There are many great moments in Robert Zemeckis’s Allied, but my favorite (barring any spoilers) might be near the beginning. Max Vatan (Brad Pitt), a spy who is just arriving in the beautiful city of Casablanca strolls into a bar full of Nazi sympathizers drunk and smoking. The immaculate bar looks like a sort of heavenly painting reflecting a gold hue into the audience. Then, suddenly a woman. One he’s never seen before but has been instructed to love with all his heart. She turns around to see him and smiles with the most beautiful smile one could imagine, and then springs up to hug and kiss him. Two strangers in the most beautiful town in the world falling into character in a second. It’s a beautiful thing to see. There’s an immaculate quality to that moment that Allied doesn’t always keep hold of but much of the time is suspenseful enough to compensate for. The trick to its suspense isn’t exactly what one would expect and might even throw some off of its true beauty, but to those who can fall into the film much like the beautiful characters do this will be an beautiful experience....no I won’t stop saying beauty. That’s hard when you’re talking about a film directed by Robert Zemeckis. The trailers to this movie offer an addicting hook: Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) has started a family with the woman spy who took part in the Casablanca mission with him, one Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard). One day, his bosses in the British intelligence V-Section pull him aside and tell him that his wife might be a German spy and it’s up to him to figure that out. If she is, than Vatan must kill her, if not the whole ordeal will be forgotten. Even if the trailer didn’t make this movie look as good as it actually is, that hook was enough to make me want to see it. Good thing that the actual film really is better than most are regarding it as, though it’s not a surprise that reception hasn’t been exactly glowing. The reason for this is found in the way that the piece juxtaposes the life of a spy and builds suspense. This is done very carefully through little things about the production that don’t seem quite correct. Brad Pitt is good, but he seems a little flat and out of place. The visuals are captivating and believable, but there’s an ever more obvious fact that most of them are digital The effects are good, but they also look old fashioned to a fault even. Marion Cotillard...well she’s just so amazing in everything that it’s not a surprise that she is in this. All of this seems to present and deliberate to have been unintentional, which seems counterintuitive, but it’s not really. The tone instead finds itself never landing on its feet making the film extremely riveting. It’s odd to watch as what should be a flaw allows a film to actually iron out most of its problems, but that’s just what happens here. Brad Pitt doesn’t really fit in, well now I can believe that there’s stakes in him being caught. Nothing feels safe, nothing feels sound and nothing feels right. That’s good, this is a spy movie. There are moments when the film ratchets into place. Gory, brutal moments of violence and moments of passion. Zemeckis takes a time to create a romantic movie out of Allied too, taking advantage of the Casablanca setting to stage romantic scenes strung together with blissful digital transitions. Cotillard and Pitt feel so bonded as a couple that their dedication to the craft is obvious. The moments of passion as just are effective as the moments of violence, even startling. For any misstep, that Allied takes the couple at its center feels perfect. This being a Zemeckis film, no matter what the ending has a touch of sentimentality that should never be underestimated. It feels almost like Forrest Gump or Zemeckis’s other 90’s efforts, which is actually refreshing in this downbeat era of filmmaking Allied is another well-made effort from Robert Zemeckis that seems oddly counterintuitive in the way it builds suspense but does so all the same. This isn’t the movie that will receive the awards, but it’s sure one of the nicest little surprises of this awards season. I give Allied an 8 out of 10.
0 Comments
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Directed by David Yates, Starring: Eddie Redmayne11/20/2016 Fantastic Beasts is a very different beast from Harry Potter in more ways than one. The story structure of setting up, character development, everything important happens at the ending, is still present, but this is a different feeling film. Harry Potter always had a sense of magic behind it. An uplifting lived in and well... magical feel. Fantastic Beasts fails to carry that. The special concoction of joy and mystery that found itself in each Potter film simply isn’t present here, but it can be said that Fantastic Beasts differentiating itself is a good thing. This different just isn’t better. Fantastic Beasts takes place in 1920’s Wizarding New York as Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) enters with a case full of magical creatures. The first two acts will be dedicated to him and these creatures, and in them there is a lot of amazing factors. The first thing is the world. J.K. Rowling world builds very efficiently, and that’s very much the same here. 1920’s New York feels like 1920’s New York, cars lumbering past, and skyscrapers new and shiny. However, this does pose a problem. One of the most incredible things about the Harry Potter films is the way that they contrasted the world human world with the Wizarding World, as the Wizarding world seemed to be stuck in an almost a halt in time, looking like the early 20th century, while the human world evolved more and more over time. It’s fun to see cars and then find yourself looking at a giant beast that takes people places. With the setting of the 1920’s though, both worlds look the same and it takes a lot of the differentiated feeling out of the world. We’ve seen parlors, and mob bosses in the 1920’s, what’s the difference if a tiny, poorly rendered (most of the CG is good, this one guy not so much) goblin is being a mob boss. We’ve seen government raids, we’ve seen parlor singers. This is a familiar world, and not the one of wonder that Potter gave us. It’s still a fine world that is well used but it lacks real magic. If there is an aspect of Fantastic Beasts world that works, it’s there’s a whole number of people who demonize wizards, that attune themselves to a New Salem group ready to burn witches. They come off like a religious cult and are genuinely scary at times. The contrast more comes in the fact that we’re comparing the idealization of the 1920’s that the film has to the shadiest aspects of things that existed in that time period and that’s terrifying. There are many moments that do contain magic, though, and those can be put on the actors and the characters. If Rowing has been always great at worldbuilding, she can do characters in her sleep, and each one here feels new. Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander is the best he’s ever been, mainly because the effect Newt has fits Redmayne very well. Newt’s a little dopey and antisocial, and that fits the physique of Redmayne excellently, much better than his other leading roles have. There’s a crowning moment of his career in which Newt attempts to get a large rhino creature back into his magical case of creatures, by attempting to mate with it, that has a wonderful bravado to it. Redmayne is also just funny and engaging in that moment. Katherine Waterston gets some fun moments too, but her character is kind of the weepy, distressed bumbler, so her shining moment is a heavily disturbing, almost execution. Moments like those and the rhino are what make Fantastic Beasts better than most blockbuster fare. It might be moving too fast for the audience to see the extent of the world, but it’s determined to show us emotional set pieces and that it does. The other few characters are less so established, with Dan Fogler being simply the bumbling idiot, Alison Sudol being a charismatic, ditzy, manipulator that gets some laughs, Colin Farrell as Graves, a government worker, and Ezra Miller as Credence, an abused boy who is part of the New Salem cult. While Newt and friends have a pretty cohesive story that wraps up right before the third act, the one involving Graves and Credence takes up the third as a somewhat convoluted, but intoxicating blunt metaphor takes over the film. That would constitute a spoiler, so I won’t say anything of it, but this story is the reason why Fantastic Beasts kind of fumbles its third act. It all makes sense but when wrapping so many threads up in mostly dialogue there’s a sense of whiplash and clunkiness to the entire thing. The final twist though involving a character is a brilliant moment of a studio all tricking the heck out of us, and an exciting note for the movie to go out on. Fantastic Beasts has plenty of brilliant moments, but it also has plenty of missteps. This is a sweeping, surprisingly scary, imperfect work that is better than most blockbusters bother to be. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them gets a 7.5 out of 10. The phrase “A New American Classic” is thrown around a whole lot in the effort to describe the almost unreachable state that the 70’s left for filmmaking. That’s the moment in time when the “American Classic” was born. The time after the Golden Age when the glamour of the studio system only butted heads with what could be put on screen. The time when Americans needed new, revolutionaries to come in and make them films that had to do with the actual world that they lived in, or allowed them to escape that world. Films like Taxi Driver, Star Wars, The French Connection all needed to happen, and that’s what might just constitute a classic. Is this film necessary? Does it give us something that is desperately needed even if that something is just exciting action? Jackie is a necessary work. Jackie is a work of unprecedented mastery. The reason has to do with grief and the way that it affects people. What can be done about it, and what can allow us to truly understand it? Jackie is about the following days after the death of JFK and an interview that went on between Jackie and reporter, Theodore H. White, following the lavish funeral that she held for a president that many didn’t think deserved such an affair. The first stage is a sense of shock, where the initial event hasn’t sunk in. Natalie Portman, playing Jackie Kennedy in a role that should win her a best actress Oscar (Rebecca Hall should too), runs around hazy and weeping attempting to make sense of the blood on her dress and face. It’s captivating and powerful stuff, done masterfully by director Pablo Larraín. Jackie is at first a film of close-ups, keeping tight and allowing the claustrophobic sense of the ever burdening pressure that comes to all dealing with the assassination of a president to inch into our minds. The Secret Service, Lyndon B. Johnson, everyone stands with the face of confusion, of guilt, of pain. At the center is Jackie Kennedy, who can’t begin to comprehend what just happened. Neither can we as an audience. As the film lays its base it’s incredibly frustrating, but intentionally so. It pushes the feeling of the characters into the audience through tight close-ups that force all actors on deck into somewhat of an endurance test of acting. The spell that the film casts is calculated, and Larraín never lets you out of his hands. Then the film backs out a bit, giving us almost a second stage, where the crushing sense of all of it comes crashing down. The moment when Jackie must tell the children what happened, and accept that her connection to the history of the White House seems almost meaningless The frame widens as more well recreated characters such as Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy start to occupy the film, and the coldness of the big empty house becomes apparent. A great thing about Jackie’s second act is that it understands that at moments of great shock and great grief one can find herself thinking about the simplest of things. What that thing is you couldn’t ever get me to spoil, but it’s shockingly realistic. The facets of the performance in here are just marvelous as the grief slowly turns into guilt. The final so-called stage has to do with the acceptance of this, mainly through the efforts of cinematography. The camera finds itself occupying almost a duet of the first two acts distinct camerawork as cinematographer Stéphanie Fontaine channels Emmanuel Lubezki’s work for Terrence Malick. The close-ups are still claustrophobic and cutting and the wider shots still accentuate the coldness, but as the importance of the administration, the legacy, the things that comfort Jackie come to the surface the styles start to excitingly flow together. The film in all it’s glory solidifies and one finds themselves transported through the nonlinear, dreamy, and poetic imagery into the world of Jackie Kennedy as the film punctuates it’s ending with the glorious feeling of euphoria as hope and understanding once again punctuate the Former First Lady’s life. Now, none of this would work if the screenwriting (Noah Oppenheim of….Allegiant and The Maze Runner...What the hell?) and Larraín’s direction was not on point. The actors aren’t the only one on an endurance test. The way the story unfolds is almost the full reason why it’s so engaging and lusciously absorbing and Oppenheim and Larraín almost effortlessly push everything together. For the third time in this review I’m going to call Portman something of a astonishing presence. She’s surrounded by great actors like John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard, Caspar Phillipson, John Carroll Lynch, Billy Crudup, and Greta Gerwig, all of them collectively bringing to life the exciting moroseness of the events. There’s not really describing the feeling that each actor and each shot allows the audience to feel. By the end, everything is playing together in a wonderful orchestra of filmmaking, of sound design, score, acting and screenwriting. Jackie isn’t just one of the best movies of the year. That’s an insult. This one of the best movies….ever. It’s extremely important on one hand, but it’s also just a damn great, poetically assembled, no punches pulled, GREAT on the level of any important movie of the 70’s piece of filmmaking. Jackie so far should win best picture and I can’t wait to see how it goes over in the awards race. I give Jackie a 10 out of 10. Denis Villeneuve makes dark, and scary movies about things like adultery, the personal ethics of torturing a person, the violent drug trade on the Mexican border and the existential and beautiful sentimentality of the ever expanding beauty of life and the incredible nicety of raising a chil…..wait what just happened there? As joking goes that’s not a very good one, but it just about gets across the surprise that is Denis Villeneuve's Arrival: 1.This isn’t the type of movie that he usually makes, 2. HIs calculated style should not work with an overly sentimental tone without feeling like he’s trying to copy Spielberg (see moments of Interstellar), and 3. This movie is hiding the sentimentality in the middle of it all wrapped up in a spoiler protected bow, which does make it pretty hard to actually talk about what the movie is about. The short answer is that translator, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), possibly fueled on by the recent death of her child at the hands of an unstoppable disease, is called upon by the US military to a remote base located at the base of a large alien spacecraft. Eleven other spacecrafts have landed around the world and other countries aren’t acting quite as well too them. Now, on it’s face that’s a pretty cool story, and this part of the movie works because it feels incredibly grounded and personal into Adams’s perspective. Want to make your movie a globetrotting effort that stays in relatively the same place throughout the entire movie? Ground your movie on an almost miniscule protagonist compared to the rest of the world and hope that that comparison and the existential trappings your movie is using, as well as the simple but spellbinding effects can smooth out the edges .Arrival, does so too. Louise is perfectly played protagonist, as Adams turns in wonderful work and eventually the scale of the movie finds itself feeling both out of our grasp but also intensely intimate. This at first feels slightly off, as those tones shouldn’t fit together, but throughout the first two acts the composure breaking alien imagery (seriously guys there’s a rugged and dark emptiness to the alien ship that is mystifying), actually intense real world reactions by some soldiers to the aliens, and almost over staged, charming dialogue in conversation does a nice job of smoothing out some of those rough edges. Turns out all of this is necessary once the twist of the story actually comes in i.e. I’M ABOUT TO SPOIL THIS AND YOU SHOULD NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE, IT”S GETTING A 9. GO SEE IT. See, after a voiceover section in the middle of the movie that shows Banks and the other scientist working (a very sympathetic Jeremy Renner) out how the alien language works, the aliens start to talk about giving Adams and other countries around the world a weapon. This spooks China and other Eastern governments who decide to mobilize, and as Louis attempts to keep the countries from using weapons, Villeneuve slowly starts to feed us the truth. One thing that’s always been strong in his films is he allows the audience to figure things out rather than just telling them. So, that tangent aside, the alien’s “weapon” happens to be their language, which allows them to look at time non-linearly. Suddenly, we get the sense that Adams, now learning it is also getting a view into time, and that the daughter stuff we thought was motivating her character is actually not even in existence yet. That’s one hell of a twist, but it’s also a genius inversion that allows the same plot point to have emotional bearing on both the beginning of the movie and the end. The stakes soon become focussed on how Louise can use this newfound ability to stop the world from falling apart but more importantly whether or not she will allow the sad reality that she knows is coming (her daughter living and then dying from a debilitating disease) to happen. This sounds like the type of ending that would probably piss off a lot of people, but the movie promises it in the earlier tone of epic yet intimate. Eventually, the melancholy longing that comes with allowing a life, with all it’s good and bad moments imposes take over the film in a strong finish. Arrival is a film one could imagine Spielberg making now as a rebuttal to his more cynical 70’s alien fare in that while Spielberg split families apart in an effort to create a broader realization of life and how one would deal with beings from another planet, Arrival brings them together. Both versions are not half bad I give Arrival a 9 out of 10. A lot has been said on the “Marvel origin formula” and how it, unfortunately, creates lacking films. That’s an overstatement. It just makes very similar, all good, films. The real determination is whether or not Marvel can make the character of interest different enough to be its own thing. That’s where Doctor Strange excels. The story is not that much of an alteration of the formula, but instead of being driven by character, the movie seems more driven by external universe forces as the one little guy seems to be running around trying to figure it out as it goes along. This is a good idea, as Doctor Strange as a character is basically Tony Stark and in much the same way needs to have de-jerk-ified (that’s a word right there). Strange is a cocky jerk who is smarter than most people that he is associated with and he knows it too. This is actually the biggest flaw with the film. At its start, Doctor Strange doesn’t really differentiate itself from some of the other Marvel films and therefore doesn’t feel special, other than Marvel casting Michael Stuhlbarg who deserves any work that he’s given. The script near the beginning feels like it was punched up in a day to simply spell out enough to get us to realize Strange is a jerk (a weird angle to see Benedict Cumberbatch play, I mean at least Sherlock is likable) and that he’ll go on a hero's journey to stop being a jerk and everything will be fine. That’s where this movie actually becomes special because Stephen Strange doesn’t actually become better. For all the heroism, and fighting and hubris of surviving a near fatal car crash he’s still stuck up and superior by the end of the movie, but he’s getting better. In fact, it’s this stuck up superiority that keeps the movie interesting and allows the film to be driven by the plot rather than the character. Strange doesn’t change very much, which allows the focus to be more on the world and how it’s affected by him. Doctor Strange is a setup movie and the exposition dumps are present but the focus on the overall, big picture events keeps this from being a big deal. That each new dump reveals some new awesome, mind-boggling special effect helps too. There’s just enough of Marvel’s trademark tongue in cheek dialogue to make all of the character’s personable, especially Wong, the librarian and Mordo (Oscar winner Chiwetel Ejiofor). Mordo’s character arch throughout the film is an example of how Marvel continues to succeed in setting up other storylines for its film universe to expand and by the end of the film not only does he seem to change the way that sorcerers stand in the Marvel universe, but also the idea that maybe the heroes aren’t always great or right. This all culminates in a completely against form anticlimax that stands as one of the smartest inversions of Marvel’s origin story formula and serves to be very funny, something that Doctor Strange consistently is. The best thing Doctor Strange has going for it though is the fact that it feels like a movie about discovery. That feeling a wonderment that comes from the pages of a comic book as a comic character discovers a wonderful power or a powerful wonder is the beating heart of the movie. With that, the best visual effects of the year, and enough changes to the narrative formula, Doctor Strange is certainly more fun than Civil War and is a magical time at the movies. Doctor Strange gets an 8.5 out of 10. Review by Stephen Tronicek If there’s one thing that made me question whether or not I liked Hacksaw Ridge (other than the more superficial problem of third act being pretty repetitive and weak compared to the first two) was the concept of religion in it, a big elephant in the room with any film (other than Braveheart and Apocalypto) in anything Mel Gibson. Hacksaw Ridge has a distinct sense of religion baked into it that the stigma of it is unavoidable. That said we all want religion to be something for the good of all people (at least I hope we do) and that’s more or less the stance that Hacksaw Ridge takes. That religion is more for the good of the hero and the people around him in the literal hell-scape that they occupy and that it brings people together and keeps them from violence. And despite that tangent, which is more like the first thing I wanted to say, Hacksaw Ridge is something that you should see, if only because it’s smartly written and pristinely directed to show the true horrors of the war that it portrays. The whole first act is really just setup but it serves the purpose of making the audience comfortable with the main character and the worldview that he occupies. Desmond Doss is a conscientious objector, meaning that he cannot touch a weapon or dole out violence in any way. This becomes problematic when you’re in an area where killing is your job. The most important thing about the opening act of Hacksaw Ridge is that it’s sugar-sweet and cheesy to the point of almost second-hand embarrassment, but this works mainly because the screenwriters are intelligent enough to address the audience and put them in the mind space for it too. There’s a conversation in which, in the attempt to pick up a girl, the main character says something extremely cheesy and when her response is commenting on that fact that it was, Doss responds in saying he’d worked on the line all night, smiling like an idiot. This is almost a reassurance to the audience telling them, “Yes, we understand that we’re corny, but we’re also completely earnest about it, so give us a break.” The delivery of the lines from Andrew Garfield, playing Doss, with an ungodly sense of optimism and levity and his costar Teresa Palmer’s mirror personality makes the whole scene enjoyable. This optimism doesn’t always work well with the complex mix of PTSD issues that Hugo Weaving brings as Desmond’s father, and the patriarchal view of all of this stews into feeling a bit sickening, but it’s all just likable enough. The following training sequences are the highlight of this beginning act though as the film allows us to laugh at the soldiers in a way many war movies don’t. The abject racism of Vince Vaughn as the drill Sergeant, a muscular Clark Gable type realizing too late that being naked when drills start does not mean you get to put your pants on and a young man with a knife in his foot having to explain it to his superior officer are all really funny situations, especially since they are all making fun of the subjects (a surprise on Gibson’s part). Then again, if you’re like me, you’re not really there for the drama or the laughs, even if they do really work, You’re there to see what type of adrenaline pumping, traumatizing thing Gibson has put on screen. Gibson’s violence has always been strong gory stuff but just detached enough to be exciting rather than upsetting always, though there are moments of Apocalypto where the thing truly goes scary as hell. Hacksaw Ridge delivers the same amount of Mel Gibson violence but he does what most filmmakers are a little too noble to do. He casts the entire thing as a straight horror show, complete with jump scares and unrelenting violence. I’d personally say that I have a desensitization to some violence, but when the first battle scene of Hacksaw was done, I was shaking in my seat and gritting my teeth. That first battle ranks up with the work that Gibson did in Braveheart and deserves to be seen if just for the numbing effect that it sends you into. The battle is especially easy to follow and because you laughed with these men it’s literally painful to watch them run through hell. The amount of violence that Gibson dishes out is warranted, but the numbing feeling does have side effects eventually, as Gibson’s own audacity to be so violent starts to wear thin over time. As Doss starts to save people, well that’s all the movie turns into and it often feels like it’s running out the clock too often. There’s a montage of him saving a lot of people….after he’s done so for the past 20 minutes. The film simply slows to a crawl and thankfully ends quickly after that. Hacksaw Ridge is an odd mixture of a film. Each section of the film is resoundingly strong for the most part and yet lacking in others. The question as to whether or not Mel Gibson is back? Ok, fine he’s ok...hopefully, there are no more rants. Hacksaw Ridge gets an 8 out of 10. Review by Stephen Tronicek Christine is about the quiet intensity of depression. Those moments when you’re sitting alone or in a crowd of people with one urge, and one urge only. The urge to cry and maybe, if you have the energy, scream. There are many moments where the masters of the film, who are directors Antonio Campos and Rebecca Hall, allow this feeling to bleed through the screen and into the audience. This is what makes Christine so horrifying and empathetic This feeling of disconnect and paranoia is extremely important to the film as a whole. It takes place in the wake of the Nixon impeachment, at a moment in time when there seemed no sense of security—when even the president could be caught lying. In this thick tone of the 70’s we are transported to the warmly colored, dirty, cramped offices of WXLT-TV Sarasota, where the reporters work hard, but it’s not enough. Where the cigarette smoke of Mike (a better than ever, Tracy Letts) seeps into the walls. Where the colors of a once new and high tech news station have faded, and the yellowing tar of tobacco and coffee has stained everything. There’s always a sense of disparity to the interpretation of the newsroom, but also an innocence in its bright colors and homey demeanor. This is simply not the place for someone to commit suicide. The people we’ve come to know here are desperate, but supportive, nobly trying to present the news and not end up in a place of more and more insecurity. And then there’s the odd woman out—that one poor soul, still living with her mother and desperately trying to overcome both the disparity of the workplace and the depression that permeates her worldview and lifestyle. This is where Rebecca Hall comes in. Hall, from whom I’ve seen good performances, has an incredible burden as she plays this part. Chubbuck is a selfish, self absorbed, antisocial character but her actions are more filtered through the monstrosity of her depression, rather than the actions of a functioning person. This forces Hall to play the role to such an extent as to blur the line of when the audience truly sees Chubbuck or Chubbuck filtered through the veneer of professionalism that she holds onto to function in the news station. Rebecca Hall’s work as Chubbuck is one of the best performances by an actress of the year, and I hope that she is given some consideration as the Academy Awards start to ramp up. The great thing about the performance and all these layers is that they never call too much attention to themselves. There’s a morose feeling hanging over the entire production for obvious reasons, but it’s understated, never bringing down the truly inspired moments of filmmaking or the levity that any of the co workers show each other. There’s a specific scene of all of the reporters at a party that reminded me of Boogie Nights, in the way incorporates a lovely longshot. That’s a lofty comparison and Christine’s scope is nowhere near that film’s, but what Christine lacks in scope it makes up in personality. The moroseness while understated serves to make everything in the movie, really, really, creepy. The studio might seem homey, but there’s just enough creepy to it hanging from the sidelines, dooming everyone who goes in. The perception of us being through the depressed eyes of Christine is terrifying, but most frighteningly, it’s realistic. It might be a gimmick to use aperture on a camera (blurring or clearing up the foreground and background of a picture) to show the haze of depression, but in Christine, director Campos almost allows it to sneak up on you mid-scene. The result is mystifying while also alarming. For as much credit as I’ve given Campos and Hall, the other players of the film are impressive as well. Michael C. Hall’s bravado as George Ryan is intoxicating, drawing the eye. There are plenty of twists that undermine that bravado in a perfect way, and C. Hall is equally. This is his best performance since he finished Dexter and he’s always had the creepy demeanor to fit right in with stories of gore and sadness. Speaking of gore, the moment, when it comes is as shocking as the filmmakers could make it. Literally, traumatizing in its effect, intentionally made to look slightly off to fit the hyper reality that the period piece requires. The sense of intensity and panic that comes with it as everyone realizes that it’s not just some sick joke is crushing. The film, through its silent intensity, through the empathy with a character, who just needs a hug, who just needs life to go alright, draws you in and gives you that intensity passes it to you . It’s not comfortable. It’s not pretty. It’s real. And in that reality Christine becomes on of the best films of the year. I give Christine a 10 out of 10. The Accountant is effectively playing the same game that Soderbergh did with Haywire or that Fincher did with Gone Girl. The plotting and screenplay on this thing are as ludicrous as they come, but Gavin O'Connor has just as intense of an eye for action as the former, and the true skills of the latter to take The Accountant from just a distraction to being a more amazing Batman movie...than the Batman movie that actually just came out. That comparison doesn’t come lightly. Not only does The Accountant star Ben Affleck, who is currently playing the caped crusader in the DCEU, it’s also about an autistic, mild-mannered accountant who has a secret lair and can brutally beat anyone who he believes to be doing something wrong, determined to save those who need to be saved, while also blending into the real world. Oh, and also (spoilers!!!!) he has an “Oracle” like figure aka a so-called “woman with a computer who finds stuff out for him and provides the cops with information” to help him on his missions. Oh, and he has been contacting J.K. Simmons as a government agent of incredible merits helping Simons deal out justice after Simmons witnessed him killing a few men. Now, guess who Simmons might play in the DCEU. Commissioner Gordon, the cop who helps Batman smite his enemies. Now that’s all just connections, and not really a review, but intertextuality really is a big part of the enjoyment fact of The Accountant. As a film it’s kind of flaccid but engaging feeling bared down enough for the audience to buy the ridiculousness at its core, but with the added perk that Christian Wolff ( The Accountant) is basically Batman is actually enough to sway me towards saying that this is actually kind of a good movie. There’s plenty of other things other than this that bring The Accountant up. Ben Affleck is one of the best actors now, a truly fascinating performer. There’s a kindness to the coldness of the delicately played autism Affleck infuses into this role that makes Wolff startlingly empathetic, and because a righteous man murdering bad guys to save the one’s he loves in glorious “movie violence” is always fun, so is The Accountant. There’s a beautiful feeling of hysterical fear that comes with the bad guys realizing that they are wrong in not thinking that Wolff is formidable, and it almost becomes a particularly exciting thing to see Wolff dole out punches and gunshots with the precision of say John Wick mainly because of his compulsive need to perfectly do everything. Affleck really is good at conveying that and his little bursts of happiness or kindness are a lovely sight. The rest of the cast is of a surprising caliber including a wise-cracking Jon Bernthal, playing a funny version of The Punisher, and Anna Kendrick being finally compelling in a movie where you’re actually supposed to take her seriously. Gavin O'Connor is also just really good at the type of “R” rated violence going on here. Sometimes the lighting of action is a little low but it’s all still hard-hitting, even funny near the ending as a plot twist turns Bernthal into a sniveling mess trying to appeal to Wolff who is just not really able to have any of it. It’s actually kind of funny. The realm of belief here is stretched pretty thin to the point where none of the movie coheres, but that doesn’t mean it can not be awesome. It just can’t be great. Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal and Gavin O’Connor all but force The Accountant into being an entertaining action movie, and they succeed pretty frequently. Also, BATMAN!!!. The Accountant gets an 8 out of 10. Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children will now forever hold a special place in my critical heart. This is a fascinating film, one of the very worst of the year, but it contains such scenes that I will never forget seeing...so that’s weird. This doesn’t actually happen that often because, well, there’s usually a correlation between great scenes and a pretty darn good movie, but every once in awhile a movie actually comes up that is as a whole really, really bad, but contains such mind-meltingly amazing moments that it’s hard to recognize just how bad the movie actually is. It gets even more difficult when a director like Tim Burton is helming the whole enterprise because Burton, while not always great has always been genuinely unique and informed by large melodramatic emotions that are sumptuous to take in. That’s the reason why Miss Peregrine can be a really godawful movie, but also awesome. The largest problem is there’s not actually much of a plot. The internal mythology of the entire world is the only thing that builds a sequence of events here. Characters don’t naturally evolve or convincingly emote or fight, instead, the world gets explained by characters who are fully formed and never truly explored. Yes, the fact that each character is fully formed as they come into the story is a good thing, but that’s less through dialogue and more through stylistic touches, and that part is most likely attributed to the savior of this garbage fire: Tim Burton. Burton’s genuine talent as a filmmaker is the only thing that saves sections of this movie, as the entire mythology of the piece is informed with a blend of complex emotions. The house that the titular Miss Peregrine and the children live in is located in a time-loop, aka a fixed day that Miss Peregrine rewinds each night. The day happens to be one in which a bomb was dropped on the house that the children lived in killing all of them. Now, if that sounds like a frustratingly over thought piece of prose, it is, but the way that Burton spins his imagery around it is beautiful, almost informing the impending bomb with all the historical value of all the lives taken by them. His morbid, but creative style is just the thing to do that too. The use of music combined with gas mask-wearing children is typical Burton, and it’s great to see his style come out through this. All this said his application to more of the real world as it is in the present day doesn’t feel correct at all...that is until Burton pulls out the rock music, and the CGI monsters and skeletons fighting each other in an amusement park. Once this scene hits it’s hard not to be swept up in the propulsive action that Burton puts on screen, even if it does feel very small scale. It’s hard to believe that he has even put some of these images on the screen, and the effect is truly breathtaking in its absurdity. But these small flashes of absolute amazingness cannot save what is still ultimately a drab no-stakes mess. The actors even feel a bit off. Asa Butterfield, acts somewhat whiny and just unsympathetically as a lead, and Eva Green is boring, something I’d never thought was possible. The only one that comes out of this without truly embarrassing himself is Samuel L. Jackson, who is so pitch perfect but underutilized as the villain that it’s almost fascinating. But then again, Miss Peregrine’s is a truly awful picture, awkward in all moments, awesome in some. Tim Burton looked like he was ready to make good movies again after the excellent, Big Eyes, but that isn’t quite the case. Burton puts some mind-blowingly entertaining stuff on screen for this film, but it’s just a dull adventure to be had. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children gets a 4.5 out of 10. The Magnificent Seven: Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Starring: Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt9/29/2016 Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven is the best type of likable bad movie. On one hand it’s an unsatisfying character piece with too many people running around (not that this is Fuqua’s or the screenwriters fault), but on the other hand the film embodies the build, if not ever the pacing of Leone's Dollars Trilogy becoming gleefully engrossing over time. It’s not good, but deliriously involving, is the best way to put it. How it gets there is what’s so interesting because as is the flaws are more built into premise then they are built into anything that the actors or the director present. With seven characters and a mandated two hour running time to get the optimum number of shows per day, nobody’s going to get all that much character whatsoever, leading to a problem when you have Seven characters to set up. Despite this, the Seven do actually become somewhat engaging through an almost Coen-esque build of introductions, where each moment is infused with a sense of either gruesome violence or off putting jokes but these don't last too long. The film feels like a typical team up movie, but they left too many of the character spots in the dialogue, rather than the well...character. Then again, the fact that this team is significantly more diverse than your typical team up movie, (looking at you Marvel), the character tension may have intentionally been skimped on to call attention to the subtle racial tensions in the group, but overall it’s not enough. The first hour here is just substandard as the paper-thin, yet wonderfully played characters meet and this section just feels like it needed more room to breathe. Like it needed a 3 hour runtime, and individual introductions like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. That said, maybe that’s not quite the case because when the final 45 minutes (guesstimating there), of battle actually start to roll, it’s genuinely difficult not to root for every single one of the Seven, and that’s probably because as much as they are non entities, their overall disjointed personalities make for an amusingly human side to the whole team. Sure, not enough is given of each of them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not funny as hell to watch Vincent D'onOfrio, the scariest villain of the Marvel Universe, appear as a mousy voiced, almost helplessly traumatized fighter, or Chris Pratt playing his modern idealistic caricature of a cowboy against the overall darkness of the movie. In fact when the deaths in the group do come (don’t call that a spoiler) the overall sadness of each one of them is too compelling to ignore. There’s also what seems to be a rushed (like everything else) homage to Once Upon a Time in the West that while rushed lands because of Denzel Washington's impecable acting and the late James Horner's and Simon Franglen's compelling score. The one thing that isn’t contradictory in the categories of unsatisfying, yet compelling is the action that Fuqua has set up. This was much the same with last years, overrated, even by me, Southpaw. Fuqua’s western violence explode in moments of actual results to violence that suggest that the age of actually bloody PG-13 films might be coming back. The suspense that builds between each gruesome death is filled up with the ever escalating PG-13 violence deaths which very oddly creates suspense on the side of when the next more violent death will come. The camerawork that Fuqua employs is furious too, absolutely thrilling in every way even as the PG-13 bloodless violence fills the screen. Perspective is a big deal for Fuqua, and those that he employs, like the lone Chris Pratt ducking in a wooden shed backgrounded by a charging army of men on horseback are both beautiful and thrilling in composition. So, is The Magnificent Seven a good movie? No. Is it thrilling and engrossing, and hilarious at times? Yes. Go see it, enjoy a few hours in a crazy cowboy film. The Magnificent Seven gets a 7 out of 10. Clint Eastwood’s flat, staged, clean style has not benefited him of late. The cleaned up style worked with the rose color glasses Eastwood presented on WWII, but that was mainly because content wise Flags of Our Fathers revealed a sinister exploitation in such glasses and Letters From Iwo Jima was simply too violent and cruel as to rip off the glasses and smash them on the ground. His style seems to work best when he’s subverting it with something, not just playing it straight, but to many that’s all Sully will be. A flatly composited, small effort that doesn’t seem to have too much at stake. This is not quite the case. Sully, about the “Miracle on the Hudson” aka the landing of a airplane on the Hudson River by Captain “Sully” Sullenberger after losing both engines due to birds slyly gives a reason for Clint Eastwood’s almost fake looking composites. It may seem like a backhanded compliment, but intentionally or not Eastwood has stumbled into yet again subverting his own filmmaking style. The key to breaking down the film is how he has actually done that. The records broken in this review when it comes to the description of Eastwood’s filmmaking style in this film. It’s simply a little awkward and unrealistic, but through narrative layering that actually seems pretty intentional. The film is mainly focussed on the investigation in the aftermath of the crash, which overall doesn’t seem to have that much heft to it. The capable drama to pull out of it is minimal unfortunately as not really all that much of true stakes happened. To anyone who actually knows the results of the investigation the dramatic core of the film would probably be ripped out... if this movie were being played as a straight drama, barring any underlying emotions and simply telling the story. Eastwood hasn’t done this. He’s done something better. It become readily apparent through excellent work of the whole cast, mainly from an almost effortlessly excellent Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart, that the aftermath of the Hudson landing is both subtly and unsubtly hazy and dreamy for both Sully and his co pilot (Eckhart). Now this is very easily shown in these big money shot IMAX nightmares that Sully has ie. him crashing the plane into buildings, but it’s also subtly represented in the way that the film stages the aftermath of the event (which is the whole movie) in a way that almost comes off like a miles more serious and subtle version of the parody sitcom in Natural Born Killers, in that the reality that we are witnessing is less true events and more the awkward weirdly skewed dreamlike reality that Sully and his co-pilot having both experienced a near death experience are for the time being stuck in. This stigmatizes the production creating a Rockwellian or even Lynchian tone which becomes the driving dramatic engine for a film that taken simply on it’s own merits would most likely crumble. Honestly, if directed by Spielberg, the film would have achieved a greatness probably in the heart of the character, but this enticing angle might have been lost. As far as the surface material goes Eastwood’s calm creation of the events preceding the crash excellently contrast the adrenaline rush that comes with each time we watch the plane fall from the sky, though this crash never really reaches Flight levels of intensity. Unfortunately, the previously described tone sometimes can’t hold the film up as it continues through such a light story, but for the most part Hanks and the implications of Eastwood’s own subversion of style make Sully certainly worth seeing. Sully gets an 8 out of 10. Don’t Breathe is a tiresome piece of work, but that’s for good and bad reasons. On one hand, the genuine adrenaline that the film forces you to use up is exhausting and even nauseating. Considering that this is a horror film that’s all good, though. The other tiresome reason is, unfortunately due to directional tact the film becomes much more sloppy than it should be. No, that’s not to say that Fede Alvarez is a bad director, or that his direction of this film is particularly weak, it’s only to say that under the circumstances direction is related to tone and here the tonal contrivances really show. The reason for this is because of the way that the story plays out. Three robbers, the main character being a mother named Rocky (Jane Levy), attempt to rob the house of a blind man (Steven Lang), only to realize that he is extremely fatal. As the night goes on, more and more is revealed and the shocking truth comes out. That actually makes for an shocking if a little floaty premise. Only Rocky and the Blind Man are given any motivation, letting us know that the others are expendable, but it’s intense and compelling stuff, especially since Alvarez pulls his greatest tricks out of the bag at the beginning of the film. He stages an early tracking shot that displays tools that will later be used in brutal ways parallelling the house establishing shot in Panic Room. His best little addition to this is that he assigns a sound effect to almost every item that will be used in the bloodshed. This calls a very intense focus on sound in the film, matching the Blind Man, but also gives a semblance of structure for the rest of the film. Subconsciously, when a noise is heard it means that that item will appear causing a large amount of dread. The main problem with the film as it goes along is that Alvarez doesn’t continue this early focus. The premise calls for a continually twisting plot, so soon things just start forcibly happening, as more and more random situations keep beating the hell out of the robbers. It all seems a little much, and some of it seems unnecessary as suspenseful as it all is. The film’s turning point and scariest scene is shocking but it is never grounded in the rest of what’s going on. It was never really set up. When the items that were signaled by the sound effects do appear, Alvarez smartly pulls off his intelligent trick, but he does it sloppily. Soon, the forced nature of the continuing events of the story start to really show. Lacking the directorial focus that was set up the film just gets more tiresome as it comes along. Don’t Breathe is a fine film though, and that’s on the back of both Alvarez and the actors he’s brought together. The events of Don’t Breathe are horrifying and the actors perfectly pull them off, but it’s how the events relate to the actors that truly scare. Steven Lang is scary as hell, but a female-centric exploitation focussed on recent horrors of the same form are scarier than anything that Lang or Alvarez throw on screen. The overall twist of the movie is terrifying and sad bring a dreaded feeling to the movie. If anyone should be making Resident Evil movies it’s Fede Alvarez. Paired with excellent performances from the protagonist, her partner and Lang, despite its flaws Don’t Breathe is horrifically believable. Don’t Breathe doesn’t always use the directional flourishes it has to its benefit but it’s still a disturbing and just fine ride. As a buckled