is rapidly descending into dementia.

Clinical trials for the ALZ-112 drug go well, but when they inadvertently treat a pregnant chimpanzee then separate her from her newborn, she goes on a rampage and the project is shut down. Except for Caesar, the baby chimp who Rodman takes home to prevent it being killed. Caesar turns out to be an extraordinarily intelligent chimp but after an incident where he attacks a neighbor who was assaulting the now-cured father he's sent to monkey jail, the San Bruno Primate Shelter.

Not only does Caesar not like the primate shelter, but is also constantly taunted by malevolent employee Dodge Landon (Tom Felton). Enough is enough, and he escapes, steals some of the more powerful ALZ-113 from Rodman's house then goes back and exposes the hundred or so primates at the Shelter to the drug. The stage is set and the monkeys break out en masse.

The original 1968 Planet of the Apes is an iconic science fiction film, with imagery notably including Colonel Taylor (Charlton Heston) finding a half-buried Statue of Liberty on a beach in the monkey-dominated future Earth. I'd always wondered what happened for that to transpire and Rise of the Planet of the Apes does a good job of explaining, even through some vital information the happens in the last two or three minutes of the film.

I really enjoyed the new film and found it mostly plausible. Director Rupert Wyatt has captured the essence of the San Francisco setting and produced many iconic images of his own, including when the angry simians encounter SFPD on the Golden Gate Bridge. It's fun. Go see it.

]]> Planet of the Apes. Weaving the two together is a tricky business, and it's done very well in this film, with hints and nods to earlier story elements.

At one point there's a TV news broadcast about a spaceship on the first manned mission to Mars and it wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized that was the very mission that Taylor and his crew were on when they cryogenically froze for a few hundred years before crash landing in the earlier film. Smart. This is a big budget action film, but it's still worth paying attention to the smallest of details too, including newspaper headlines.

There are also two simians that are introduced in Rise of the Planet of the Apes that play significant roles in the earlier Planet of the Apes film too: Cornelius and Zaius, though the latter is never named.

Caesar is not a happy monkey in "Rise of The Planet of the Apes"

The neurogenesis drug ALZ-112 causes a reversal in Alzheimer's, but the later drug 113 isn't quite so beneficial to humans, though it dramatically improves the intelligence of simians when Caesar steals some and exposes his monkey brethren to it. Therein lies another seed to what happened to cause man to lose his primacy. Pay attention to the closing credits too, to fully recognize what the filmmakers are suggesting transpired, and try not to draw too many parallels to a popular theory about the simian basis of AIDS.

There are a number of scientific and medical protocol breaches during the story that were a bit frustrating, but certainly nowhere near as ridiculous as the daft Splice had (see my review of Splice for details of what I mean). Still, what credible medical researcher tries out an essentially untested drug on his own father?

There are a number of scenes shot in Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco. During those scenes it's clear just what a good job actor Andy Serkis does as Caesar. Then again, he's the same person who brought Gollum to life in the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and won a Critics Choice Award for his performance -- so it's no surprise. Still, Rise of the Planet of the Apes ultimately depends on whether the simians are believable or not, and in 95% of the shots they really do seem like chimps, orangutans, apes, etc rather than CG creations or actors with heavy makeup.

Is it possible that humans will become the inferior race and generically smartened chimpanzees become the rules of Earth? Probably not. But as the basis for a smart, exciting film that both fills in the backstory of a classic science fiction tale and acts as a fun movie in its own right, Rise of the Planet of the Apes proves a film well worth seeing.

Review: Cowboys & Aliens

2011-07-29T20:23:07Z

There's something timeless about a good Western, even if the genre has generally fallen out of favor with modern filmgoers. Sprinkle in some scary aliens, stunning special effects, and a terrific cast and the mashup film Cowboys & Aliens turns out to be a terrific and highly entertaining summer tentpole adventure.

