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Movie Curiosities: The Judge
October 13, 2014 in Curiosity Inc.
I don’t normally go into movies that I know are going to be awful. It’s a waste of everyone’s time, especially mine, and you people aren’t paying me enough to suffer through bad movies on purpose. This weekend, however, offers two films for which I simply must make an exception.
In one theater is The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, and Vera Farmiga. In another theater is Dracula Untold, starring Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, and Dominic Cooper. I’ve never seen a single one of those actors give a bad performance, even when the rest of the movies around them sucked. In times like these, I feel compelled to poke my head in to find out how so much potential could go so utterly wasted. Or maybe the critics are wrong and the films in question deserve some praise.
The Judge won the coin toss for today, so let’s see what we’ve got.
The film opens with Hank Palmer (RDJ), a hotshot Chicago lawyer who specializes in defending clients who are almost certainly guilty. And he’s somehow able to get them off. Yet he doesn’t lose any sleep over it, because — and I swear to God this is a direct quotation — “innocent clients can’t afford me.” Anyway, Hank gets the call that his mother has suddenly passed away, so the prodigal son returns home to a family he hasn’t seen in years.
In the sleepy Indiana town of Carlinville, we’re quickly introduced to Hank’s brothers. The younger brother (Dale Palmer, played by Jeremy Strong) has some kind of mental condition, such that he interacts more with cameras and film strips than people. The older brother (Glen Palmer, played by Vincent D’Onofrio) is the son who stayed at home to care for the parents and try to hold everything together. Then there’s the eponymous judge.
Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) is not only the patriarch of this family, but a well-respected judge who’s presided over the local court for over 40 years. And at the end of the first act, he gets caught up in a murder case. It’s a long story, but the victim was convicted of murder in Palmer’s court and sentenced to twenty years before he got out of prison and somehow got his blood in the grill of Palmer’s car. The evidence is scant, but it all points to the judge committing first-degree murder, and Joseph Palmer himself has no memory of what actually happened. In spite of himself, Hank steps in to defend his father in court.
Moving on to the supporting cast, the prosecuting attorney is played by Billy Bob Thornton and he keeps a collapsible water cup in his briefcase, so you know he has to be an asshole. There’s a barkeep played by Leighton Meester, so of course she’s a promiscuous flirt. There’s an attorney who’s comically inept because he’s played by Dax Shepard. Vera Farmiga plays one of Hank’s old lovers… you get the idea.
There’s absolutely no denying that this movie leans heavily on cliches, and that doesn’t stop with the characters or the cast. Even the camera movements and lighting are incredibly cliched, particularly during the courtroom scenes. The filmmakers were clearly trying to bring some gravitas to the courtroom scenes, but it’s done in such a superficial and exaggerated way that it verges on parody. Seriously, Joseph Palmer is first introduced in silhouette, with sunlight streaming through the window behind his profile. How am I supposed to take that seriously?
The contrived moments are even worse. The first act is loaded with dialogue that sounds absolutely tin-eared because the filmmakers were obviously trying to shovel in all the exposition they could. When the murder case unfolds, new bits of evidence crop up out of nowhere like clockwork. And every time Hank starts to think about getting away from his family and leaving the whole mess behind him, he only needs a montage of family memories set to cheery music and he’s back in the game.
But in my opinion, the piece de resistance is Dale, who is very quickly established as the comic relief. To repeat: Dale — the brother who very clearly has some degree of autism and/or mental illness — is the comic relief. Granted, the film never overtly makes fun of him, and his brothers are very quick to deliver a beatdown onto anyone who calls him a witless retard (as indeed happens in the movie). Still, when a character like this is included and his socially clueless nature is the film’s primary source of levity… well, that’s questionable, to say the least.
All of these cliches and contrivances are symptomatic of the movie’s greater problem: It’s two completely different movies smashed together into one. The lighthearted family dramedy and the prestige courtroom drama spend the whole film dueling for screen time and development, so everything has to be simplified and condensed to make room. And somehow, this movie still bloated to a screen time of 141 minutes. Two and a half goddamn hours with these thinly written and almost completely unlikeable characters.
To be clear, I do not blame the actors at all for this. They all do a very good job with what they’re given, though some do better than others. Take Robert Downey Jr. for instance. I love the guy, but let’s face it: He’s really only got one trick in his bag. If he’s played anything post-Iron Man (aside from Tropic Thunder, of course) that wasn’t some variation of Tony Stark, I haven’t seen it. Don’t get me wrong, the act is always entertaining to watch, and it’s very well-suited to the arrogant, fast-talking lawyer he plays here. Still, as much as I love seeing RDJ do his schtick onscreen, there’s really nothing here we haven’t seen him do already.
The same goes for Robert Duvall. His performance here is remarkable, and he does a fine job playing a man of integrity turned into a bull-headed coot too stubborn to admit that he’s getting old. Joseph is a man grappling with his past mistakes in the process of trying to preserve his legacy, even if that legacy is nothing more than 42 years serving as a low-level judge in some middle-of-nowhere town, and Duvall plays it in a way that’s great to watch. Even so, he’s Robert Fucking Duvall. You don’t have to see this movie to know that he’s done better work elsewhere. Hell, the man is 83 years old and he may very well have better performances left in him.
But to repeat, I do not blame the actors for this movie’s failings. No, I blame the writers (Gran Torino writer Nick Schenk and newcomer Bill Dubuque) who tried to stick two completely different movies together and let the results get so far out of control. But most of all, I blame the director. If you don’t know who David Dobkin is, he’s the guy previously responsible for Shanghai Knights, The Change-Up, Wedding Crashers, and Fred Claus. I’d be perfectly willing to trust a lighthearted family dramedy to a director with that CV. A heavy courtroom drama, on the other hand, not so much. And for the task of meshing those two genres into a single cohesive whole? Sweet merciful fuck, no.
The Judge is not all bad. Any movie with a cast this strong is bound to have at least a few redeeming moments, and there’s some good thematic material in here about families and the concept of equality under the law. Unfortunately, that good stuff is buried under too many cliches and too much contrived shit. Moreover, this is a movie at war with itself, comprised of two halves that ultimately neutralize each other and leave nothing of substance behind. I applaud the filmmakers for their ambition, but everyone behind the scenes was WAAAAY out of their depth here. The director and writers were not worthy of their story, and certainly not worthy of their cast.
That’s ultimately the biggest disappointment here. If the movie was only guilty of being a well-intentioned and instantly forgettable mediocrity, well, there are worse things. But for a movie with a cast this incredible, a running time of two and a half hours, and a release date right at the start of awards season? No, that’s a truly despicable failure.
I’ll put it to you another way: I sat through a movie with Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, and Vincent D’Onofrio for two and a half hours. And the scene that most sticks out in my memory is the one where Robert Duvall shits himself on camera. Does that sound like a movie worth recommending? I don’t think so.
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Movie Curiosities: The Zero Theorem
October 12, 2014 in Curiosity Inc.
The Zero Theorem is a Terry Gilliam picture that stars Christoph Waltz, with Matt Damon as the antagonist. Even better, the premise is rich with potential ruminations about the nature of existence, free will, and a whole ton of other trippy related subjects. Middling critical reception be damned, I jumped at the chance to see another Terry Gilliam masterpiece.
And for better or worse, that’s pretty much exactly what I got.
Let’s take it from the top. Waltz stars as Qohen Leth, a man living in an abandoned church at some point in the (hopefully) distant future. Qohen is a deeply antisocial man with a laundry list of phobias. He also refers to himself in the “royal we” and spends all day waiting for a phone call. He couldn’t tell you who the phone call will be from or what it’s going to say, just that it’s tremendously important. So it would be an understatement to call him eccentric.
The upshot is that Qohen is a genius mathematician crunching numbers for Mancom, your typical monolithic corporation of evil. After months of denied requests, Qohen is finally granted the privilege of working from home so that he can avoid crowds and wait for his phone call. In return, Qohen has to take on the impossible assignment of proving the Zero Theorem.
What is the Zero Theorem, you ask? Well, it’s rooted in the idea that everything — mass, energy, life, everything — came from a huge black hole at the center of the universe. And eventually, everything is destined to return to that same black hole. The Zero Theorem translates this concept into cold hard numbers, stating that the sum total of everything in the universe adds up to zero. Basically, Qohen is tasked with proving in mathematical terms that everything amounts to nothing. Some giant corporation wants irrefutable proof that all the machinations throughout the cosmos, including the lives of every human to ever exist, are ultimately meaningless.
Why would anyone want to prove such a terrifying concept? Why was Qohen selected to take on an impossible job that’s crushed the souls of everyone who’s tried? Wouldn’t you like to know. Hell, I’ve seen the movie and I’d still like to know.
Because this is a Terry Gilliam film, it should go without saying that the future is noisy, crowded, and overwhelmingly bright. This is particularly true of the technology on display, which is made to look overly flashy in a garish kind of way. The machines were clearly designed by the same guy who made Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, but there are so many neon colors flying around that I wonder how much ecstasy Gilliam ingested while prepping for this one.
Obviously, the production design lends itself to some jaw-droppingly psychedelic visuals, with Gilliam’s trademark camera style (Dutch angles, wide lenses, etc.) to lend a sinister edge. It perfectly expresses the concept of a future overrun by capitalism gone amok, as well as the standard Gilliam trope of one man’s attempt to escape an oppressive corporate/government regime.
However, all of this causes a huge problem: It’s too distracting. There were times when I could barely hear the characters talking because there was so much background noise going on. This happened especially often in the first act — a crucial time for exposition in any narrative — so this was a huge obstacle in figuring out what was going on. Even worse, the computers in this film were designed in such a bizarrely incomprehensible manner that it was hard to tell precisely what the characters were doing. Granted, a lot of Qohen’s work in this film involves a lot of impossibly complex mathematical work, which is assuredly quite difficult to express in a visually interesting manner. Still, when I’m watching Qohen play around with computer-generated blocks on a screen and towers start crumbling for no apparent reason, I’m left wondering what the fuck I’m looking at and what any of this has to do with anything. Even when Qohen is talking about his work with other characters, it’s all stuff about “entities” and neural links and Gilliam only knows what any of it means.
In all honesty, there were times when I could swear that even the filmmakers couldn’t keep up with themselves. For example, there’s one point early in the third act when Qohen is presented with a golden opportunity to escape this whole mess, and he turns it down. When that happened, I had to backtrack a while to try and remember Qohen’s motivation for refusing that escape route. In fact, after that phone call he’s waiting for has been quite solidly dealt with, it gets very difficult to figure out why Qohen does much of anything.
It certainly doesn’t help that the film never offers much in the way of a baseline for logic. We’ve already established that the whole world has gone bonkers and anyone we meet could potentially be acting on the orders of Mancom, so no one in the supporting cast can be trusted as a consistent voice of reason. And lest we forget, our protagonist is a socially inept shut-in who dreams of black holes and refers to himself in the first-person plural, to say nothing of the Zero Theorem proof that’s slowly driving him even more insane. We can’t count on him to be our guide through this world, so the audience is left floundering. This gets far worse in the film’s closing minutes, when the climax and the denouement whiplash from one wildly different scene to another. I know that the goal was to close on a note that left us wondering about the main character’s mental state, but Brazil did that perfectly fine without giving the impression that a reel of film went missing somewhere.
Last but not least, the film has a nasty habit of going off on thematic tangents. A key example regards Bainsley (Melanie Thierry), a call girl who’s hired to be Qohen’s housekeeper/nurse. Except that Bainsley is the rare prostitute who doesn’t engage in physical sex. Instead, she prefers to service her clients by way of full-body VR suits connected over the interweb. Yes, she and Qohen meet in a simulated paradise to have 22nd-century online sex. On the one hand, it serves their romance arc beautifully. It’s a perfect stepping stone for Qohen, who very desperately needed a good middle ground between “xenophobic shut-in” and “functional human being” as he develops from one to the other. On the other hand, we’re really going into the implications of virtual reality and relationships over the internet? That’s a subject complex and relevant enough to sustain its own film altogether, and they’re trying to cram a few scenes of it into this movie when so much else is going on? Sorry, no.
With all of that being said, I honestly don’t mean to sound like this is a bad movie. The thematic ruminations surrounding the Zero Theorem itself are truly fascinating, bolstered by the recurring motif of an enormous black hole that sucks in and destroys everything around it. The Theorem itself is a brilliantly novel way to examine our own individual worth, especially against the parallel development of a man who realizes just how small a cog he is in the larger corporate machine. Speaking of which, it should go without saying that Gilliam dives into the iconoclastic material with aplomb, like he has with most of his filmography.
And of course, the actors are all amazing. In particular, Christoph Waltz turns in a performance that’s mesmerizing from start to finish. Even in those moments when nothing else around him makes sense, Waltz provides us with an emotional hook strong enough to keep us going through to the end. David Thewlis and Tilda Swinton turn in some very memorable work, and Matt Damon does wonders with only a few scenes. The cast also features Ben Whishaw and Peter Stormare for a brief scene, and it was a delight to see them both. Even so, the standouts of this cast have to be Melanie Thierry and Lucas Hedges. I had absolutely no idea who these two were before I saw this picture, but you can be damn sure I’ll be keeping an eye out for them after their outstanding work here.
(Side note: Look sharp for the late, great Robin Williams, who makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it uncredited cameo near the start of the picture.)
To summarize, The Zero Theorem is a slickly produced, dazzlingly intelligent, superbly acted, beautifully demented piece of cinema that does not make a single lick of narrative sense. To summarize even further, it’s a Terry Gilliam movie. Anyone with an ounce of brains would not walk into a movie directed by Terry Gilliam and hope for a coherent story. Indeed, the man seems to revel in disregarding conventional storytelling so that he can push some boundaries and get the audience to think about new and unusual questions. It’s all about plumbing the depths of imagination to make something truly special and unique, wrapping it in such a dreamlike presentation that it’s hard to know which end is up.
Anyone who isn’t already a fan of Gilliam’s work may have a tough time with this one. Even so, I heartily recommend a rental at the very least, just for the experience.
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Movie Curiosities: The Two Faces of January
October 6, 2014 in Curiosity Inc.
A few years ago, there was this little movie called Drive. It was heralded as one of the year’s best at the time, but I’ve noticed a backlash starting to settle in. The movie still has its followers, but quite a few of my friends and correspondents have called it boring, pointless, gratuitously violent, etc. These were many of the same complaints that I leveled against Only God Forgives, Refn’s subsequent film, which is another very divisive piece of cinema.
Now, I was one of those who loved Drive upon its initial release, and I still hold it in high regard. Yet I absolutely despised Only God Forgives and I’m still picking shrapnel out of my ass for my review of it. In the many, many discussions that followed, one of my correspondents suggested that Refn didn’t write Drive but did write Forgives, and maybe that made the difference.
Drive, by the way, was written by Hossein Amini, who adapted the script from a James Sallis novel. Amini later went on to write Snow White and the Huntsman and 47 Ronin, but let’s not hold those duds against him; both of those projects were so thoroughly bungled that no screenwriter could have saved them.
So here’s The Two Faces of January, in which Amini makes his directing debut with a screenplay that he wrote. Additionally, the film was adapted from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, whose works also gave rise to The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. For extra measure, Amini would be working with a cast of such esteemed talents as Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Drive alumnus Oscar Isaac. Basically, Amini set up the ultimate test to prove whether he was truly the real deal. With such an impressive pedigree, and with no one else to blame if the writing or direction fell flat, Amini would have looked like a true dunce if this movie came apart.
But it didn’t. Sure, it’s deeply flawed, but it’s overall a very good film.
Our story takes place all over Europe, but most of the action is set in Greece. There, we meet Isaac’s character, a young man known only as “Rydal.” We quickly learn that instead of going back home to America to bury his dead father, Rydal has been acting as a tour guide to con gullible vacationers out of their money. He has two major scams: He either lies about the currency exchange rate, taking American dollars in return for fewer drachmas than they’re worth; or he haggles with street vendors in Greek, translates the price into a higher figure in English for the tourist, then works with the vendor to pocket the difference. The guy’s quite clever, really. But not clever enough.
Rydal eventually crosses paths with Chester and Colette MacFarland, respectively played by Mortensen and Dunst. He’s attracted to them for some sudden reason, and agrees to help the married American couple find their way through Greece. Unfortunately, it turns out that Chester double-crossed the wrong people back in the States. There’s an assault, someone turns up dead, and Rydal has the bad luck to get caught up in all of it. Rydal is then hired to procure new passports for the MacFarlands, so the three of them go on the run together.
First of all, Rydal needs the MacFarlands because he doesn’t get paid if anything happens to them, and the MacFarlands need Rydal because he can get them passports. Secondly, the MacFarlands have all the money, with thousands of dollars in cash tucked away, but Rydal is the only one who knows how to get around Greece and how to speak the language (in fact, he speaks several different languages). Thirdly, Rydal is involved enough that he can be charged as an accomplice, but he also knows enough to bring the MacFarlands down with him if he’s arrested.
Sound like an unstable partnership? Man, I’m just getting started.
It must be emphatically stressed that all three of these characters are inherently dishonest. Rydal is a con artist, after all, and there are precious few reliable details about where he came from and what he plans to do with the money he steals. As for Chester, he (allegedly) swindled millions of dollars from some very wealthy people. Moreover, we saw him kill a man early on and he’s played by Viggo freaking Mortensen. We know that the guy can take care of himself, no matter how scared and defenseless he may act, so what else could he be hiding?
Then we have Colette, who proves to be a major wedge between the group. See, Chester is naturally quite paranoid, due to all the people out to kill or arrest him, and that paranoia is very quickly turned toward his partners as well. The guy gets insanely jealous over the prospect that Colette and Rydal may be falling for each other, and of course it’s anyone’s guess whether those suspicions are justified. We also see that Chester is a very mean drunk, which certainly doesn’t help matters. As for Colette herself, what the hell is she even doing in this May/December marriage anyway? Are they really married at all? Does she have some kind of secret or involvement in Chester’s legal trouble?
All three of these characters have a tremendous amount of secrets and their agendas are never entirely certain. This is the movie’s greatest strength as well as its greatest drawback. On the one hand, these characters are so deeply enigmatic and brilliantly performed that their story makes for some wonderfully compelling suspense. On the other hand, most of these questions lack any definitive answer and plenty of secrets go untapped.
I understand that the characters’ enigmatic nature is a huge part of what makes this film work. I also understand that as a suspense thriller, some false trails and red herrings come with the package deal. Even so, it feels like a lot of potentially great character drama was left on the table when so many intriguing setups are given so few satisfactory payoffs. It feels cheap to constantly allude to the characters’ backstories and ask how they got to where they currently are, and then fail to answer those questions with anything more than half-truths or outright lies. Then again, as I’ve stated before, the characters are so completely untrustworthy that maybe they were giving honest answers all along and I had no reason to believe them.
This is a huge part of why the movie didn’t quite stick the landing for me. The resolution seemed very strained, in that it didn’t tonally match with the rest of the film. This plot is comprised of various mysteries and messes, and it felt cheap for so many complicated storylines to be resolved in such a rushed manner. This movie did not deserve to be wrapped up in a neat little bow, but that’s exactly what the filmmakers seemed determined to do.
Based on the Wikipedia synopsis for the book (because of course I haven’t read it, sadly), it appears that a fair bit of information about the characters had been excised from the screenplay. Also, the plot — particularly the ending — is different from the book in some key ways. So I’d assume that some key points got lost in the process of adaptation and the book is far better than the movie. Needless to say, these are hardly unusual problems.
It bears remembering that The Two Faces of January is Hossein Amini’s first time at the helm, and it’s a damn solid directorial debut. Aside from a few shaky-cam chase sequences, the whole movie looks gorgeous and takes full advantage of the local European beauty. The movie is even more remarkable for how it maintains some wonderful tension throughout, and the powerhouse trio of leads did a lot to help that.
The ending stumbles a bit, and it’s frustrating that so many mysteries aren’t given worthy resolutions, but that isn’t enough to take away from 90 minutes of compelling suspense. Definitely worth a look.
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Movie Curiosities: Gone Girl
October 5, 2014 in Curiosity Inc.
It’s tough to know where to begin when writing about a story like this one. Today’s film is one of those stories that’s very difficult to talk about without getting into spoilers, because so much of the story is wrapped around a central concept that is itself a spoiler. That certainly won’t stop me from trying (even though the source novel is a bestseller read by millions), but it does mean that this review probably won’t go into my usual amount of depth. That said, let’s talk about Gone Girl.
The premise is simple at first. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) goes about his day until the news comes in that his wife (Amy Dunne, played by Rosamund Pike) has gone missing. It appears that Amy was taken in some kind of home invasion, but details slowly start to unravel as time goes on. Inconsistencies start appearing, Nick seems ignorant about basic details of his wife’s social life, and we see flashbacks to show that the Dunnes’ marriage may (or may not) have been quite rocky.
What makes things even worse is that Amy is a kind of celebrity. See, her mother is Marybeth Elliott (Lisa Banes), a very successful author who wrote a series of children’s books based on Amy’s life. The title character is even called “Amazing Amy.” So naturally, there’s a legion of fans out there who are very upset about the kidnapping and want to come help find her. Other people come from out of the woodwork, too: old friends, strangers claiming to be old friends, lunatics trying to get attention, women offering Ben Affleck a shoulder to cry on, etc. With all of these people around, the whole thing spirals into a mainstream media frenzy. That’s when paparazzi and cable news pundits get involved, stirring up the court of public opinion and pestering the key players of the investigation until someone finally does something stupid.
So much of this story rests on its two lead actors, who really had their work cut out for them in this picture. Nick and Amy are both characters who have to be played with a special kind of cunning, like there’s no telling what secrets and impulses are being hidden behind a pretty smile. And both are played by actors who can hold their own just fine. Ben Affleck has long since outgrown his career slump and proven to the world that yes, he really is a superbly talented actor. Affleck has always (since Dogma, at least) had an underappreciated knack for playing an effortless charm with a dangerous edge. He can be the pretty boy, then spin on a dime to be someone nobody wants to fuck with. He does a fantastic job of showing that talent here, and I’ve no doubt that it will serve him well as Batman. But I digress.
Then we have Rosamund Pike. In the past, I’ve gone on record stating that Pike was a mediocrity. A nonentity. A placeholder for some other actress, someone who neither added nor detracted from anything she happened to be in. Not anymore. Amy is a character who goes from sexy to scary, dominant to paranoid, manipulative to sincere and back again. Pike pushes herself to the physical and emotional limit in the process of delivering this character, and the results are compelling to watch. I never thought I’d be eager to see another Rosamund Pike performance, but I’m suddenly quite anxious to see what she does next. And if she delivers work that’s this good without the guiding hand of a master like Fincher, I will officially be a convert.
(Side note: I was curious to see Reese Witherspoon listed among the producers of this movie. Turns out that she optioned the book and co-produced the film adaptation through her Pacific Standard shingle. I wonder how the movie might have been different if she had taken the female lead instead. You may laugh, but take a look at her more recent career moves. She might have surprised us all.)
More to the point, I don’t think there’s a single bad performance in this whole movie. Not one. And given this cast, that really surprises me. Sure, Neil Patrick Harris, Scoot McNairy, and Missi Pyle all do some fantastic work with what little screen time they have, but that’s to be expected from such proven talents. By contrast, I never would have guessed that I’d be sitting here to praise the work of Tyler Perry, Emily Ratajkowski, and Casey Wilson. Hell, I didn’t even know who Carrie Coon or Kim Dickens were until I saw this picture, and they both crushed it.
Of course, this comes back to the director. David Fincher is a huge, HUGE reason why this movie works so well, and it’s not just because of his uncanny skill at coaxing great performances out of a perfectly chosen cast. His keen eye for visuals and his ongoing collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who turn in another extraordinary score) are also factors. But perhaps more importantly, this is a mystery thriller being directed by the guy who made Se7en and Zodiac. It’s a movie about the power of the media and the court of public opinion (see: The Social Network), along with female empowerment and sexual abuse (see: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake).
To my knowledge, however, this film is unique among Fincher’s filmography in that it addresses love, marriage, infidelity, etc. This is a movie that very aggressively deals with all the downsides of being married, examining them through one of the most fucked-up marriages I’ve ever heard of in past, present, or fiction. It’s genuinely fascinating to watch how Nick and Amy are so hopelessly damaged, yet they’re still stuck together.
Before I get to the film’s most prominent drawback, I want to make it clear that I have not yet read the source novel. I can’t speak to its quality directly, I can only judge the story from the screenplay. Though the screenplay was written by Gillian Flynn, who was adapting her own book, so there’s that.
Anyway, as great as the cast and direction were, this screenplay had some problems that were too much to gloss over. The plot structure is a great example: The narrative moved right along through the first half, intercutting flashbacks with the main plot in a way that felt seamless and coherent. The denouement, however, dragged its feet terribly. Even after the central mystery had been resolved, the film just kept going long past the point of overstaying its welcome.
More to the point, there are so many times when the characterization seems to thin and events are sped up entirely for the convenience of plot. The characters come dangerously close to being two-dimensional, and there are times when the “female empowerment” angle is written in a lazy way that seems like trashy fantasy. My screening was preceded by a trailer for the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation, and there were times when I wondered if the two books might have been written for a similar audience. And this is where I wrap up before I go any deeper into spoilers than I already have.
I don’t normally like to quote other reviewers, but Nick Nunziata, my colleague at CHUD, hit the nail on the head when he said that Gone Girl was “cheeseburger treated like a filet[…] That’s why David Fincher is one of the best we’ve ever had. To weave gold out of shit.” There’s no way I can top that. This whole movie — especially the back half — feels like lowest-common-denominator trash that had the good fortune to be elevated by a phenomenal cast and a master filmmaker.
That treatment is ultimately what makes the film worth watching. For all of its faults, this is still a wonderfully tense movie with jaw-dropping performances throughout. Even so, I do hope that Fincher picks a better script next time so he’ll finally get a shot at winning an Oscar. Like he damn well should have for The Social Network.
Movie Curiosities: The Skeleton Twins
September 29, 2014 in Curiosity Inc.
Previously on Movie Curiosities, I reviewed a movie called This Is Where I Leave You. It was a dramatic comedy about a squabbling family, nowhere near worthy of its incredible cast. Only a week later, we now have The Skeleton Twins, another dramatic comedy about a squabbling family. And it also has a stellar (albeit far less crowded) cast. I confess that I first thought of calling Leave You a poor man’s Skeleton Twins, though I ultimately decided not to make that judgment until I had actually seen both movies.
I’m glad to have made that call. Skeleton Twins is so much better that no comparison is warranted.
Movie Curiosities: The Boxtrolls
September 28, 2014 in Curiosity Inc.
Let’s check in with Laika, shall we?
The house that Will Vinton built and Travis Knight remodeled is still going strong, but things have been rocky lately. Only a few months ago, Laika shut down its advertising department, displacing dozens of animators here in Portland. It was a shock to our local film industry, especially considering how many jobs and corporate dollars were lost in the shutdown, though Laika’s motion picture department still remains open and active in Hillsboro. In fact, they’re currently looking for a second studio in the area, expanding their operations to release stop-motion films on a more regular basis.
To recap the films they’ve released so far, Coraline is of course still a classic of children’s cinema. Their previous film, Paranorman, was also very good, though weighed down by a very wordy climax. So now, for Laika’s third and most recent offering, we have The Boxtrolls, based on a kid’s book by Alan Snow. Even though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a reimagining of “The Jungle Book.” Seriously, the ads showed us a kid being orphaned and raised by animals, before a pretty girl lures him back to civilization. I mean, come on, that’s “The Jungle Book.” And maybe also Tarzan, come to think of it.
In retrospect, however, those apparent similarities speak more to the poor marketing than the film itself. It’s really much better than that.
Our story begins in the town of Cheesebridge, when a boy was mysteriously taken away by one of the eponymous boxtrolls. Our villain (Archibald Snatcher, voiced in a tour-de-force performance by Ben Kingsley) takes advantage of the situation by spreading rumors that boxtrolls are horrific beasts who will steal and eat any unattended children. He then promises to rid the town of every last boxtroll in return for a white hat.
This brings us to our next faction, ruled by Lord Portley-Rind (Jarred Harris). He’s the head of the city council, a bunch of bourgeoisie dolts marked by their white hats. It’s ostensibly a huge honor to earn one of these white hats, though no one in the town’s higher class seems to do much of anything except obsess over cheese and enjoy being rich. These are people who would rather spend money on a giant wheel of brie than a children’s hospital. I’m not even exaggerating, that actually happens in the movie.
Thus the villagers have something of a dilemma. On the one hand, Snatcher is a complete and total bastard. He’s entirely devoid of manners, he’ll get his way no matter what evil things he has to do, he’s delusional to a… Oh, who the hell am I kidding? He’s a monster. That’s where the film is going with this, and it’s not the least bit subtle in making the point. The boxtrolls aren’t the monsters, it’s the human villain who’s the monster. Hardly a new concept, I know, but the character is played in such an over-the-top eeeevil manner that he’s so very much fun to hate.
And the townsfolk do hate Snatcher. Everyone in the town hates him. But they hate the city council so much more that they’d still rather see the boorish git get his way and stink up the elite ranks out of spite. That’s how badly off the town of Cheesebridge is.
Then we have the boxtrolls themselves. Needless to say, the stories of their violent nature have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the boxtrolls are so deeply pacifistic that they refuse to fight or even run from danger under any circumstances. They bear an uncanny resemblance to the proverbial ostrich, except that instead of sticking their heads in the sand, they’ll tuck their heads and arms into the boxes they wear. They’re very good at hiding, in large part because they’re such masterfully resourceful creatures. The whole reason why they go above ground at all is to scavenge parts that they can tinker and invent with back in their underground home. Also, they eat grubs and insects, certainly not people.
So why would such a peaceful species abduct a child? Great question. I’m not going to answer that here.
Speaking of the child, let’s meet our protagonist. He’s called Eggs (voiced by newcomer Isaac Hempstead Wright), because the boxtrolls are all named after the products on the boxes they wear. Even though Eggs doesn’t look like a boxtroll, he’s long outgrown the box he was adopted in, and he’s somehow the only one in the cavern who’s learned how to speak English, he of course was raised to think of himself as a boxtroll. Until circumstances inevitably change.
For one thing, Snatcher has been winning. During the obligatory montage to show Eggs growing up, we can see that the boxtroll ranks have gone down at an alarming rate, until only a handful are left. That’s when Eggs goes out to learn more about what Snatcher is up to, and meets up with Winnie Portley-Rind (neglected daughter of the aforementioned lord, voiced by Elle Fanning) along the way. From there, we’re off to fun and adventure.
Because this is a Laika picture, some things will be a given. The production design is sterling, the voice cast is solid, the 3D effects are absolutely worth the price of admission, the action scenes are exhilarating, and the animation (aside from a few choppy moments) looks incredible overall. Also, this film continues the proud Laika tradition of bringing dark and twisted imagery to the screen, just scary enough to keep all ages entertained without leaving scars for the littler ones.
However, a lot of old problems resurface here as well. I’ve already said that Paranorman suffered for being preachy in its closing act, and I’m sorry to say that this third act falls into a similar trap. This movie is much better at balancing words with spectacle, to be sure, but the problem is still there. Moreover, the movie is very explicit in its role reversal, depicting its monsters as scared and vulnerable while the humans are paranoid, stupid, and violent to a sadistic degree. That’s exactly what Paranorman was all about, but without the “zombie film parody” angle that gave the concept its novelty.
On the other hand, the film does take its premise to some new and interesting thematic ground. For example, it goes without saying that identity is a huge part of the story, as Eggs tries to figure out whether he’s a human or a boxtroll or something in between. Yet the movie expands on the concept of identity by introducing the factor of class. After all, our main villain is motivated entirely by his desire to join the ruling class, and his goal is seemingly an end in itself. But even if he (or Eggs, or any of the other characters, for that matter) went up or down on the social ladder, would it really change who he is?
Oh, and speaking of Snatcher, it bears remembering that he trumped up rumors of the boxtrolls’ violent nature, polarizing the town to such an extent that he created a war for the purpose of advancing his own agenda by way of preying on everyone’s fear. It’s subtle enough that the parallels will go over the heads of children, but some adults may find some allegories here for certain recent events. Just saying.
Of course, the film doesn’t preach about politics so much as it talks about identity. Though the movie also talks a great deal about courage, conformity, standing up for what’s right even when it’s hard, and so on. The boxtrolls are a prominent case in point, since they eventually have to learn how to quit hiding and start acting out of self-preservation. However, the “courage” aspect is also explored through Mr. Pickles and Mr. Trout (respectively voiced by Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost) a couple of comic relief henchmen who start to question their work for Snatcher. Though there is a third henchman (Mr. Gristle, voiced by Tracy Morgan of all people) who’s a mindlessly sadistic little gremlin, to keep things balanced.
Also on the subject of comic relief, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Madame Frou Frou. She’s a comic relief who also works as a vision test: If you don’t immediately know what her big plot twist is going to be from the moment she first appears onscreen, you need to get your eyes checked.
I’m very sorry to say that the plot is deeply flawed. Though there are a few neat surprises here and there, way too many of the plot twists were telegraphed well in advance. It also doesn’t help that the pacing is lopsided, with a drawn-out first act padded with redundant exposition and way too many montages. Oh, and Eggs’ origin was held from him for absolutely no reason, that’s another drawback.
On a miscellaneous note, there’s no way I can end this review without talking about Winnie in greater detail. It’s always refreshing to see such a proactive female lead, especially in a kids’ film. But more than that, Winnie is notable for how she looks like this sweet little girl dressed in pink, even though her tastes are disturbingly macabre. Even though she was raised to fear the boxtrolls — and make no mistake, she is deathly afraid of them — she takes an alarming amount of glee in recounting tales about the boxtrolls eating faces off and making necklaces out of phalanges. When she finally arrives at the boxtrolls’ cavern, Winnie is genuinely upset to find that there aren’t any rivers of blood or mountains of human skulls. Basically, Winnie is an aggressive person with an offbeat sensibility, exactly the type of person that Eggs and the boxtrolls need for that push out of their comfort zone.
Finally, one more miscellaneous note: Stay through the credits. At least until the mid-credits stinger. You’ll definitely want to see it.
In spite of all my nitpicks and all the various flaws that the movie has, I have to stress that The Boxtrolls is not a bad movie. It’s creative, it’s funny, it’s energetic, it’s thrilling, and the darker imagery is very smartly used. The strength of the presentation also counts for a lot, with fantastic voice acting across the board and dazzling visuals that are well worth the 3D premium. What’s more, the story is built around some solid kid-friendly themes, even if most of it is expressed in a blunt manner and a lot of it was carried over from Paranorman.
It isn’t a bad movie, but it still isn’t even close to Laika’s best (Coraline). It isn’t even the best animated film released this year (The Lego Movie or How to Train Your Dragon 2, take your pick). I think that’s ultimately the biggest disappointment about this movie: It’s good, but we know that Laika can do so much better. Still, Laika is far from rock bottom and I have every reason to believe that their next project will be truly great.
Incidentally, what is their next production? checks Google It’s rumored to be Wildwood, an adaptation of the Portland-based fantasy novel written by Colin Meloy (yes, of The Decemberists). Given the track record of movies shot and set in Portland (Gone, Extraordinary Measures, Body of Evidence, etc.), this should be really interesting.
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