down thriller it’s certainly worth 88 minutes. Don't Breathe gets an 8 out of 10. Laika has made two of the greatest films of all time, and two good, but underwhelming ones. Coraline is a scary masterpiece and Paranorman is so emotionally wrenching and important that in its greatness will never be understated. The Boxtrolls was more slapstick silliness but was just bizarre enough to mess with the conventional trappings that it was part of. Kubo and the Two Strings is a film that while creative as Laika has ever gotten seems to bungle its own premise by being too compromised. The route that it takes is new and heartfelt, but it’s not satisfying, unfortunately. This new route goes a little like this: by using the pre-built idea that this kids movie will automatically include a message, the film dangles a fulfilling one in front of our faces and then out of nowhere swaps it away. That’s some complex story mechanics there, but the reason it doesn’t work is because the message that we end up getting is less satisfying and meaningful than the one proposed in the beginning. Kubo is our young protagonist who can control origami paper using his own magic and a magic guitar. One night he stays out too late, in order to contact the spirit of his father, and is found by his night dominating grandfather, the Moon King and his aunts, all mystical “God” like characters attempting to take revenge on Kubo’s mother for leaving them and trying to rip out the one eye Kubo has left (they took the other one). That’s a lot of exciting setup that’s wholly original, and the film cleverly establishes the rules though a beautifully animated story that Kubo tells with paper, and a heavy helping of exposition (one of the film’s biggest problems). All of this set up pretty much works though. Kubo is an understandable character, the Moon King and the sisters are “Other Mother” from Coraline menacing, and the disparity of Kubo’s mother to protect him is emotionally satisfying. The opening moments are so overwhelmingly impressive from an animation set up, you might swear you were just watching real people. It’s beautiful. But then the first message comes in. Through a series of events Kubo must go find three pieces of mystical armour: a sword, a breastplate, and a helmet, with the help of a monkey (Charlize Theron) and a Beetle-man (Matthew McConaughey). As the trip progresses, it all seems ok. The message is obvious. A melancholy look at the way that in a modern world sometimes your family wants to hurt you and it’s important to trust adults that will always be good to you. That’s an important and relevant message having to do with trust in foster parents and the meaning of true kindness from a guardian...that the film completely cops out on. As the film twists and turns it takes the original setup that is so lush and takes it in unsatisfyingly easy routes. The emotional maturity of the material is important to consider, but the new message about the legacy of the dead seems forced into the movie, and is less grounded than the original one considering whether or not family is really good for the characters. It makes one think that the chaotic group fight that would have been all but mandatory in the climax was not possible for Laika to pull off because of budgetary or creative reasons and it’s unfortunate that this cripples the emotional throughline of the movie. All that said, Kubo is easily one of the most impressive animated films technically ever made. Stop-motion animation proves itself to do anything in this film. It’s marvelously impressive, especially one of the most thrilling of the year taking place between Monkey and one of the evil sisters. The difficulty of Kubo comes mainly in the fact that looking at all of its parts it’s a truly breathtaking film. Everything that leads to its downfall isn’t all that bad either, presenting a sense of maturity that is not often seen. The film just doesn’t really add up or feel all that good, and with all the beautiful work that went in, it really should. Kubo and the Two Strings gets a 6.5 out of 10. Empathy is tricky, but when it’s there, it’s there. Its power can overshadow the horrors that characters perform, and the barriers between good and evil. At the pivotal moment of Hell or High Water, the pure breed of the anti-hero tension is born as any narrative intensity is bled from both the good guys and the bad guys. That’s the true strength all the way through the film, about two brothers robbing banks. As mechanically well pulled off as the story is, the emotions of brotherly love somehow find a way into working. Seriously, Hell or High Water is so well put together as a thriller that you almost expect it to become too boring in its perfection like the bad Christopher Nolan movies. Wait, scratch that, the 8/10 Christopher Nolan movies. But it never does. Instead, the emotion of the film stays and grows to build on both the anxieties of living in modern America and the evil that sits in all of us. Hell or High Water is the type of intelligent screenplay that plays our own want to be politically correct and good against us as it uses both concepts to make us bring both sides of the characters down to in some way “evil.” Yes, Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby (Chris Pine) Howard are robbing banks, but Jeff Bridges' old sheriff is uncompromisingly and uncomfortably racist to his Native American/Mexican partner, Alberto (Gil Birmingham). Bridges' sincerity combined with his gruff nature kind of brings him down to the standing in our minds as just another mean old man, and probably meaner than the two brothers. Especially since the brothers have a good reason to do what they are. The greatness of the film is the moment that it takes the piss out of you for siding with the robbers and judging the sheriff, simply because he’s being irreverently racist. The moment that this happens isn’t worth spoiling, but it’s a deliriously shocking moment of character realization. You realize in this moment that the sheriff, who is soon to be retired, has been being racist as simply a thin layer of bravado, trying to keep himself masculated as he nears the end of his career. The moment is both shocking because it almost completely dehumanizes things that we liked about the robbers (who for the record have been charming all the way through) and reveals all the depth of the sheriff. Now you have to live with rooting for the brothers to make it on their crime spree, and all the horrible implications that rooting for that has for the characters in the story. Hell or High Water’s ability to play with audience empathy and what that means to both the film and to the audience is masterful. It’s moments like the one described above that raises the film above the pack in doing this. This is a film that through character, theme, and our own prejudice makes us own our support for the anti-heroes at its center. The direction of David Mackenzie has always been smooth, but brutal. His Starred Up proved to be a masterpiece of prison cinema, but through a sequence of one-shots and brutal pov shots, Mackenzie outdoes himself here. His camera easily becomes the essential world building engine, using close-ups to lend an intense sense of chase to the brothers from both the sheriff and the bank and quick loan programs that have financially crippled everyone around them. This is a message movie for all intents and purposes and it wears its message not just on its sleeve but plastered to its face. Every aspect of the set design, performances, and camerawork suggests a world of poverty and people struggling to rid themselves of it, and that focus drives the entire film along with the complex character mechanics. Hell or High Water is a not too often seen spectacle. It’s a stressful, thrilling Western, with a lot to say. It sets up impossibly empathetic characters and then makes it genuinely impossible to not feel for both sides once everything falls apart. This is a genuine piece of perfection in a year of only a few. Come, Hell or High Water, don’t miss it. Hell or High Water gets a 10 out of 10. There’s a moment near the end of Mike Birbiglia's Don’t Think Twice when Sam (Gillian Jacobs) stands alone on a stage, her four friends having abandoned their improv group as they all try to simply move on and become new people. The group, “The Commune” was a group of people slavishly devoted to the art of improv theater and dreamed of gigs on Weekend Live (you just guess what that’s making fun of). As you can tell this is a film completely built on improv through and through. That’s why it makes sense that Birbiglia would structure the piece as if it were an improv performance. There are six major characters to cover in Don’t Think Twice: Miles, Sam, Jack, Lindsey, Allison, and Bill. Each of them needed a proficient amount of screen time to make the movie work. That’s particularly hard balance to place, but the secret is simple. Don’t Think Twice is masterfully built. It introduces us to the characters while they are performing at the beginning, setting up each character's importance to the story through their importance in the improv sketch. Sam starts off the show front and center because she is the most important character, and the story’s themes hinge on her. Everybody else is relegated to the back because while they are integral to the plot (they are part of the show to say), they are nowhere near as important as Sam. And then from the beginning Sam’s story starts even if she’s not necessarily the driving force of the plot at the moment. It’s like a great improv sketch. Soon everyone who is part of the show has started to add their little section of the story. Bill’s father is in the hospital, Jack is getting the opportunity of a lifetime, Lindsey is troubled, Allison is desperately trying to be happy and dealing with past mistakes and Miles is trying to find a way to outdo his students who seem to be leaving him in the dust. Everything about these characters is well defined and well thought out, and while some may get overshadowed by others (Lindsey and Allison don’t get that much to do), it never matters that they don’t because they aren’t the front and center characters. Blocking and movement in the first scene define the structure of the movie, and then the film takes that and knocks it out of the park. The best part of all of this is that Don’t Think Twice never feels like it’s doing this on purpose. There’s never any sense that the internal story mechanics are being pushed any specific way and that’s most likely because of the improvisational delivery that the film brings to the plate. All of the actors from Birbiglia to Keegan-Michael Key to Gillian Jacobs feel almost like they are playing themselves keeping a realistic and hilarious beat to all the delivery. There are lines that seem to push for “iconic and scripted,” but even those fail to seem that way. Instead, they land with an elegant poignancy that all but continues to elevate the proceedings. Plus, these people are writers. You can believe they’re going to say something pretentious every once in awhile and that in itself is kind of funny. All that aside, the most important thing about Don’t Think Twice is that as a movie it’s optimistic. It’s about how people who have become slavishly devoted to an art form are both harmed and benefited by that form, but mostly about what happens whenever they can transcend the idea that they need anything else other than that love.for art and each other. For someone with the constant worry that everything won’t be ok If they don’t succeed that’s a beautiful prospect. This is an oasis of optimism that is incredibly beneficial. If you love art and want to make it more than anything in the world Don’t Think Twice understands that and encourages that even in the darkest of times that passion is something you can always fall back on. Besides, it’s a strong film even without those implications and masterfully balances the ability to feel spontaneous. Don’t Think Twice gets a 10 out of 10. There have been so many great, but forgettable British biopic movies coming out in the past few years, i.e. The King’s Speech, The Imitation Game...etc, that it’s almost become infuriating how excellent all of them are. Game is close to a masterpiece. This is why it comes at such a harrowing surprise that Florence Foster Jenkins while funny, and saccharine, is broken on a fundamental level. On one hand, that might seem oddly fitting because each character is broken in some way. They all have dreams they want to achieve but have failed in doing so. Meryl Streep’s Madame Florence wants to be a concert singer and pianist