A story that is told at the expense of the larger ideas of its themes cannot, in fact, survive because, much like pedantic continuity details (cough Star Wars fans), a larger theme is not what is compelling about a great story. What’s compelling about a great story is the way that said theme naturally develops from the relationships of characters. One of the best directors at doing this is Alexander Payne. With classics such as Citizen Ruth, Election and The Descendants, Payne and his co-writers crafted stories that plotwise were about characters confronting their horribly corrupted yet horribly pitiful dispositions, but within said stories, they hid stark political and societal messaging that always rung true. The trick about those stories was that the messages were always in the very back of the movie, with the compelling characters and plot holding the entire thing up, only to be supported by the subtext. Downsizing thrusts that subtext into text and doesn’t have a strong enough core of plot or characters to hold itself together, something truly unfortunate because the ideas here are pretty interesting, if possibly wrongheaded. That thesis being presented, the text being at the forefront of a film doesn’t necessarily ruin a movie. Great films from this year like The Shape of Water and The Square thrust their subtexts into text and come out just fine because they have great characters and great stories. Downsizing, which focuses on Matt Damon (sigh) as Paul Safranek, doesn’t really know what to do with Paul himself, who does make a character journey but doesn’t do so naturally. In fact, if I remember correctly, the message of the film is told to the main character in the over caricatured and somewhat uncomfortable accent of his love interest played by Hong Chau (not really sure what to make of the accent). It is that bluntness that allows Downsizing to kind of get away with a lot of its more over the top and just batshit insane concepts, but also that bluntness that robs the film of any intimacy. This is a movie about people coming together in situations that drastically affect the human race, that the movie has nothing to say about other than, “Boy, this one white guy really can help these people,” and “Boy aren’t humans stupid?” That latter one is what most of Payne’s movies are about and in the more contained environments of a high school (Election) or just a friendship (Sideways) he is able to explore this concept in depth without actually getting out of his depth. Here, the ambition that Payne and co-writer Jay Taylor show simply outruns them leaving us with a movie that wants to extol the virtues of humanity on one hand while also take the piss out of them. Again, Payne does that a lot and does it well, but when dealing with big allegorical parts, the smoothness of Payne’s previous features is never present, here. Downsizing is trash but it is trash that only a director like Alexander Payne could make. Hopefully in the future, Payne steps back into a more intimate and focused tier of storytelling, but for now, in his attempt to create a visual effects (and actually pretty effective ones at that) bolstered drama he runs himself off the rails, failing to adequately explore the themes he wishes too and failing to make a great movie for what seems to be the first time. Downsizing gets a 4 out of 10.
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WRITTEN BY JOSEPH TRONICEK
Films are like a beating heart that is constantly trying to die. They start out hammering powerfully, and are at constant risk of slowing down. Sometimes they’re already dead when the screenplay is approved, but most of the time making sure that this doesn’t happen is the responsibility of the crew, actors, and director, and director Joe Wright has never lost a patient. Wright over the course of his career seems to have made it his personal creative need to take all that he has learned about from other filmmakers, and evolve them to his needs. Pride and Prejudice, and Atonement are in just the right vein of Shakespearean melodrama of directors such as Laurence Olivier and David Lean, while Hanna was greatly elevated by a sense of Tarkovsky's natural formalism. That might be an oxymoron but if you know your film you know what I mean. Much like in projects like these, Darkest Hour works because its director has taken the script and applied all of his knowledge of past film, style, and craft to the material, and it just can’t help but to work. The director he’s coping off of to amazing ends this time: Frank Capra. Films like Mr. Smith goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life permeate the films entire production. Wright takes this knowledge, and applies it accordingly. Amazing character actors like Gary Oldman, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, and Kristin Scott Thomas are beautifully composed in scenes that all seem to isolate yet reveal their deepest truths, surrounded by lighting that is high contrast yet strikingly natural. The camera slowly zooms while characters are given monologues thankfully not permeated by music, trust me there’s a moment on a subway that doesn’t drop an inspiring beat and we are so much better for it. This is big, intense, broad strokes filmmaking, and it all works like a beautiful machine. It’s quite an experience to watch it work so perfectly. That doesn’t mean that the film is perfect in all means. The screenplay is one of those that really isn’t very good, and running at such a high intense pace for most of the film makes the moments where is slows down really stand out. The second act contains most of these, containing maybe one two many shots of the prime minister contemplating how screwed he is. Also as mentioned before it seems as if the team would just let the musical score be quiet during some of the bigger moments we would have had a film that felt completely different than something like The King's Speech, which this definitely is not, and would have made for a much richer experience. Overall, Darkest Hour is just one of those movies where everybody shows up, does their job, and the filmmaker has a complete understanding for how the mechanism of film works. It is both similar and different than any of the prestige pictures that you will see this year, and is probably the best example of what cinema as a craft work can be. P.S. Yes Gary Oldman deserves the best actor oscar. I give Darkest Hour a 7 out of 10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a miracle. After the rousing and wonderful The Force Awakens’ safety and adherence to formula, The Last Jedi finds itself in a position of both commenting and evolving on top of that formula. It is a thesis statement, one set forward by its writer and director Rian Johnson, on the collective opinions of the Star Wars fan community, while also being a complex and well informed blockbuster. That shouldn’t be possible, but instead, that is the place that we find ourselves in. Rian Johnson really does just work his magic.