Set in sparsely populated New Mexico around 1875, the film starts with bad hombre Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) waking up in the middle of nowhere, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Stuck to his wrist is a strange metal bracelet, one that is built of technology far beyond what he's ever seen. Three ruffians show up and try to jump him, saying "son, this just ain't your lucky day" but they're wrong. It's their unlucky day and Jake demonstrates he hasn't forgotten his fighting skills.

Heading into the sleepy, impoverished town of Absolution, he has a scuffle with local bully Percy (Paul Dano) and ends up tossed in jail by Sheriff Taggart (Keith Carradine). Just as they're about to leave for the Federal court in Santa Fe, Percy's Dad Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) shows up and, more dramatically, so do alien spacecraft out of the gloom, intent on lassoing and kidnapping humans.

The juxtaposition of the mythic Old West with the technology and frightening visage of the aliens are at the heart of this movie and Iron Man director Favreau doesn't disappoint.The creatures are reminiscent of Predator, with some internal plumbing all their own. Westerns are just as much about the sweeping plains and endless skies and Cowboys & Aliens has it's share of beautiful vistas. In fact, subtract the alien element and it's a terrific Western with believable personalities, sets and lots of tough hombres on horseback. Fun!

Human vs. alien movies end with the humans winning. It's the heart of just about every film, that good guys overcome bad guys. Cowboys & Aliens still manages to have an engaging storyline and its aggressive special visual effects notch up the tension quite a bit. We know the cowboys win, but with the Indians on their side? That's a central theme in the film too: in times of trouble, disparate people can band together to fight the alien invaders.

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It's a classic Western theme, where a town lives under the iron hand of town rancher Colonel Dolarhyde and the mysterious stranger ambles in, gets into trouble, then turns out to be the town's only salvation. The twist here is that Lonergan and Dolarhyde have to join forces and even befriend and work with Lonergan's former band of outlaws and the local Chiricahua Apache warriors. The aliens, after all, don't differentiate. Humans are humans.

While the narrative is surprisingly well assembled, there are still some core questions that left this reviewer a bit befuddled. Chief among them is why the aliens kidnapped and enslaved humans in the first place. The explanation given made no sense, and given the dramatic disparity between the human and alien firepower (think a bow and arrow against a fighter jet), why didn't the aliens just wipe everyone out? Of course, there'd be no parallel between the ranchers lassoing and roping livestock and the aliens lassoing humans, certainly a frightening image.

Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) and Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), from Cowboys & Aliens

I am a big fan of Sam Rockwell and found myself engaged in his story and his journey from town pacifist to gun-toting cowboy. He was one of the most sympathetic characters in the film. Harrison Ford, by contrast, was playing his recent type: crusty old guy. Craig was similarly wooden in his role, but as the 21st Century stand-in for legendary Western actor and tough guy Yul Brynner, his role was more suited to someone with minimal emotions. Young actor Noah Ringer overshadowed both of them as Emmett Taggart, the grandson of Sheriff Taggart.

There are a lot of cliché Western archetypes in Cowboys & Aliens, but I enjoyed them and found the grizzled old man, the scroungy ranch hand, the teary orphan boy, the noble sheriff and the spiritual indian all comfortable characters that helped the narrative seem familiar enough that the juxtaposition of weird, scary alien was that much more effective. By contrast, the denouement of the alien at the end of Super 8 was the worst part of the film. I don't want sympathetic aliens, I want a clear enemy.

It's the heat of the summer and while deep, thoughtful films are always welcome, there's also a place in the cinema for a fun, mindless action adventure, and with the combined talents of (producer) Steven Spielberg, Jon Favreau, James Bond (Craig) and Indiana Jones (Ford), Cowboys & Aliens delivers a fun two hours. Recommended.

Review: "Captain America: The First Avenger"

2011-07-22T16:17:14Z

"Uncle Sam Wants You!" the posters insisted on wall after wall during the 1940s, but what if you were just too scrawny, too weak to pass the physical and join the military to fight for your country? That's the dilemma faced by Brooklyn weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who has gotten used to being bullied, but is remarkable for his willingness to endure any pummeling so as not to seem a coward. "I can take this all day" he says in one scene early in the movie.

Enter German-American scientist Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who picks Rogers to join a squad of men he plans on turning into enhanced super soldiers for the US Army. Rogers struggles through the training but shows he has tremendous courage and the proverbial heart of gold and when it's time to test out Erskine's serum -- with a little help from Stark Industries and Iron Man grandfather Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) -- it's Rogers who is picked to go first.

Rogers emerges from the Frankenstein-like machine ripped and ready to defend his country, able to run lightening fast, swim deep into the water and with other terrifically enhanced capabilities. Helpful for fighting Nazis, for sure. Except Erskine's previous experiment was for the Germans and the result is the insane Johann Schmidt and his alter ego Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). Good guy, meet bad guy.

I really enjoyed Captain America: The First Avenger, actually. It was a fun story with lots of heart and a terrific visual style that helped transport us back to the mid-40s. If you enjoy comic book films, it's a good weakling-to-hero journey too and while it has its flaws, Cap's a good guy and I'm glad he's on our team!

]]> Comic book action films live or die on their ability to weave the unbelievable (super powers) with the all-too-tangible. Setting it in the past makes it even more tricky because now you have to ensure you haven't gotten tripped up with more modern technology. Captain America does well in this regard, though there was a moment in the opening scene that struck a dissonant chord, until I realized that the film actually opens in contemporary day America, then jumps back 65 years to WWII America.

The other element of a good film is a love interest. In this case, it's the cool, beautiful Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). She's attracted to the compassion Rogers displays, but there's never a spark between them and later in the film when he's sacrificing himself for the greater good (in a scene reminiscent of the opening sequence in the 2010 Star Trek) his banter with Carter is unbelievable.

The bad guy is The Red Skull, and Hugo Weaving brings a certain evil energy to his role, but where the film needed a villain who was larger than life, complete with minions and mysterious weapons, he was too tame and proved not to be much of a challenge for Cap to overcome. Even his makeup seemed like it could have been improved and there were scenes where it was an obvious facial prosthesis.

I was also quite surprised by the role that Captain America's sidekick Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) had in the film. He's vital in the comic book series but in the movie he's almost invisible and has a far shorter time on screen than expected. Disappointing, as the film itself has such a strong story bias but the characters within the story are almost uniformly smaller than life when they needed to be larger than life.

Captain America (Chris Evans) flanked by Red Skull's evil minions

It's a classic hero's journey that Rogers takes in the film, and I was pleasantly surprised at the scenes where he ends up a talking head for the War Bonds efforts rather than a super man fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Or was that some other comic book superhero I'm getting confused with?

Marvel Comics has been slowly but surely introducing filmgoers to the major comic book characters that comprise the crime fighting team The Avengers. That's where "The First Avenger" subtitle comes from. In addition to Captain America, the crew includes Iron Man (Tony Stark, as portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.), Spider-Man (Peter Parker, as portrayed by Tobey Maguire), Thor (as portrayed by Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (as portrayed by Edward Norton) and a bunch more who haven't had the privilege of their own films yet. Coming soon, a full-blown Avengers movie.

I enjoyed Iron Man and the mythos of Spider-Man but was distinctly lukewarm about Thor and thought The Incredible Hulk started out strong but collapsed as the film progressed. Captain America: The First Avenger stands up well to the comparison and offers a story with more human interest, a much more sympathetic and likable protagonist, and a logical explanation for his superpowers and his good vs. evil outlook. I'm a sucker for the era and the production team has done a splendid job of evoking mid-1940's America, from the World's Fair that Rogers and Bucky visit to the street scenes and street patter of Brooklyn earlier last century.

Even with the shortcomings of the film, the visual effects are generally excellent, Rogers weakling-to-hero story is satisfying and his gradual appreciation for the powers he's been granted made me want to have that Stark Industries Vita-Ray zap me too. Overall, the movie is good fun and one of the best comic book films I've seen in years.