but can’t really because she can’t sing and has syphilis so the nerves in her hand are damaged. Hugh Grant is her husband, a man who loves and takes care of Florence, but wishes to live with his girlfriend, played by Rebecca Ferguson (so good in Mission Impossible 5). He’s also a failed actor. Simon Helberg plays Cosmere Macmoo, a concert pianist of high ambitions heavily caught off guard by the fact that he’s playing with a woman who cannot sing. Streep is doing spectacular character work that she is usually cast for. Hugh Grant is mugging to the camera in his wonderful British way, and Helberg is using unsubtle sitcom acting, that while less fitting, milks a joke out of every scene he takes part in. All of these elements combined should theoretically create a fine film grabbing for Oscars. But it doesn’t. While all of those prestigious actors are fine in their roles, again, the film is broken through its own screenplay and direction. Grant’s character, as the film shows us, is much happier with his girlfriend while also being slavishly devoted to Florence. But the girlfriend and he seem so happy together and everyone seems so annoyed with Florence that you start to hope for Grant to end up with the girlfriend, which in turn leaves the story of Florence in a place where you don’t actually care. By the end of the film as Florence prepares to sing at Carnegie Hall the sense is one of why does this matter? Sure, Florence is inspiring, but why would you care about this poor, but irritating woman who has all but trapped this man? This isn’t inspiring. This is sad, upsetting, and kind of pointless. That’s what the film feels like upsetting and kind of pointless. Streep, Helberg, and Grant try their best, but it’s the screenplay’s focus on the relationship of the husband that kills the film’s drive and purpose. It will be nominated for Oscars because of its pedigree, but that’s the only thing this film has. Florence Foster Jenkins gets a 4 out of 10. Sausage Party: Directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernan, Starring: Seth Rogan and Kristen Wiig8/13/2016 As Finding Dory is about mental illness and The Incredibles is about a midlife crisis, Sausage Party is about the modern world that we live in. That’s both calling attention to the fact that the supermarket, the place the movie mostly takes place in with a bunch of talking food as our heroes, acts as kind of the real “Earth” in the movie, with its own interesting and understandable geography, and also the views of the foods in the market. See, while it is a lowbrow comedy, Sausage Party has its eyes set on very lofty ideas including religion, racism, sexism, and the journey of self-fulfillment that all exist in the world. This is Disney fare with big boy pants on, and the fact that it’s just as genuine and earnest as those films is what works completely about Sausage Party. See, the food characters of Sausage Party, including: Frank (Seth Rogan), Brenda (Kristen Wiig), Barry (Michael Cera), near the beginning of the film all hold a blissful ignorance, almost as if they are just repressed souls desperately attempting to make it in a system that limits their ability to really enjoy life. This creates a melancholy sense to their characters that is only complimented by the feelings of dread that the story ultimately creates, but also slyly makes the raunchy humor of the film really work. Sausage Party is nowhere near close to understated, so when all this racy, uncomfortable, and just overall upsetting stuff happens the earnest nature of the characters makes up for it. As the jokes get more ridiculous and raunchy we start to understand it as less of the comedians just throwing jokes into the movie for the sake of jokes, but more character informed stuff. Sure, not all the jokes land (a lot of racial humor shouldn’t be that funny, but the movie through design choices actually overwrites this) but Frank, Brenda, and Barry aren’t just cracking all these jokes because it’s a comedic film. They are doing so because they need to stay emotionally stable. This creates a tone that perfectly fits the more disturbing fare that the film’s story offers, and sets everything up perfectly for the final act. This is no place for spoilers, but it’s simply one of the most satisfying endings of any film for the whole year. The gonzo action of the third act and the implications that it creates are almost fully fueled by the sympathy that comes with the food’s feelings, while also being an excellent irreverent blowout. There’s a literal orgy of evidence for why the foods are now able to enjoy life and it’s deliciously gratifying. For all the focus placed on dirty jokes, Sausage Party has the type of emotional depth in its characters that is only present in films from the Disney house, only it’s bolstered by the “R” rating. Sausage Party serves up the best animated film of the year, and a hearty helping of brain food about the world that we live in. Sausage Party gets a 9 out of 10. Well, after seeing Suicide Squad I was optimistic that The Killing Joke might cleanse my DC comics movie palette. The best of the DC films have been animated, with legitimate classics like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, and Batman: Assault on Arkham (a Suicide Squad film you should see now) DC has far overshadowed the boring efforts that Marvel has shelled out. This begs the question as to what would happen if someone made a movie out of one of the most intentionally wrenching and skillfully forced comics of all time? It turns out not much. Batman: The Killing Joke is a fluke, that while not horrible, never really comes to life.. Throughout its entire length, the book felt paranoid and almost poisoning, including the almost slightly misogynistic implications that it’s plot brought into play. The Killing Joke follows the Joker as he shoots Barbara Gordon in the spine, tries to drive her Commissioner father insane in an amusement park reveals his backstory, and slowly attempts to drive Batman insane. It was about a horrible thing happening to squeeze out a feeling of dread and fear, that while overwhelming and effective, was a little too persistent. It is really crushing though. The movie of The Killing Joke only ever reaches the hysterical nature that the book created during moments of its climax. The rest is boring and not very well directed animation. This is kind of a surprise because of how startlingly good the team and voice cast on the film is. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Tara Strong, and Ray Wise are all veterans. Sam Liu, director of the well written and animated Batman: Year One animated film obviously knows what he’s doing, but here seems to be doing things too straightforwardly. The nature of Brian Bolland’s almost surrealistic panels don’t translate well as the film version plays it all realistically. The intention was probably to create a world where all of this crazy stuff could in fact happen, but it robs the story of its fangs until a crazed final battle between Batman and the Joker. The camera movement and action is excellent during this beautiful final confrontation. The nothingness that is the first 30 minutes isn’t completely mentionable. It comes and goes and ends as it is, but doesn’t effect the plot to much. Wow, this is not a good month for the DC Comics cinematic department. As is The Killing Joke doesn’t seem to hold the depth the cartoon that much of its pedigree came from or the book it was based on. This may come from the forced nature of the original material, but seems more a product of execution unfortunately. Not as bad as the DCEU, not close to previous animated films, The Killing Joke is still an an indication that DC needs to get back on track. Batman: The Killing Joke gets a 5 out of 10. For as much as I wanted to hate the DCEU I simply couldn’t. Oh, I could acknowledge the fact that they are bad movies, I just couldn’t accept that fact. The tangible connection that I have to these characters is unprecedented to the point that I have an uncomfortable bias. The first time I saw Man of Steel this got the better of me. I projected the hope that Superman embodied for me onto a movie that while sound wasn’t very hopeful. I couldn’t even properly review Batman v Superman because this bias was there on my shoulder clouding all the judgment that I could have. I still watch that film wishing it were great...but every time I slowly realize that it’s not. Suicide Squad did not work on that bias. I hate this movie. I hate it so much that I couldn’t even apply that to cushion the blow. This is a tease. A film that promises something bigger and better than it really is and that disarmed any favors I could give it. The original vision of Suicide Squad seems to have been something lurid, and nasty, something that you never see in a PG-13 movie, so the film seems to be trying to run away from that the entire time. David Ayer, a talented director, throws hints of the manic energy that could have inhabited the film but all of that seems to have been killed in the editing room. Notice how fans started to say that they didn’t want DC movies dark anymore. Notice how I said that in one way or another too? Well, this is what happens when the studio or a director takes that and misses the whole point of it. The film feels like it’s desperately trying to embrace the manic energy of films like Harmonie Korine’s Spring Breakers but is also trying to stay as light as Guardians of the Galaxy. Instead of landing on either side the film falls right in the middle feeling really confused and joyless. The only moments that seem to rise above the pack are the moments that hint at the crazed, but also totally not PG-13 mania that luridness provides. There’s an early scene in a club where Joker (Jared Leto) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) take out another gangster that hints at some crazed depth and psychology to their actions. Harley, over-sexualized, draws the gangster into a hysteria, and then the Joker shoots him in the face at the peak of his desires. It’s a moment that just hints at what could have been. Ayer’s frenzied cutting, Leto’s wide-eyed eccentricity, Robbie’s sexuality on display in an almost toxic way, all of it combining to create a baser feeling. But the film doesn’t let that ever cut loose. It never could. So, here’s what we have instead. We have a scrambled film that never provides proper character motivation or at least none that sticks. We have a film where most of the exciting footage in the trailers isn’t even in the freaking movie. We have a film that looks down on its audience. Oh, you can’t handle villains like Heath Ledger’s Joker, and Loki in The Avengers. No, take a green dude who wants to destroy the world. Oh, you can’t handle the absolutely psychotic whims of Jared Leto’s performance. Cut him almost completely out of the movie and cover what he is part of in garish music to appeal to the teenage girls in the audience. They think Jared Leto’s attractive right? Want to see Katana? Well, you can have like 3 minutes of her doing stuff and Karen Fukuhara trying. Captain Boomerang gets even less to do. There're so many character moments sprinkled around this film that seem to just be surface things never suggesting to deeper characters. The movie also just downright takes an intermission to explain El Diablo, just so it can desperately make us care when he is killed off. At least Margot Robbie, Cara Delevingne, and Viola Davis can have the initiative to carry a scene, but others like Joel Kinnaman and Scott Eastwood are completely useless. Deadshot is set up for an arch but in his big moment, much like Batman in BvS, betrays it. The action chops of David Ayer could have at least made it intense and gripping, but the rotting tone and horrible action kill that prospect. Ayer’s previous hard edge brought to his magnificent Fury has all but disappeared here as he stages fight scenes with enemies that blend into the background of the sets. The image of our heroes swinging at what looks like thin air is laughable and unexciting. The DCEU has failed. There is no doubt about it now. Wonder Women will fail. Justice League will fail. Warner Brothers will fail. If something this promising can crash this hard even while containing a truly well studied performance by Leto, two cool cameos for the fans, and a glimmer of hope then it’s all going to fail. RIP the DCEU. Suicide Squad gets a 3.5 out of 10 Café Society: Written and Directed by Woody Allen, Starring: Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart7/29/2016 Great films sometimes make you wonder why something feels the way it does? Why in this moment of watching a man confess his heart’s desire, a moment of solemn drama, am I laughing so hard I can’t contain myself? Why is it that every time I see two characters on screen together I gesticulate if almost on cue? Why can’t I stop gesticulating? I’m so happy. I want to cry. I’m so freaking happy. That is what happens when a film physically moves you and that’s in a literal sense. When a film in an almost unwanted but exciting bravado takes you and the things that create you and completely commands them, leading to a loss of all control. That is what the great filmmakers do. I haven’t truly considered Woody Allen as one of them always. I’m always garishly excited for one of his projects as it prompts a comfortable good time that is most likely going to be breezy, but his films (even the true masterpieces) take on a sense that maybe just maybe Allen is just a sort of well-versed point and shoot dramatist. I was horribly mistaken. Café Society is a film that seems to do all the wrong things but uses that to its advantage. It’s got blatant moments of narration, it’s got subplots that are almost useless, it flamboyant for the simply the sake of it, and yet it understands longing and uses all aspects of its being to thrust the feeling on us the audience and the feeling is mesmerizing. Woody has always been one for funny, yet emotionally dark fare, but Society isn’t actually pessimistic or cynical. It believes that no matter the mistakes people make, appreciation of what we still have and the times we share as humans make it all worth it. Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) arrives in L.A. to get a job from his uncle (Steve Carrel), a powerful agent. Bobby is shy and fidgety (perfect for Eisenberg’s fidgety nature so reviled in BvS) as we see him display in a hilarious early scene where he argues with a prostitute why she should not sleep with him. Soon, though he meets Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) and their story continues in a twisty and interesting way. The film feels like an old Austen romance in the emotions it harnesses of want and longing which could be Allen simply trying to create an old seeming movie. The cinematography and direction are certainly very old fashioned centric. The film is shot in intimate wides and close-ups that remind one of the old shooting styles that Hitchcock used almost making you imagine that the crystal clear colors and images would be what those crystal clear images of black and white would look like if they had been colorized. The film’s grandeur is unprecedented, and it only prompts the idea that most things in the characters lives are ok bringing more attention to the central romance. Most importantly though it seems as if Allen has mastered this wonderful, if simple, style. The way he utilizes it brings less attention to the dialogue and more to the almost sensuous feelings of the set design leading to the film being both intellectually and visually stimulating. As suggested the performances here occupy the same quality as in most of Allen’s films which is to say that they seem authentic and comfortable. Carrel lends a silly edge to his character as if he’s still playing a character in the vain of Adam Mckay, but it works in a hilarious way. Blake Lively is also given more movie star material as she plays probably the kindest person you can think of while keeping it from becoming boring. But as you’ve heard Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg reveal themselves as the new Woody Allen crew in a big way. Hopefully, he brings the two together again as they really do bring the best out of each other. The connected chemistry of their acting styles being benefited by each other and the way that both characters make each other better people to the point of doing anything for each other compliment each other to make the film even more emotional. Café Society is a film that made me feel love. It made me feel release, and took me to a place that while sad, made me happier then I’ve been at almost any film this year. Woody Allen, the creator of calmer classics of the relationship game, physically moved me. The patrons behind me in the theater must have been annoyed by my swinging arms. Café Society gets a 10 out of 10. Hunt for the Wilderpeople: Directed by Taika Waititi, Starring: Julian Dennison and Sam Neil7/26/2016 Hunt for the Wilderpeople might be a perfect argument for why the world should be run under the mentality of a 13-year-old kid. The elementary school world has faded away ever so slightly and now the depth of the adult world has started to slowly reveal itself, but still, the mindset is: authority is bad, the forest is a place to have an almost mystical adventure and the most important person in the world is you. Ricky Baker is a boy sent to live with a foster mother and father out near the New Zealand “Bushland,” a huge forested area. Soon, Baker and the foster father Uncle Heck end up alone in the woods and running from child protective services. The perfection of the film comes not from that plot, which is simple, and probably a little off kilter in structure, but again from that worldview of a 13-year-old. Wilderpeople understands the fact that a child at this point in their life is still a child, but is slowly attempting to figure out what is going on in the world. Ricky learning how to survive in the wild, while also staying true to his childish and destructive nature perfectly encapsulates this. Young actor, Julian Dennison plays Ricky with a sense of naïveté that completely sells the whole dramatic arc of the movie. Dennison is also just a different type of protagonist than we usually see, and he harnesses his figure (yes, he’s chubby) to create jokes that would not work with any other type of kid. Sam Neil’s performance as Heck is ecstatically funny because it turns out Heck is in the same situation that Ricky is in. As Heck’s character develops it’s revealed that he has a rough past that only one person helped him through and he is wonderfully complex on account of that. The juvenile comedic edge of the worldview benefits everything else in the film too. The Child Protective Services officer is a delight to watch as actress Rachel House repeats “No child left behind” in such a manic and bloodthirsty way that you almost get the sense that if the officer ever caught Ricky she’d stab him. There're difficult balances to strike in the movie everywhere like that. That character had to be built specifically to seem reasonable yet murderously enthusiastic and I can’t imagine it was an easy character to write or create. However, in the mind space that the movie creates she works and is utterly daunting in her effectiveness. As characters everyone’s idiosyncratic, and the balance necessary to pull that off while keeping the structure just loose enough to make sure these idiosyncrasies don’t smash into each other is mind-boggling. Not to say all of it works out, but Taika Waititi’s writing and directing work is top notch in a way that allows for complete tonal consistency. That structure though does end of feeling a slight bit bulbous though as the film at 101 minutes feels stretched out. There’s so many weird things trying to fit into this movie that eventually the film seems a little overdone and at times it feels like it’s going a bit slow, but what’s there is still genius so that matters very little. The fact is it’s just not easy to say anything bad about Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s too charming, too funny, and above all too intelligent for that. Waititi has crafted a perfect film out of pieces that should not fit together, but they do. Onward to Thor Ragnarok. Hunt for the Wilderpeople gets a 10 out of 10. Star Trek: Beyond is the type of blockbuster that has true thematic depth hidden in the filmmaking, but doesn’t really push that enough. The climax of the movie is the epitome of what can be done with this genre and the filmmaking that is still fresh and fast paced. The rest of the movie is much less so but is still too much of an awesome ride to ignore. That’s where the tricky part of reviewing this movie comes in. The first act is thin, but entertaining introductions chockful of above the line character driven action, the second is exposition driven set pieces that work, but seem to be just going to fast getting you from plot point A to plot point B, and then the third act explodes into this something so amazing in its throughline that it almost elevates the previous acts. Almost. The paralyzing (I literally was so moved I could not move) climax of this movie is so incredible and the other acts so much fun if just breezy that you can’t help but love all of it. Star Trek: Beyond is simply a well-done movie. So, with that out of the way...there’s only the superficial stuff to cover. Chris Pine is interesting for the first time, Zachary Quinto is given incredible depth as Spock as he struggles with the ideas of death and relationships, Karl Urban (still the best thing that has come out of this series) get’s some of the best lines he could have, Knife Leg Lady (Sofia Boutella) from Kingsman is both awesome in action scenes and surprisingly effective for as much of her character is simply explained in the dialogue. Simon Pegg and Doug Joun have done great work on the screenplay, which while thin in the middle act is breezy to the point of just feeling homey and welcoming, Idris Elba charges in to scare the heck out of you as you stew in that hominess. Justin Lin does some of his best direction bringing a stunning eye to action scenes especially in his direction of action in the third act. A scene of multiple Kirk’s under the wrong direction could have confounded and irritated, but under Lin becomes hilarious and completely simple. But, then there’s that moment. See, I didn’t really talk about this earlier because I didn’t want to spoil the movie. Now I will. The big savior, in the end, is music. The Beastie Boys "Sabotage" in fact. Yes, I know it was in the first movie, but that wasn’t a good movie so we’ll just skip over here. The moment when it plays is astounding, not just in the visual sense, but in the true thematic throughline of the Federation and therefore the film. Using cultural connections, and culture, aka the music, to bring hope and understanding to the universe. By proxy you connect to Starfleet’s use of the music because they are the good guys and they’re just fun to hang around, leading to their heroic deed coming in the sharing of culture being both heartfelt and intoxicating. Yes, that is simple for the message or whole undertaking of a movie, but it’s extremely effective, as well as the only thing worth analyzing here. Sometimes, the blockbusters just need to be the blockbusters, and if all of them are as full-blooded as Star Trek: Beyond we’ve got some good times ahead. Star Trek: Beyond gets an 8.5 out of 10. You know that a drug theme and color grading doesn’t make you Traffic right? For that matter why would you want to seem as dated as Traffic (that is a good movie though)? If there’s one thing that I could describe The Infiltrator as is an 80’s version of one of the stories from Soderbergh’s calling card movie from 2000. It’s rampantly edited, color adjusted in some scenes and clear in others to boost artistic merit, and as a story by itself doesn’t boil down to all that much. The simple story here is that Bryan Cranston, plays Bob Mazur, an undercover cop who is infiltrating the operation of Pablo Escobar’s right-hand man with a partner played by John Leguizamo. This story has been seen in many forms, and here there doesn’t seem to be enough meat on the bones of the movie to actually make this specific story worth telling, but overall the payoff scene is worth it. The editing and the colors are the first things you’ll notice though. Director Brad Furman has enthusiastically cut this movie to form an intense but energetic 80’s feel, while also grading the movie like a late 90’s drug movie. The visual effect of this is a little odd as the images never really seem truly real and only informed by a white-hot adrenaline, but you can’t take your eyes off of it. There’s a scene where nude dancers are using large feathers to perform a routine that is visually awkward, and bewildering, but fascinating at the same time. When the movie does finally pay off in one of the most startlingly amazing endings in a movie this year, the style lends itself well as the use of synth-pop music and montage cutting makes the moment gut wrenching. It’s all for not though without Cranston, who being one of the most realistic actors of all time creates Bob out of literally the thin air and dead weight that the screenplay gives him. Leguizamo, being one of those sad 90’s actors that never really made it, is doing his traditional well researched character work. Seriously, this guy needs a full on drama role so he can knock it out of the park. The rest of the cast is a charismatic wash, either not getting much to do (something that befalls Leguizamo), or simply doing serviceable if arch “drug movie” performances. The real surprise is that the climax actually doesn’t hinge on Cranston though, but more on Benjamin Bratt, who has both an imposing personality and grandiose figure to bring to the film. There’s a moment of Bratt’s facial acting during the climax that is so striking that it paralyzes the viewer. Brad Furman, and Bryan Cranston craft a thin Traffic story with The Infiltrator, that still eventually brings the big guns through mind wracking cinematography and editing, and solid character acting. If you like crime movies this is a fine thriller to spend an afternoon with. I give The Infiltrator a 7 out of 10. The most difficult thing about Ghostbusters is the fact that it’s simply...there. It’s not game changing, it’s not horrible, it’s not special...it’s just kind of is. There’s not a real central theme to talk about (mainly because the one that could exist in the context of the film really is underplayed), and there’s not really much to say as far as the direction or acting goes. This is simply a bordering on good adventure/comedy that lacks any sense of a point and is a little sickly in its own studio mandated tonal broth. That’s actually the problem with a lot of comedies these days. No matter how funny they actually get, or how original they actually get, the jokes are the only thing making them into “stories” as the main plots, even at their most complicated, lack the weight to really get off the ground. The original Ghostbusters had a very deliberate plot and central theme that could be talked about for an hour (in fact go check out Bob Chipman’s Really That Good to see just that), but this one lacks that. Sure, one could consider the idea that women not being taken as seriously in the workplace and world to be a central theme, but this movie is leaning a lot more on the comedy then the thoughtfulness. Weighted a little bit more with these themes (accentuated by a raving fan base) the film could have have been the ultimate version of itself being just as relatable for a female audience as Bridesmaids (I take it on good accord from my female friends that Bridesmaids is relatable), but Katie Diploid, Feig, and the Ghostbusters probably wanted to make the movie more entertaining by not dwelling too much on the themes at their disposal. While it is true that the film is probably more entertaining in the absence of such themes, it’s less provoking than the original, and much of the available talent on display. But all that said the movie is very, very, fun and light to watch. The cast is joyful, and the effects are colorful and only a little bit sickly compared to what the trailers suggested. The tone here is spot on as the film is light enough, like other Feig comedies, to keep us laughing before we realize that ultimately none of it matters. Melissa McCarthy, and Kristen Wiig are revelations as usual, and the amount of nuance that this project allows for Leslie Jones is a welcome change from her normal screaming comedy. Kate Mckinnon is very enjoyable, but she seems to be a little forced, as her character's quirks seem the most traditional out of all the women’s. That said the quirks do suggest a sadness behind her character which pretty much overshadows everything that seems overly forced. For as anticipated, and hated as this all was there’s not a whole lot to say about Ghostbusters. It’s a colorful, weightless, but hilarious and emphatic experience made well enough to warrant a release. As far as depths...I got nothing. I give Ghostbusters a 7 out of 10. I heard a lot of reviewers explicitly spoiled this movie to keep some animal lovers from seeing this film. I only do so for the sake of analysis as it’s difficult to dig into a project of Todd Solondz’s without doing so. At that note, this review (but more analysis) explicitly spoils Wiener Dog. SHORT VERSION: A little bland because of one of the central themes and the way it reflects on the acting, but other than that overall one of the most potent movies I’ve seen in awhile. If you can laugh at something horrible happening to a wiener dog, and also be very sad toward that then you’re the person for this movie. If you love dogs? Don’t bother. Wiener Dog might just be Todd Solondz messing with us. That’s something that can be stood by. That’s not bad, in fact, Solondz’s crazy, depressing, and funny style has always been doing just that, I was just stating the ground rules here. The movie follows a wiener dog who goes through 4 different owners, each revealing something about life in the 21rst century. So let’s set up more ground rules. The point of “animal” movies is to make us emote through the animal, and Wiener Dog starts off by letting us stare at the dog itself and realize that. However, soon the dog leaves the focus of the movie and the people who are affected by the dog become more of the focus. Solondz structuring the beginning of the film like this is smart as it allows us to get into the mind space of emoting to the dog and then throws the humans into the movie quickly so we start to do the exact same thing to them. There’s a sense of deceit to the way that he alters our view of the world and then serves up his view on it through the stories. The first concerns a small boy and his pair of despicable parents. This is showing how a smaller character can be abused without ever really knowing it. Julie Delpy, deliciously evil, as the mother explains to her cancer survivor 9-year old that the dog may very well have emotions, but it still must be treated like a dog. The father explains how “we need to break the will” of such animals. But aren’t they just talking about the boy? That’s the trick. This scene started all about the dog, but now you’re projecting the feeling that you would have on the dog to the boy because the dog is nowhere to be seen. The parents for good or ill are trying to break in their son, by telling nasty stories (seriously, Delpy gets some hilariously sardonic milage), and keeping him in a place where he can’t do anything. Sure, it’s all for the best but what about the boy? What about the dog? That’s the question that this section brings up. There’s a sadness and a depth to it all, but the film’s indefinite problem rears its head during this as well. The projection is so necessary that the actors almost become blank slates much like the animals in these movies often become. The acting is fine, just a little flat (except in one section of the movie, but that comes later). This first section makes one question the whole stability of the systems we have for taking care of pets, and the way that parents shelter their children. It’s an important topic that Solondz executes well even if it did compel a sense of depression. But that’s what this movie runs on. The lofty ideas that almost always inspire depression. The mix of nostalgia and happiness and the other darker feelings that follow these when you realize that you won’t get what you want. This brings us to Dawn Wiener, who was the protagonist of Solondz’s masterpiece, Welcome to the Dollhouse. In the context of Dollhouse this section of the film is tear inducing, attempting to approach the meaning of the dog in a different way. It draw parallels between the feelings of nostalgia that the wiener dog, herself embodies, as the childhood dog you’d never forget, and the nostalgia of never being happy because you were robbed the ability to properly comprehend adult life because you were introduced to all that stuff in middle school, and now you can’t feel anything or understand it. Gerwig’s construction of Dawn is so vivid that I was able to describe the entire heartfelt motivation of her character in detail right there. This part of the movie got to me. Dawn and Branden (another Dollhouse character, played here by Kieran Culkin) are on a road trip, and he doesn’t know that she’s in love with him. It’s the type of almost cheap gimmick that seems to strive for your heart and it got mine. I suppose lacking the context of Welcome to the Dollhouse the sequence would play less emotional, but nonetheless, the sequence is incredible, playing to all kinds of tearful looking back. There’s a recurring song, sung throughout it that makes one think of better times, and happier places, and the way Solondz plays the idea of the American road trip, and the idea of the collapse of the American ideal against that in just a few scenes is mesmerizing and traumatizing. Thinking onto the later sections of the movie, Solondz might be making fun of all of us for believing in that American ideal, like the representation of the feeling of nostalgia that the wiener dog is, is a lie, and that now all we have to do is look into the people to notice the bitterness… I’m getting a little overblown here, though. Point is, the Dawn Wiener section of this movie is heartbreaking, and Gerwig is so realistic and moving that I doubt there’ll be a better performance by an actress this year. The fake idealism comes up again in an interview in the third section of the film which follows a screenwriting professor played by Danny Devito. The scene concerns a student in an interview for the school, and he’s answering in completely broad terms as if he doesn’t understand what he’s getting into, blindly wanting to make movies because THAT SOUNDS GOOD. The parallel to how Solondz may look at how my generation approaches the coming years of our lives in what is ultimately a collapsing country is highlighted here, and the way that Solondz eventually uses a terrorist attack to represent the ideals that may have eventually destroyed that American ideal once and for all is gloriously blatant. Plus, the image of a man in a bomb suit crawling up to a wiener dog in a yellow dress with a bomb strapped to it is downright the funniest thing you’ll see all year. It’s interesting how the movie accepts all of this and then finally, and damningly takes the piss out of itself by condemning the negativity that it’s almost all about. Ellen Burstyn is a blinded woman with cancer who is visited by her niece. Her life is structured almost like a prison, and the final place she has to escape to (a forest behind her house because the rest of her world has been industrialized) is haunting her. What specifically is? Versions of her younger self, each a little bit different. This is you if….this is you if… The point, though? All of these versions are better versions of herself. This is a sad moment, especially since you can tell by the money that the woman seems to have and the very protected shrine of a house she has that she must have either married into a capitalist run family or just gone and done it herself sacrificing happiness, (no that is not saying that capitalism is bad, simply saying that people with lots of money probably sacrifice a lot to secure such money) but it’s also a moment of optimism on how we can all improve ourselves and create a better world. MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD IF YOU’VE GOTTEN THIS FAR. And then the dog runs down the hill the house is on, and is hit by a truck….and then a car, and then another car, and then another car, and then another car. The optimism of the idea of old world industrialism makes one think about what these cars may mean. Considering what specific models the cars are they seem to be ones that glorify industrialism: A truck, a yellow sports car, a minivan. It possibly could be about how the whole damn thing is self-defeating and will ultimately destroy itself. The film ends with the dog having been turned into a taxidermic art piece, that can turn its head and bark at us as it stares directly into us. The face of everything that the movie is criticizing is now staring at us in all its artificial glory and suddenly...barking. Wiener Dog is not great because of these deeper meanings. Really the acting problem takes a good chunk out of the movie, but they certainly makes the movie mean more. Solondz could be just messing with us of course as I covered earlier, though. Honestly, I will not be surprised if many don’t subscribe to the film's depressing world view, but it was quite entertaining in my opinion. Wiener Dog gets an 8 out of 10. |
Archive
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. |