The Last Jedi starts off like a Star Wars movie but soon veers off into darker more intense places. It is a spectacular achievement of storytelling, most likely attributed to Rian Johnson. The screenplay is structured in such a way where it is almost impossible to notice the skill employed in making sure that each new scene is the answer to some question and the structure and filmmaking being that way can’t help but drive the story forward. Johnson covers a whole ton of ground with the film, but what becomes especially apparent is the fact that the individual plot points are there to serve a larger narrative that redefines both the character’s and the audience’s interpretation of the Jedi and Sith. What these films often find themselves doing is ignoring the reality that they are driven by the actions of only a few people, trying to allow the scale of the events outshine the supposedly more contrived character driven storytelling. Johnson doesn’t bother and in doing so, turns his film into quite a messy (but that’s fine) character piece, where the logic of the story is found in the messy, often impulsive behaviors of the characters. If that sounds awfully like The Empire Strikes Back and maybe even some of the more salvageable parts of the prequels, well, I’d say it should. The Last Jedi has no qualms with being ripped open like a nerve and allowing that to dictate the storytelling and therefore it succeeds on a level that many other films, including the still excellent The Force Awakens, fail at. This way of structuring the narrative makes it almost impossible for the film not to comment on the state of the fanbase of Star Wars itself, with it explicitly telling the audience of legacy obsessed fanboys and nitpickers unable to understand the way that they intricacies of human behavior can alter a story to firmly sit down and consider the fact that their way at looking at these films is spectacularly immature. The Last Jedi succeeds then to, within its narrative pacing and thematic ambitions give a mature and interesting answer to them by actually developing the formula further. Johnson seems so in tandem with the particular themes running throughout this series of films that he even comes back and redeems the tematic lining of the Prequels while he’s at it. This movie is that good. While this tonal and thematic choice for the film is the reason why it works so well, going on the messy side of the humans at the center of this story does mean that filmmaking, world-building, acting and basically...everything, would need to be able to keep up the illusion and as Brick, Looper, The Brothers Bloom and “Ozymandias” prove that is just about the case. Johnson shoots some of the most exhilarating action sequences of all time in this film especially a two man lightsaber fight that happens in the second act. There’s a visceral sense to it that is so delectable it almost becomes exhausting and that doesn’t even bring up the final action scene of the film, a gorgeous miracle of digital compositing that is so well crafted that it comes close to outdoing the trench run in A New Hope. The acting, as you’d probably anticipated, is much the same. The returning players: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac are all as good as they were in the last one of these, and they’re all asked to push their characters further because, again, most of the plot and theme comes down to their actions. Newcomers are fantastic as well, with Kelly Marie Tran coming out of nowhere to basically steal an entire subplot of the movie. So, what is there left to say really? The Last Jedi is fantastic in almost every aspect of its being, a rich blockbuster of endless emotion, able to crush and exhilarate. It is a true masterwork, pushing the franchise further than it ever has been. I give The Last Jedi a 9.5 out of 10. P.S. The PORGS are a great little touch of character building that helps tie the good guys goals back to the more unifying nature of the Force and the beauty of the natural planets, and how that contrasts with the cold mechanisms of the warfare in the film. This is code for, THE PORGS ARE FUCKING AWESOME! |
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |