New Articles for the Week of January 12th: So Long 2013 Edition

A belated Happy New Years to you, dear reader. Lots to catch up on, what with this being the first update in nearly two months. Probably for the best though, as it’s been a slow start to 2014 on my end, so at least I’ve got a healthy backlog to bring to your reading attention. First, a quick rundown of a few theatrical releases I reviewed, before the big TV list promised so long ago:

Philomena: A nice little movie about a nice little old lady, featuring a nice little supporting performance from Steve Coogan. That I remember almost nothing else from this probably means I should be the one reading the review, if anyone.

Saving Mr. Banks: Ditto for this one, which I’ve only soured on more after reading about the real relationship between Walt Disney and P. L. Travers. Read Genevieve Koski’s review and analysis of “brand deposits” over on The Dissolve to understand the full ickiness I feel about this movie.

Out of the Furnace: I’d be lying if I said review scores don’t matter to me, simply because being well outside the mean distribution of critical math-ery increases your likelihood of being yelled at by people. Writing a downer review for this a full month before its release left me a little nervous to see whether I’d be an outlier, which turned out not to be the case. Part of the fun of seeing movies way before the hype machine kicks in is getting to watch them in a vacuum of buzz, which this one (rightfully) didn’t end up generating. Still love me some Christian Bale though.

American Hustle: Which is also probably a good reason why I continue to like this one a lot more than other critics. Well, reading Rottentomatoes and Metacritic scores would tell you a whole lot of critics liked this one a bunch, but since we now live in a world of Criticism 2.0, the press lifecycle of this film has accelerated faster than I reasonably would have thought.

With major awards season kicking off tonight with the Golden Globes, the widely agreed upon greatness of films in 2013 will now be boiled down to a couple of DVD box tag lines and historical footnotes, so it’s understandable why a lot of critics are upset that American Hustle is going in as a presumed favorite against the likes of 12 Years a Slave, and Inside Llewyn Davis. And yeah, I’d be disappointed if American Hustle won any of the major awards (save for any acting award they want to throw at Amy Adams, who’s totally deserving, though that's not to say most deserving), but more so because of the historical backlash it would cause that turns an unworthy, but still very enjoyable film into the worst thing to happen to movies since Crash won Best Picture.

The acceleration of the awards season cycle has caused a dogpile onto American Hustle recently, perhaps in an attempt to sway academy votes. That’s a fair enough goal, but misses the larger issue that awards fever causes the film industry. Why is it that a light, empty, but wickedly fun movie like American Hustle can so easily take gold off the table of more important, timeless pictures? My thinking is that it's because voters are human, and like to be entertained. I’ve likened the film elsewhere to being The Fast & Furious of prestige dramas, in that it’s just a bunch of likeable people having a good time for no real end or purpose. And if you do that well enough, as David O. Russell has, of course voters are going to glom onto it, because there simply aren’t enough films like that, which target adult, film-loving audiences that like to have a good time at the movies.

We need there to be more films like American Hustle, not less. Its success speaks to how badly adult audiences are looking for well-acted, well-crafted entertainment that doesn’t involved superheroes or mass destruction. If there were more movies out there balancing American Hustle's same mix of mature filmmaking and immature, "let's just have some fun" attitude, then critics wouldn’t glom onto it like a life raft. Yes, 12 Years A Slave is a more important, powerful film, just as Her is a more emotionally affecting one, but if you starve awards voters of purely enjoyable film experiences, then they’re going to be absolutely over the moon when one like American Hustle comes along, and gives them the easy satisfaction wider audiences get week after week in the summer blockbuster season.

I think American Hustle is a great good movie, while the other nominees it’ll be facing off against range from good great, to simply great great films. In every case, the great film will be the one remembered by history, but there’s still room for just good, enjoyable prestige films to exist, so long as they don’t make it easier for awards voters to screw up the one thing they have to do: pick the film that best represents the year, either on a qualitative, or idealogical level.

Now, the danger of getting more films like American Hustle is that instead of proving their disposability by satiating the baser urges of voters, the nominee lists will instead be overrun by films that spectacularly clear an insanely low bar. This would be a fine result too, in my opinion, because it would offer us the last hair fiber of proof to show that, for fuck's sake guys, awards are almost never right. To quote the immortal words of The Wire's Snoop Pearson (or Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, if you wanna be anal about it): deserve got nothing to do with it. As far as I’m concerned, the year’s best films were decided last month, when critics I love and respect made their cases for what they thought were the best movies. Look no further than Film Crit Hulk’s amazing take on the Top 10 list to see how completely arbitrary picking “bests” is, especially coming off a year as amazing as 2013.

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By the way, here’s my Top 10 list of TV shows for 2013! So as to save myself from a very severe case of hypocrite-lash, let me be upfront by saying I would have chosen to not even rank these if I had my druthers. I was wishy-washy about all the numbering from conception to posting, and don’t considered myself held to the ordering in any way. You can check out my big 10 on the link, but I also just want to take a minute to highlight another 10 series from the year that didn't make the cut, roughly in ascending order of my enjoyment of them:

Homeland: Oh, Homeland. I’d say you broke my heart, but you never really had it to begin with. You had my attention all through season one, as Carrie Matheson elbowed her way into the anti-hero pantheon, and Damien Lewis put on an acting clinic every week. And for the first half of season two, you had me by the shorthairs, what with your inspired and insane willingness to barrel the plot forward at an alarming pace.

But then the rest of season 2 happened, and like a lot of other viewers, I got nervous about what would emerge from the rubble of the show’s late 2012 implosion. What we got in 2013 wasn’t an embarrassment, but it does prove the sneaking suspicion early critics had about Homeland’s success being intrinsically tied to momentum. It still looks great, and the performances are strong, but I’m not sure I’m getting much else out of it each week.

Broadchurch: Check my mega-blog from a few months back for the full scoop, but I found a lot to like in this morbid little seaside murder mystery. Here’s to hoping the American remake, and another series of the original don’t completely throw this show’s legacy off a cliff.

New Girl: I was late to the New Girl party on both ends, as I wasn’t in time to praise the strong back end of its second season we got in 2013, and have only now caught up, when the show is seriously struggling to maintain its momentum. Jake Johnson is practically carrying the show on his shoulders at this point, so this might be the only time New Girl makes a best of list for me. But, hey, at least they’ve cut down on a lot of the ironic racism humour that plagued the first couple seasons! That’s something, right?

Archer: The fuel gauge is visibly starting to dip on one of my favorite animated comedies, though word is the quickly approaching fifth season makes for a revitalizing gamechanger. This is a show I usually like watching more the second or third time than the first, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Season 4 is a whole lot better than I give it credit for. If for nothing else though, the show gets points for collapsing the H. Jon Benjamin voiceover universe into a singularity during its Bob's Burgers crossover in the premiere, which was just fantastic.

Parks & Recreation: My love of Parks still runs deep, but it’s deep enough to know that I'm about ready to say goodbye. I still love the characters and world of P&R, but as with all comedies, what made them identifiable and relatable continues to get stretched by the increasingly cartoonish lengths needed to land a joke. I’m a Legacy-ist in a lot of ways: it’s better for a show to live fast and die young than to risk overstaying its welcome. Parks isn’t nearly at that point yet (I laughed my ass off at the touching 100^th episode they just had), but the show’s 3 season golden age might be forgotten by history the longer it’s followed by diminishing returns.

Scandal: Jumping off of Parks, the best way I can describe Scandal is to say that if Leslie Knope is TV’s Superman, Olivia Pope is its Batman. Scandal is a cynical soap opera thrill ride that’s only recently shown signs of flagging. It’s a show I love for a number of reasons, chief among them being how aggressively, at times embarrassingly, progressive it is. It’s almost certainly run out of juice at this point, but considering the levels it was operating at through all of 2012 and most of 2013, can you blame it? Not since Spartacus has a surface layer of trash hidden some of the most effective and thought-provoking writing on TV.

Game of Thrones: I think I ruined Game of Thrones for myself right after episode 9 of the first season (yeah, that episode), when I decided I couldn’t wait a whole week for the finale, like some sort of impulse-control-having sucker. I burned through the first book before the first season’s finale, but felt much less excitement and enjoyment when watching HBO recreating something I had already read. The same muted feeling has persisted since reading all the books, and seeing the show adapt them. It's still so incredibly well made, and so well acted that it’s almost impossible to comprehend that something like Game of Thrones not only exists, but is one of the biggest things in TV. Still, I can’t help but feel like I love Game of Thrones more in book form, and simply appreciate and respect the TV version more than feverishly devour it like a lot of other people do.

Hannibal: God bless Bryan Fuller for not only proving that serial killer television doesn’t have to be bad, but for also showing that a remake of a known property doesn’t have to be the worst thing ever. Coupled with the best cliffhanger ending of 2013, Hannibal’s first season will give you ample reason to be unbearably excited for the quickly approaching second.

Orphan Black: I’m running out of word fuel so I’ll keep it brief: watch this show. Maureen Ryan sums up best why little shows like this are some of the most important out there, but even as pure entertainment, Orphan Black is a smashing success. If Tatiana Maslany wins the Best Actress Golden Globe, it will be deserved, and make up for any and all future snubs by the HFPA.

The Returned: The third of Sundance Channel's trio of esoteric shows to premiere in 2013, this late 2012 French series was even more frightening than Hannibal, despite very rarely giving in to horror/thriller cliché and tropes. It’s a disturbing little show in a lot of ways, capable of making very simple images incredibly unnerving, but it’s all in service of a thoughtful, emotionally balanced look at loss and grief. Don’t let subtitles be a barrier to entry, or you’ll be missing out on one of the most haunting and beautiful shows 2013 had to offer.

That’s all for now, I’ll be back with more updates, once I’ve got some stuff to update you with! Play me off into 2014, mysterious and ethereal Mogwai soundtrack!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gskEoviMFGA]

New Articles for the Week of November 18th: Penultimate Listageddon Edition

Theater waters are being thoroughly chummed with Oscar bait, and there doesn’t seem to be much anything good on TV anymore, so you know what that means: time for year-end awards! Yes it’s the most, liscticle tiiiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeeeeeeear. It’s been a slow month for me in terms of actually producing new content, as prep for click-mongering Top 10s and Best Ofs has had me busy catching up on a lot of programming I failed to get around to earlier. So let’s call this month’s post a practice round as I present Woolf On Film’s: Top 5 Pieces of Content from November!!!!!! (Feel free to flick your light switches a bunch and make some wooshing noises between each entry for added dramatic effect)

5) Interview with Gavin Hood On Ender’s Game: So this was pretty fucking crazy, seeing as A) I’ve never interviewed anyone in my life, let alone an Oscar-winning director, and B) it was held at a Trump Hotel, and I’ve never stepped foot in anything much nicer than a Marriot. I expected to get bounced the second I walked in, which would have been something of a relief. Yeah, I was nervous as all hell about spending 15 minutes talking with a guy I’ve never met, seeing as who exactly the fuck am I? I can barely make it through watching interviews hosted by actual professionals, so the prospect of doing one myself was more than a little terrifying. The artificiality of it always just weirds me out: actors and creatives giving the same canned answers to the same questions they’re going to get 20 times from a revolving door of press correspondents sounds just horribly awkward no matter how you cut it.

So my primary goal going in was to at no point stoop to something like “SO WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH HARRISON FORD?!?! YOUR MOVIE IS SET IN SPACE, AND HE WAS THAT GUY IN THAT MOVIE SET IN SPACE!!!” But the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that it seems preeeetty unlikely I’ll be able to just walk into this thing and totally reinvent the rules of movie publicity. At the end of the day, this sort of thing is just a transaction: we get content, they get to pimp out their project. It’s all part of the marketing game –and it’s a game that lets me meet an Oscar-winner in person, and maybe snag a couple Trump coasters while I’m at it. Not bad, all told. 

It was no small relief then that when I actually sat down with Mr. Hood, he answered my questions with an energy and verbosity that not only made my job easier, but also actually gave me first hand evidence of what an interview can be useful for. Gavin’s passion and excitement when speaking about the film was really quite inspiring, and I hope it translates into the written version. The guy has a background in acting originally, so yeah, part of me is still suspicious as to how much of that enthusiasm is legitimate. Again, the whole point of the press tour is to get people hyped for his movie, and you’re not going to do that unless you can look them in the eye and say without hesitation their next big project it’s is better than sliced bread.

But dammit, I wanted to believe him by the end of it –not so much his confidence in the finished product, which even he was modest about, but in the idea that people are making these giant, $150 million movies because they want to share something they feel passionately about with the world, and not just because the studio thinks they’ve got a shot at cashing in on a known property. After all, this is the adaptation of a 30 year-old sci-fi novel by an author who’s spent the last 30 years proving he’s a complete fucking wacko, so it’s not like this thing was gonna be a calk walk.

4) Ender’s Game Review: Did I mention Orson Scott Card is a piece of shit? Sorry, let me rephrase: Orson Scott Card is a colossally homophobic, ginormously bigoted, 12-piece bucket-sized piece of shit. But I still liked the movie they made out his book. Despite how positively my interview with Gavin Hood shaped my opinion of Ender’s Game’s director, it didn’t make me feel more confident that the movie itself was going to be anything but a massive flop. How big a bomb it’ll be once all is said and done is still up in the air, but its soft launch was hardly surprising.

Part of the reason: the book’s reputation was poisoned, then stabbed, then beaten to an inch of its life and left bleeding at the side of the road by its author, Orson Scott Card, every time he opened his mouth, and discussed his views on religion, sexuality, government –pretty much anything that doesn’t have to do with the book he wrote. This was a huge problem for the film adaptation to get from screenplay to screen, seeing as people understandably might not want to have their money going into the pocket of a giant asshole. Granted, if we aired all of Hollywood’s dirty laundry, I doubt you’d ever be able to see a movie and have a clean conscience about where your money’s going. But Card’s been open about his opinions, and in a way, I respect him for not hiding them, no matter how hateful. At least this way, I knew I wouldn’t want to pay to see a movie that has an asshole scoring points on the backend.

Or so it seemed. Despite Summit Entertainment spending more time distancing the project from Card than actually promoting it, the last minute announcement upon its release that Card wouldn’t be getting residuals off of ticket sales hinted at the toxic word of mouth the film was premiering to. I was happy about this, as having seen the film a week earlier, and having generally enjoyed it, I felt more comfortable in being able to recommend people purchasing tickets for the film, instead of just recommending the film itself.

That all bears out in the review, in which I caught some flack for overly emphasizing my dislike for Card. In my defence, all the extratextual discussion is presented up front, and meant to establish my conflicted position: my opinion of the film wasn’t influenced by my opinion of who came up with it, but considering the large population of viewers who probably wouldn’t want to give money to this guy, I figured it was important to address the controversy directly. Whether or not that was effective I’ll leave up to you, and in the future, I’ll try to use a defter hand the next time a complete dickbag has me feeling conflicted about whether or not I can recommend a movie to someone. But hey, I got a positive review on Existimatum, the site that reviews reviews. So that’s something.

3) Dallas Buyers Club Review: Here’s a movie I saw that I gave the same rating as Ender’s Game, and caused far less grief. It’s quite good. You should see it. Matthew McConaughey has a really great mustache in it, and I really should be reviewing more of his movies, if for no other reason than because I should probably have figured out how to spell his name properly at this point.

2) Thor: The Dark World Review: Oh shit, more ratings kerfuffles! I really, really wish we as a culture, as a people, and as a species could just do away with review scores. I totally get why they exist, seeing as our need to codify and categorize entertainment for convenience sake only gets more pressing the more entertainment there is to be labeled and listed, but seriously, if your viewing habits are dictated solely by IMDB star ratings and a rotten tomatoes score, you're doing it wrong.

So yeah, when I gave Thor: The Dark World a 3 out of 5, and an ever so slightly rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew I was going to get in some shit from Marvel die hards. Sure enough, haters did hate, as is their wont, though when it comes to criticizing my criticism, I generally don’t respond to comments that are attacking me, or the existence of my review, as opposed to what I’m trying to say about the movie. Which can be hard! It’s incredibly tempting to jump down in the comment section muck and articulate as politely as possible why it is someone is a fucking idiot. But getting involved only fans the flames of outrage sparked by those insecure enough to take a star-rating on a movie they haven’t seen as an attack on their being, so I do what I can to stay out. Still, when you don’t get a ton of feedback on your work, it always sucks to go through the thought process of “oh hey, someone left a comment! Lemme just take a look and –oh god, what did I do to these people to offend them so personally?!”

So when I did come back to that Thor review a whiles later, and saw two -heroes? Yeah, I’ll call them heroes- basically saying exactly what I would have said myself...well goshdarnit if that didn’t just set my cockles to max heat. I actually almost wish the comments sections were full of nothing but the non-stop hate, so that that way I could always just ignore them. Instead though, people who might themselves disagree with my opinions on a movie, but acknowledge the right for them to exist, are out there fighting the good fight on my behalf. And I thank them for that. 

1)   Under the Dome Boxset Review: And coming in at number one with a Price is Right fail trombone is my final word on Under the Dome. Why did I take this assignment after spending the better part of 3 months complaining about this show? Good question, shitty answer. See, the special addition comes packaged with its own dome. Way I saw it, it'd be an excuse to try a boxset review, which I'd never done, and I'd get a trophy out of it. Also it was free, so that was a big motivator. Buuuuuuuut then they didn’t send me the special edition, just the regular one, which doesn't come in its own tiny plastic dome so why in God's name would anyone ever want to own it? Needless to say, I was heartbroken. Hard as it was to believe, Under the Dome found a way to disappoint me one last time. It’s almost poetic.

That’s all for now. Got a couple movie reviews slated for later in the month, but it’s mostly gonna be a whole lotta TV writing for the rest of 2013. I’ll be doing an official top 10 list elsewhere, but might do something a bit more extensive and free flow here later down the road.

New Articles for October: The Longest Weekend Edition

Happy Thanksgiving/Columbus Day long weekend everybody! Yes, it may be Tuesday, but thanks to a failed rideshare, my terrific weekend in Montreal has seen itself extended by a day. As I write this, with recirculated Megabus air blowing in my face, weary from running around town looking for 11^th hour transportation home, hands raw from totting a leather-handled, broken-zippered duffle bag for hours on end, two thoughts have been running through my mind:

1)   Now’s as good a time as any to do a little blog update.

2)   If you ever get a rideshare from Montreal to Toronto driven by a guy named Adam in a silver van, punch him square in the mouth, and tell him Sam and his roommate say hello.

The Grandmaster: I actually forgot to mention this one during my last post, so this review is a little overripe and out of date. Seeing as this was my first Wong Kar-Wai film, I was more than a little out of my element. Considering how butchered the North American cut is rumored to have gotten in coming over from China, I’m willing to call this one a mulligan.

Machete Kills: At least I had done my homework for this one, although I suppose one needn’t really watch the original Machete at all before seeing the sequel. I caught an advance screening of Machete Kills well before some of the more vitriolic reviews for this one published, so I’m wondering if perhaps I should have been more incensed by it. Honestly, this one played almost identically to the original for me: as I stared at all the mayhem and aggressive attempts at titillation, I felt like Superman having bullets comically pinging off him like bouncy balls, not so much unamused as completely unfazed. Machete Exists might have been a more accurate title.

Captain Phillips: The completely opposite of that reaction came from seeing Captain Phillips, which, holy shit, is just about the most exhausting film experience I’ve ever had. If Gravity inspires the mind-expanding rush of a heroine high, Captain Phillips is the long, strung-out withdrawal. This was something of a challenge to review because it’s a movie I recommend to people specifically for how effectively it punishes them. Granted, different viewers will find enjoyment in different types of prodding from a film: I really loved the excessive tension of Phillips and constant cringing the new Evil Dead remake inspired. All the same, it may take more than just insanely effusive word-of-mouth to get me to see 12 Years a Slave anytime soon; I can barely get through reading some of the reviews without wanting to curl up in a ball and not awaken until after Oscar-season.

Under the Dome: And segueing off those bad vibes, here’s a link to the last few reviews of Under the Dome I left out of the last post, due to there being bigger TIFF fish to fry. Also: who gives a shit about Under the Dome? Well, apparently at least 10 million viewers every week did, which is why I wound up covering it through its 13-episode first season. I’ve only been in the TV recapping game for a year now, but this show already feels a bit like it was meant to be my Waterloo. I’ve covered middling shows that eventually grew on me, shows I love and wanted to talk about, and shows I love but didn’t think I could talk about without sounding like an idiot. This was my first truly bad show though, and while there was some fun to be had in riding my initial, accurately reserved optimism into the dross that followed, covering this week to week became something of a chore.

Rereading my finale write-up, I honestly regret entire portions of it, simply because it’s everything I didn’t want my reviews to devolve into: a game of bitter point scoring where the objective was to shame everyone involved in the project for having the temerity to not be good. It’s perfectly fine to express your displeasure with a program, and I still get tons of enjoyment out of watching crappy shows, and ripping on them with my friends (how we’ve missed you for that, The Walking Dead), but committing yourself to then writing about something you don’t legitimately like in a professional context requires something else entirely (ie: money).

The reason anyone starts a blog like this is because they love something, not because they hate it. There’s already way too much snarky negativity on the internet, and while there’s room for that in your relationship with what you watch, when it’s the only thing you have to offer the rest of the world, you might as well just keep it to yourself. I’ll be reviewing the Blu-Ray boxset later this month (Why? Well A), I’m getting it for free, and B) IT COMES IN A MINI-DOME!!!!), but I’ll be taking a step back from weekly TV reviews for at least a little while, and coming to it later with a more selective approach. There’s absolutely room for coverage of television that comes down to just slagging on it week after week, but if I’m not being paid to do so, I’d rather be propping something up with my free time, instead of kicking it while it’s down.

Before Midnight: And just to end things on a much more positive note, here’s a little bite-sized review for this film, which I wrote months back, but failed to publish for a deadline. I really loved it, and think you might too.

“18 years after first letting us eavesdrop on a fateful meeting between two strangers, director Richard Linklater is still treating his magnum opus as one big excuse to break the most important rule in filmmaking: show don't tell. Before Midnight, the third in an audacious, globetrotting series of old school two-handers, is all talk, all the time. But as with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset before it, “Midnight's” talk is the kind of charming, romantic, wistful, and brutally honest conversation that turns a seemingly insufferable premise into something special. That all the talk is set against a gorgeous Greek backdrop, and spoken by leads that have only gotten better with each film, is just icing on the cake.

Nine years into what others would call a successful relationship, Celene and Jesse have grown to be strangers to the people they once were, as well as one another. Worn down by the inertial weight of parenthood, work, and commitment, a night away from the kids filled with long takes of long talks reignites the playful thrill of discovery that comes from two people sharing themselves openly and completely, even if just for a night. But as the evening progresses, a flood of relationship detritus, the kind that builds and festers the longer you know someone, threatens to overwhelm all. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy leave nothing off the camera, as the years’ worth of stray looks, offhand comments, and things left unsaid between Jesse and Celeste provide all the ammo needed to rewrite the entire story of the "Before" saga.

The films have made for a subversive and self-aware rebuke to institutionalized images of Hollywood romance, yet their intoxicating brio has changed with age, becoming equal parts bitter and bittersweet. Before Midnight is too experienced for the youthful optimism of Sunrise and too tired to try and be as sexy as Sunset, but makes for a natural, and heart-wrenching continuation of Linklater's experimental look at what it means to love another person for the long haul. Ending once more on a moment of intimate ambiguity, it seems the only certainty for the future of Celene and Jesse is that they will have one, shared or otherwise. It's just a shame we'll have to wait until 2022 to find out what that future holds.”

New Articles for September: TIFF Happens Edition

Hey, TIFF happened! And I was there! Well, the festival covers almost all of downtown Toronto, and since I work in the financial district, it was kinda hard not to be there. But thanks to some writing connections, I actually wound up at some press screenings, a couple premieres, and even a press conference. Considering I've never been to TIFF, or a proper film festival, the last two weeks have been very exciting. And tiring. Tiring and exciting in equal measure. So lemme just quickly list-off the hot 'n steamy industry awards-bait I lucked my way into seeing, lest this wind up running overlong like that last post (hyperlinked titles lead to actual review).

• The Fifth Estate

Rating: 3 out of 5

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, and Daniel Brühl

Alternate title: The Anti-social Network

The Wikileaks Cablegate scandal represents a major flashpoint in the early 21st century's defining civil rights debate, privacy vs. security. Seeing as the site's founder, Julian Assange, only rose to public notoriety in the last few years, you might think it's too early for a biopic to be made properly. You would be right. The Fifth Estate is perhaps the most lavishly produced, best acted made-for-TV movie ever made. It's good for some soapy fun, but those looking for either a history lesson, or a look at the Wikileaks message instead of the man who started it, will have to wait.

• Prisoners 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Starring: Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal

Alternate Title: Les Miserablists

I really enjoyed, or rather, appreciated Denis Villeneuve's 2010 drama Incendies, despite the grimness of its subject matter. Understandably, some critics accused Villeneuve of hackish exploitation of war crimes, rape and incest for dramatic effect, and also understandably, those same people are not happy about the child-kidnapping drama Prisoners. I can sympathize with calling out the film for using low-hanging alarmist fruit for a premise, but the exploration of that premise makes for a well-paced, and gorgeous looking police procedural.

• Labor Day 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Starring: Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet

Alternate Title: Love in the Time of Cobbler

Two things that automatically predisposed me to liking this one: 1) director Jason Reitman makes really, really good movies, and 2) I'm a sap. Labor Day is a rural weepie through and through, but it's a really well-acted, warmly shot and heartfelt rural weepie. To really get swept up in all the melodrama, go in with open arms, and stomach empty (not since Waitress has pie been filmed so lovingly...or frequently). I'll add an addendum later once the press conference I covered for the film is posted, which includes a couple neat little tidbits from Reitman and 2/3rds of the cast.

• Can a Song Save Your Life?

Rating: 4 out of 5

Starring: Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo

Alternate Title: White People and Guitar - A Love Story

Photogenic movie stars playing musically talented dreamers looking for a shot at stardom/redemption? Love letters to the enduring vibrancy of New York City? Guest appearances by Cee-Lo Green and the guy from Maroon 5? Yup, this thing is pure, uncut, Bolivian-grade catnip for white people. So sure enough, me and the rest of the near-monochromatic audience I saw it with were pretty thoroughly won over by this one. The review is basically me writing an 800-word caveat, before ending with, "buuuuut, if you can ignore the core phoniness at the heart of it all, it's pretty great." I'm also one of those guys who unironically likes a bunch of Taylor Swift songs, and as we've already established, I'm a sucker for schmaltz, especially when it sounds this good.

• Gravity 

Rating: 5 out of 5

Starring: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney

Alternate Title: Fuck You, Space

So basically, Alfonso Cuarón decided it would be really funny if he based his next film on my biggest nightmare. Yeah, Gravity is the closest i'll ever get to becoming an astronaut, both for adding another compelling and discouraging example of the many, many ways space is a never-ending deathtrap, and for being one of the most immersive and visceral film experiences I've had in ages. Somehow, 2013 has turned out to be the year of me becoming an IMAX pitchman, because just like Pacific Rim, this one needs to be seen on the biggest screen you can sit yourself in front of. The script is nothing to write home about, but it's not insulting or problematic in the way most effects-driven epics tend to be. This was the definite highlight of the festival for me, and I'm strongly anticipating/dreading getting the chance to see it again.

Sorta Review: Fast & Furious 6

Forget Pain & Gain: Fast & Furious 6 is this year's true meathead American dream movie. Both are crudely written love letters to self-determination, getting ahead, and  good ol’ fashioned bootstrap-pulling, adding a touch of blue collar to a summer blockbuster season dominated by superheroes, and space cadets. Their heroes are plucky, lower-middle class survivors who don’t wait for a shot at success, but brute force one into existence through rejection of society, and its laws. The films luxuriate in orgiastic lifestyle porn, riding high on wealth cultivated from a separate outlaw fantasy of Robin Hood-esque adventure, stealing, shooting, and violently elbowing a place into the ranks of the 1%. These are the champions of a 9-to-5er’s daydreams, getting rich quick, while valiantly flying a middle finger to the corporate power abusers, and corrupt bureaucracy that creates the real world’s millionaires.

Fast one-ups Pain though, as the now sextet of wildly successful automotive-focused action movies are themselves proof of free market economics leading to better consumer products. The first three entries are, in retrospect, experimental prototypes, following different hypothesis of what 21st century audiences want from four wheel action flicks, with the surprise success of Fast and Furious (the fourth instalment) being the first of many eureka moments. With each film in the now decade-spanning franchise, the tone and cast have been honed to a finer blade, one that continues to slice through demographic barriers, and financial milestones. Fast Five was another major turning point for the series, reorienting the action away from neon-lit underground street race culture, and toward a more accessible genre of heist films -all to the tune of $600 million worldwide, and newfound critical praise.

A great deal of that success came from cherry-picking cast members and content from the original trilogy, with The Fast and Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift serving as try-outs for what/who would become the real stars for the series. The franchise now operates at a level where Vin Diesel being the one to growl out tough guy talk is as important to opening day as Robert Downey Jr. being in the Iron Man suit (as if aware, Fast 6 has three separate instances wherein the same character is compared to one of Marvel’s Avengers). Showing Stallone’s dinosaur herd how it’s really done, the Fast films have sucked up more and more A-list-of-the-B-list talent with each instalment, and benefited greatly for it. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a smashing addition last time, and MMA-fighter/surprisingly-capabale-actress Gina Carrano joins the ranks in 6, an intimidating warm-up act for the already announced headliner joining the also already announced part seven.

The Fast films continue to grow in popularity, as what little esoteric flavor there was in the first few films has been flattened and smoothed out so thoroughly, that it’s not just a stereotypical frat boy audience that's getting excited for each new lap around the familiar track. The expanding list of players has brute-forced personal, high-stakes drama into a roster of characters previously defined the by just the label of cop or crook. Viewers are now coming to these movies for the characters behind the wheels, not just the wheels themselves, and with every entry, the franchise has become even more of a creatine-infused bro-out with values like loyalty, and friendship -not just cars, beer, and firearms. The once struggling enterprise has course corrected itself toward achievements greater than ever, but even as its star rises to increasing box office heights, its heart still remains firmly at home. After all the testosterone-fuelled pyrotechnics, 6 ends in hand-clasped prayer amongst a family, all giving thanks for the comfort of home, financial security, and, of course, fast cars. It ain’t Capra, but if that’s not the American dream of the modern era, what is? It's a question that might fill your head when watching a blockbuster action movie as mind-numbingly boring as Fast 6 can be at times.

Here’s where I stand with the franchise: I’ve seen enough clips, and channel-surfed through enough of the first four films to make up maybe a movie and a half, but like many others, Fast Five was my introduction proper to Dom, Han, and whatever Paul Walker’s character’s name is. And it blew my socks off. Fast Five is a two-hour clinic of propulsive action, and efficient storytelling that's nigh impossible to not fall in love with. It straddled the line of “so bad its good,” and “legitimately great” so deftly, moments appealing to my Neanderthal, lizard hindbrain, and the rest of my mind that appreciates good movies, were nearly inseparable. Even if the film’s closing tease of a returning character meant nothing to me, I was in for Fast and Furious 6 already, because, holy shit, I just watched a bank vault get slingshot around downtown Rio de Janeiro like an oversized can dangling behind a car reading “Just Married To This Franchise.”

And sure enough, I vowed to see the next entry back in those halcyon days of 2011, but now stand before you a man sadly underwhelmed. Sure, I guess for pure spectacle, 6 has a lot going for it. It’s no vault heist, but a vehicular fight to the death between a bunch of cars and a cargo plane can't be ignored. Going further over the top than even Fast Five, 6 isn’t just divorced from reality, but sets out to burn every photo album and mixtape it still had as evidence it was ever in a relationship with things like restraint, subtlety, and physics. The characters are now able to withstand Looney Toons levels of physical punishment, and the finale takes place on a never-ending runway that might as well be a looping cartoon background. It’s gonzo spectacle of a high-calibre; hell, its climax might be the most expensive piece of innuendo in movie history. Look at this gif, and tell me there isn’t something INCREDIBLY Freudian going on here:

But while 6 still brings plenty of crazy to the table, the slower bits holding all the destruction together are a far more sluggish affair this time out.  The balance of snarky enjoyment to authentic, rapt awe I experienced with Five was near perfect, while 6 pushes things far more in the direction of the former. The dialogue has lost much of its cheesy charm, and just become dull, overdoing it on the self-satisfied, “look how cool we are” non-sequiturs, and platitudes about what in means to be in “the life” of an underground racer/illicit millionaire/alpha-bro. Meanwhile, the more the film tried to earnestly lean into the familial relationships, the more I found myself tuning out, seeing as the only distinguishing feature among each character is which kind of car they like, and what stock role they fill.

Playing completely into Universal’s hands, I’m more interested in the actors than the character’s they’re playing, especially as someone with no reverence for the Fast “mythology.” Paul Walker is every fiber the bland, affectless pretty boy you would expect of a Paul Walker character, barely registering in just about every scene he’s in. Vin Diesel does his usual “muffler caught in the windpipe” tough guy shtick, and really looks like he could use a nap more than anything. The supporting cast gets it done though, chief among them being Dwayne Johnson, who remains America’s most unexpectedly charismatic leading man. His stare-downs with Diesel work on so many levels, at once pushing the undercurrent in "homoerotic undercurrent" to its breaking point, while also providing an interesting directorial challenge, as cutting between the two requires each to look more bulked-up and threatening than the other. And it’s also just really funny to see the nape of each chrome dome’s neck bunch up like an accordion, as though their head’s might spring up at any moment like a jack-in-the-box.

Again though, the problem is that there’s too much ironic enjoyment being had, not honest fun. The humor continues to be almost entirely miss, relying on more of the usual thunderously stupid innuendo and frat house ball-busting. The slobs vs. snobs subtext doesn’t have any juice anymore, seeing as all the characters are now multi-millionaires, so when one of them spends a good two minutes of screentime humiliating a snooty English car dealer, it’s kinda cruel, in addition to being completely unnecessary. The funniest thing about the films continues to be how the third entry, which takes place after all the others -despite being set in 2006-, continues to be an albatross around the franchise’s neck. I’m certain someone will write a brilliant film school thesis on how the continued foreshadowing of Han’s approaching death in Tokyo Drift is secretly the great action movie existential drama of the 21st century.

But really, all would be forgiven if the setpieces were firing on all cylinders, but Fast Five once more proves to be the superior experience. Justin Lin is a really talented director of fight scenes (the brawls in the London underground are pretty stellar), but even by his fourth Fast, still hasn’t figured out how to make the driving sequences work consistently. By providence, I saw a bit of #4 last night, and marvelled at how awful and intrusive a GPS computer providing logistical commentary on a race was, something Fast Five didn’t bother with by having open, brightly lit, and clearly established racetracks. Spatial context is still all but impossible to establish at 100 miles an hour, but it’s a problem 6 exacerbates with constant quick-cutting to gears being shifted, and speedometer needles spiking, instead of establishing shots. The real shame is that three of the four big driving sequences are set at night, resulting in blurry messes that feel like “follow the light” eye exams, rather than well-photographed showstoppers.

Most disappointing though, are the hints that the series will be returning to its roots for Fastest & Furiousest 7: The Fastening, or whatever the hell Universal decides to call it (the actual title card for this one reads Furious 6). The best gag in Five sets up an epic street race, but cuts to its inevitable conclusion immediately, because there is not one person in the audience who doesn't already know that Vin and company are going to win. Six brings the racing back, but unless you’re really invested in Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez’s relationship, it’s just another banal as fuck car chase with no stakes or flair, which we can probably expect more of with Seven’s return to L.A., and the departure of Lin.

Where Fast Five looked the start of a beautiful friendship, the new in-film metaphor of choice comes from seeing that cargo plane tethered down by a half-dozen cars, trying to lift off, but weighed down by old baggage. I won’t call this an official review, but I’ll just say that Fast 6 is already my frontrunner for most disappointing film of summer 2013. It’s still enjoyable in spots (the tank sequence is just unhealthy levels of stupid, human-life-disregarding fun), but Fast & Furious 6 just can’t keep pace with the finely tuned bliss of Fast Five.

Oh wait, they’re bringing him into the franchise next time? Sigh. Fuck you Universal, you’ve got me for at least one more movie. Please make it count.

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Storytelling is, by its nature, manipulative, and plenty of great movies are so because they know how to twist your perceptions to their purpose. A well-crafted, emotional workout, whether thrilling, tear-jerking, or comical, makes for one hell of an experience, and the degree of pleasure you get from letting a movie works its magic on you will cement its place in your mind. But then there’s the other class of great movie, the kind that demands you pull your own weight, and meet it as an equal, no matter how unsettling doing so might be. These films aren’t made to go down smoothly; they come sharpened and barbed, designed to stick inside your head, and make you bleed from the inside, until you’re wondering why you didn’t just watch the stupid Hollywood dress-up movie with name like Gangster Squad.

In reliving the exhaustive manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty could only ever exist among the latter class of films, regardless of whether or not it turned out to be great, which it most certainly is. Expanding the “boots on the ground” style that won her Best Director and Best Picture titles for The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow, and writer Mark Boal, turn their focus to the defining conflict of the last decade, exploring a fight against terrorism by American intelligence agencies that’s as dangerous, and wearying, as any war without clear borders or armies would be.

The film opens two years after 9/11, in one of the many off the books black sites the C.I.A. is operating on foreign soil. “This is what defeat looks like,” barks one of their operatives, as he waterboards a detainee who has clearly been through this routine, and much worse, already. Looking on is recent transfer Maya (Jessica Chastain), a wispy young woman who looks like she might get carried off by a strong desert wind. Her small frame and soft face belie a fierce purpose, one that Chastain is always subtly telegraphing, when not letting it be unleashed in full. Maya is our guide, of sorts, through the next ten years, as her globetrotting journey is made to mirror that of the real life analyst who was largely responsible for finding Bin Laden.

It is through her eyes that we come to understand how inadequate the greatest intelligence resources in the world were when it came to finding one man, especially since doing so became less of a priority as the search dragged on, and domestic security concerns grew as threats went to ground. With so many painful memories to draw from, Zero Dark Thirty has no difficulty in uncovering the raw nerves accumulated over a tumultuous decade, but its daring comes from willing to strike those wounds, again, and again. The results are more than a little upsetting, as they ought to be.

Bigelow and Boal have taken on an unenviable task here, as they set out to compress an era’s worth of fleeting victories, political turmoil, and empty-handed frustration into two and a half hours. While a departmental effort to apprehend a killer might bring to mind cop dramas –and sure enough, sources are “interrogated,” red herrings get rundown, and the hunters often rank among the causalities- the film eschews a traditional thriller structure, often feeling more like a series of chronological vignettes (complete with intertitles) that build towards one moment.

The diffuse narrative would make Zero Dark Thirty as episodic and unfocused as something like The Master, were it not so charged with real history. It rarely lingers on one scene or event for too long, leaping ahead years at a time to showcase how the ongoing battle of attrition is evolving. It’s reminiscent of David Fincher’s Zodiac, another film about a seemingly fruitless hunt for a famed murderer (each employs audio recordings set against a black backdrop, denoting tectonic cultural shifts with striking effectiveness). Both films weigh down one side of a scale with a boogeyman, giving the individuals and nation tasked with finding him the high ground. But the longer, and more desperate the search becomes, the more the avengers give of themselves, and the balance starts to tip. When all is said and done, what is accomplished must be measured against where the scale stands, something Zero Dark Thirty isn't afraid to do.

The film has kicked up quite a controversy over its depiction of torture. The opening fifteen minutes continue the earlier mentioned waterboarding scene with a detail and intensity that’s disturbing, but not exploitative. These sequences, and there are plenty of them, serve to provoke a reaction out of the audience, one that is then tempered by the events that follow. Critics will point to how the brutal actions of C.I.A. spooks helped lead (in circuitous fashion) to the eventual discovery of Bin Laden’s compound, and how hand-tied the agency looks when trying to confirm his presence without the use of “enhanced interrogation.”

To call this a tacit endorsement of torture, however, is bafflingly simplistic. Yes, the film demonstrates the hard truth that physical and mental abuse of a person can cause them to give up information, but the actionable value and validity of that information is always in question. Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t paint with a black and white brush; instead, it asks the audience to consider if there's a point where our hope for a silver bullet to terrorism exceeds our duty to not commit unforgiveable acts against other human beings, or if such things even exist. It all comes together in the film’s breathless finale, a near-real time recreation of the Navy SEAL strike against Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Bigelow is excellent at shooting dialogue and information delivery, but here she confirms her status as a world-class director of action, not in terms of giant explosions and gunfights, but in capturing people as they make momentous decisions through movement.

When the events that transpired in the early minutes of May 2nd do occur, and the last shots have been fired, your reaction will vary, and this is the film’s crowning achievement. For some, it will be a cathartic release for ten years’ worth of bided rage, a cinematic reminder of the relief that came in 2011. Don’t be surprised if you hear an audible whooping in your theatre. For others, though, the moment will be utterly empty, a success qualified to the edge of irrelevance, and delayed past the point of gratification. Beyond its technical prowess, superb cast, and tight script, Zero Dark Thirty is a great film because it doesn’t tell you what to think. It’s a harrowing, unforgettable assault, summed up by one final, devastating look from Chastain that asks, “Was it worth it?” That’s up to you to decide, which may take some time. Zero Dark Thirty is meant to be chewed over, and swallowed hard, to leave your stomach clenched, and teeth set on edge. You can spit it out, but you won't escape the lingering taste of smoke and ashes.

5 out of 5

Zero Dark Thirty

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

2012, USA

Review: Argo

Ben Affleck's Argo is a very good new movie about a very fake old movie, one "made" in Iran during the volatile infant months of the Iranian Republic. Animated storyboard sketches at the beginning of the film offer a colourful crash course on Iran's revolutionary history up to late 1979 -the waning months of the Carter administration-, before Affleck jumps head first into his retelling of one thread in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which saw 52 American embassy workers held captive for over a year.

The opening sequence is electric, showing hundreds of outraged students surrounding the embassy in Tehran, and the workers inside nervously appraising the situation. The only thing keeping them together is the knowledge that the embassy is American soil, guarded by marines, gates, and high walls. Then, the unthinkable happens: one of the protesters climbs over the wall. Then another. And another, leading to a full-on invasion of the embassy. Much like the barbwire over the walls, the soldiers are only there to be a discouraging presence, not an actual defence; any shots fired would risk starting a war, leaving the Americans scrambling to destroy documents moments before their capture.

An imagined sense of security is the first of many disguises, lies and imitations that constitute Argo's key fascination: falsehoods. When six of the Americans manage to flee to the home of an ambassador, the C.I.A. throws together a plan to exfiltrate the group by claiming they're a Canadian film crew, in Iran to scout locations for a new Star Wars rip-off, titled "Argo". The operation depends on creating a ruse so elaborate, and so intricate, that the mission's leader, Tony Mendez (Affleck), will be able to walk the fugitives -using assumed identities- through Tehran's heavily-guarded international airport, and onto a plane back home.

Fake people and fake organizations with real motives all collide, and the most impactful objects aren't guns, they're stamps giving a seal of authenticity. The constant subterfuge creates a tonal dichotomy of tension and farce, with all the characters spinning their own brand of bullshit in order to save lives. Argo welcomely embraces the bullshit though, particularly in its second act, when Mendez brings in a Hollywood makeup artist (John Goodman) and an influential producer (Alan Arkin) to make his phoney movie look like the real deal. While the situation in Iran only intensifies the longer the Americans stay in hiding, the L.A. crew preps the rescue as if it were a human-heist movie. Titles like Mendez's Six, or The Tehran Job come to mind.

Argo's mix of levity and suspense makes for a propulsive brio, but one that can create jarring contrast, such as a sequence that intercuts a convention-worthy table read of the fake movie's script, with hostages being lined up against a firing wall. While the Wag the Dog-style interplay between the entertainment business and covert government agencies is often very funny, it's sandwiched neatly between the dire opening, and the intense final third, which is mostly humourless, as it focusses on Mendez working with the hostages on their cover identities.

Mendez provides as much an anchor as can be expected from a story that's more about events and environments than people, but Affleck makes him a compelling master of deception. The biggest lie he has to tell the rattled hostages is that he knows they'll make it out alright. Of course, history has already spoiled the end of the operation for us, so Argo tries to compensate by layering onto the facts with some additional fiction, which can undercut your appreciation for seeing real events recreated when the script feels the need to embellish them.

But this is a crowed-pleaser, through and through, an Apollo 13 for the politically minded, and Affleck only ever feints at trying to deliver something more than a supremely well-executed thriller. In a recent interview, Paul Thomas Anderson claimed that having great actors was the key to his success, and if that's the bedrock for one of this generation's most celebrated directors, then it's no surprise that Affleck has managed such a strong career behind the camera, thanks to the kind of talent he can bring along with him. The actors are all excellent (Bryan Cranston in particular, as Tony's spitfire of a boss), the script is clean when doling out exposition, yet punchy when it needs to be, and Affleck directs everything with a sure hand.

And it's that slavish devotion to making high-grade product out of a familiar formula that makes Argo exceptionally good, but never great. When its blend of cloak 'n' dagger and showbiz bravado is really crackling, the film is effortlessly enjoyable, but one might hope a story of such great risks would merit a few of its own in the adaptation. I don't want to sound like i'm slagging on Affleck, but if he were to try pretending that he really is America's next great director -not simply its most reliable-, than he might turn out to be just that. Sometimes, you gotta fake it before you can make it.

4 out of 5

Argo

Directed by Ben Affleck

2012, USA

Review: Looper

Has the future started yet? I was wondering that yesterday, when I pulled out my iPhone (4 not 5, i'm not that hip), and watched as a little blue dot representing me on a GPS tracked my progress to a theatre, where I'd see a movie using a ticket I had purchased out of thin air with my phone. All of this, accomplished with a few taps of the finger. Sure, it's not teleporters and laser guns, but the gap between our present, and the expectations older generations had for it, is rapidly closing.

Which is probably why science fiction keeps coming back to the few ideas that have always seemed beyond our reach, like time travel. For as insane, probably impossible, as its existence might be, we've gone out of our way to make sure that whoever figures it out first can just watch a movie or read a book to figure out who got it right. It could turn out as simple as Back to the Future, or as paralyzingly complex as Primer. What makes Rian Johnson's take on the concept, Looper, so fascinating, is that it's interested in the motives behind time travel, not just the mechanics.

As futuristic assassin Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) lays out matter-of-factly, time travel is a part of life 30 years from now, even if it won't be invented for another 60. Crime lords of the year 2074 maintain a monopoly on the technology, using it to extradite troublemakers from their time to 2044, to be eliminated by low-level triggermen called loopers. A high-ranking transplant from the future, Abe (Jeff Daniels), organizes the hits, and was responsible for setting an orphaned Joe on a path: be at the right place, at the right time, and dispose of the anonymous person who appears there. Do that, and you're rewarded with money, respect, and any number of immediate pleasures.

The opening act is like a good piece of pulpy short fiction, showing us what would happen if the noir-influenced world of Johnson's first film, Brick, were left to rust. Kansas of 2044 is all blown-out windows and busted rain gutters, where the sign outside the local looper gin joint, La Belle Aurore, is written in font you'd find on the cover of any James Ellroy novel. It's a world going to hell slowly enough to not cause a panic, just a creeping sense of dread, and the drapes change every few years so that no one notices that the building is burning down around them.

"Most loopers aren't the forward-thinking type," Joe says of his colleagues (tellingly, the looper weapon of choice, retro blunderbusses, only have a range of 15 yards), but he's almost as short-sighted as they are. Despite his greater awareness of what the world has become, and where it is heading, Joe just uses this knowledge to rationalize his own series of bad, self-interested decisions. If the party is almost over, might as well get yours before the music stops. As part of his contract, Joe will eventually have to kill his future self, sent back in time to 2044 in order to wipe out any evidence they ever existed. Failing to "close the loop" has fatal consequences for both vintages of the looper, as evidenced by a gut-churning sequence where an older looper on the lam dissolves, bit by bit, as his former self is slowly butchered.

When Joe botches the hit on his future self (Bruce Willis), they both become targets, the difference being that Older Joe comes with a mission: find those responsible for sending him back from 2074, and kill them in the past. And just when you think Looper is going to reach for the throttle, Johnson reins it in, and starts to pull the rug out from under you. There are still a number of gritty and violent shootouts ahead, and plenty more time-bending logistics, but instead of turning up to full boil, Looper settles into a slow burn, and Johnson's stylish action flick transforms into a sci-fi-infused character study.

That two key pieces of the ensemble -a steely farm owner (Emily Blunt) and her gifted son (Pierce Gagnon)- aren't introduced until the midpoint shows the deliberate measures Johnson takes to invest us in the story of a man literally at war with himself. Willis, as the world-weary Old Joe, at first seems like the embodiment of all the signposts from the future that Young Joe has been ignoring, a living warning of what a life of nihilistic complacency can lead to. Yet Johnson constructs his characters with deep histories- not just backstories, but lifetimes of hard choices and tragedy, made apparent through a line of dialogue, or just a look. What becomes clear is that the events of the past aren't what's obdurate, it's the people.

With nods to Akira, Twelve Monkeys and even a bit of Superman, Johnson's eclectic tastes are fuelled by just the right amount of the quirk that overwhelmed many moments of his last film, The Brothers Bloom. And the look recalls another think piece, Tree of Life, only one that backs up the dreamy visuals with some lucid thinking. Well, to a point. The technicals of time travel are mostly elided by Old Joe giving a hand-waving explanation that the exact details are "cloudy."

This will irk purists and create as much discussion about the story's mechanics as its themes, but Looper is so, so much more about the latter than the former. Johnson thinks the world of tomorrow is coming faster than we think, and that's something to be afraid of. When the powerful finale arrives, and three generations of people are forced to make choices about what the future will be, it feels relevant, and urgent. If that's not the hallmark of great science fiction, what is?

5 out of 5

Directed by Rian Johnson

2012, USA

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Originally Posted June 25th, 2010 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utERS_CJCJQ]

It’s Christmas Eve in Stockholm, and disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is given an intriguing proposition: learn what happened to the heir of the industrious Vangar family, who disappeared forty years ago, in exchange for the proof that can restore his name. A hesitant Mikael accepts, but before long, he becomes tangled in the Vangar clan's long history of lies, betrayal, and abuse. As the trail of the missing girl leads deeper into the past, Mikael is aided by an unlikely ally, the enigmatic and volatile computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander. The two join common cause in a race against time to expose the disturbing truth about what happened to Harriett Vangar 36 years ago.

If this sounds like a crackerjack premise for a novel, then it shouldn’t surprise you that Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become a worldwide phenomenon since being released in Sweden five years ago. An engrossing and character-driven mystery, the pulpy tale is punctuated with moments of extreme violence.  It is the first of Larsson’s trilogy of Millennium novels, which have sold more than 21 million copies. The sales figures alone were probably all the convincing Swedish production company Yellow Bird needed to release a theatrical version. The film, which saw wider release in March of this year, has gone on to strong financial success.

I went into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo like I imagine most other audience members did, having read and enjoyed the book, curious to see if the brooding prose and slick pace could survive an adaptation. In print, Larsson’s novel is a thoroughly absorbing thriller, mainly due to its two sympathetic and engaging lead characters. Mikael is a charming yet dedicated journalist, who’s as mindful of his various relationships as he is in exposing corruption in the Swedish market. His easygoing nature makes him immediately likeable, while his idealism is easy to root for. It’s important that Mikael is so well-written, because otherwise, he would be totally eclipsed by his partner. The titular punk rocker/computer genius immediately grabs the reader’s attention with an appearance that’s equal parts Aeon Flux and Brandon Lee's The Crow. Lisbeth’s fashion sense is just the packaging of a scarred and hardened youth whose horrific past has left her capable of just about anything. Make no mistake, she’s as dangerous as she is beguiling.

It’s unfortunate, then, that these characters, who are easily the best part of Larsson’s first novel, don’t translate nearly as well to the screen. Mikael, as played by Michael Nyqvist, comes off as more of a pushover than a crusading journalistic champion. In the novel, Mikael agrees to work for Henrik Vangar because he is promised a means of reviving his tarnished name. In the film, no mention of this is given, so we’re left to assume he takes the job because he just doesn’t have much else going on at the time. Lisbeth fares much better, and Noomi Rapace should be commended for her work. Rapace, whose background is mostly in theatre, underplays Lisbeth in the best possible way, intriguing the audience with her matter-of-fact dialogue without ever becoming trite. She’s the immediate source of attention whenever on screen. However, without the insight provided by a narrator, the film can’t portray the smaller details that make the protagonists compelling, and in Lisbeth’s case, the character is established through sheer blunt force.

It’s made abundantly clear when we first meet Lisbeth that she’s no ordinary twenty-four year-old. References to sexual abuse by her father give the audience some idea of what makes her the way she is.  The first twenty minutes of her screen time involve Lisbeth suffering and then exacting revenge on another authority figure who has betrayed her. The scenes are never exploitative but are for the most part unnecessary. Director Niels Arden Oplev treats the subject matter frankly, but doesn’t seem to know when the audience has had enough. In the book this portion comes off as episodic, where it helps to establish the severity of the suffering Lisbeth has endured and how ready she is to exact vengeance. On screen, this diversion adds nothing to the plot of the film and instead devolves into two very troubled people traumatizing each other for twenty minutes, with perhaps the promise of a payoff once the other two books in the trilogy are filmed. At 152 minutes in length, it seems clear where some cuts could have been made.

Without the presence of the two leads, it falls to the mystery driving the story to pick up the slack. Much of the fun of any who-dunnit comes from building your own theories on what happened and who’s the bad guy. What makes this particular crime intriguing is that the culprit must have been a member of the Vangar family, who at the time were all isolated together in their family estate. However, no time is used to cast suspicion on the range of suspects, with the revelation of the perpetrator’s identity offering little in the way of catharsis. Between extensive shots of computer screens and old photographs, there’s no time for the audience to formulate their own theories. This is just another core problem with adapting the plot, since much of it involves pouring over old files and digging through archives, which doesn’t exactly translate to gripping cinema. It also doesn’t help that Jacob Groth’s score seems only capable of alternating between two painfully long notes, which is much more grating than it is suspenseful.

To its credit, aside from a few aforementioned scenes, the film is always visually appealing. Both the darkened streets of Stockholm and the frozen countryside add to the bleak tone, and all the actors are wonderfully cast. Every character looks like a real person, which adds greatly to the believability of the story. It’s likely that most investigative journalists look more like Nyqvist than Robert Redford. It’s also refreshing to see people in a movie using actual computers as opposed the fictional ones, where the only desktop items are all titled MAIL and INTERNET, and the command console is just a single keystroke away (granted, it looks like every Macbook shown can manipulate photos with incredible versatility. Is there such a thing as IEnhance?).

There is talk already of a Hollywood remake which will surely fix some issues with the Swedish version, but almost certainly ruin the original's charm. No doubt the sexual violence will be downplayed but with Daniel Craig and Kirsten Stewart rumoured as leads, whatever vague sense of realism the original had is doomed. This is definitely one of those cases where the material will stick with you much longer on paper than on celluloid.

3 out of 5

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

2009, Sweden

Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Originally Posted August 14th, 2010 

When you’ve grown up in a word of arcades and consoles, it’s sometimes easy to forget how weird many of the basic concepts of gaming are. Mario is a series about an overweight plumber jumping on the heads of giant mushrooms and turning them into coins. Pac-man has you guiding a yellow circle with a flapping mouth through a maze to collect pellets and fruit, while being chased by a quartet of colourful ghosts. Much in the same vein, early comic book idiosyncrasies eventually became core elements of the medium: visual cues for sound appear out of thin air, and gigantic blocks of text hang in the middle of scenes, yet somehow don’t disrupt it. You may not notice how experimental some of these fundamental mechanics are until you see them applied in a different medium. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a patchwork of such elements, set in a world that’s equal parts Nintendo and Marvel. Physical actions are punctuated by BAMS and POWS, and pocket change pops out of broken thugs instead of bones. The absurdity of video game logic playing out as a living comic book is never of question in Scott Pilgrim, you're either on its level or left in the dust, making for an unapologetically niche, but vibrant tribute to these past times.

Set in the fantastical realm of Toronto, Canada, thefilm follows the turbulent love life of the titular Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera). Scott is a twenty-three year-old college grad coasting through life, in a band, but out of work, and spending most of his time hanging out with his band mates, or his new (and much younger) girlfriend. Still reeling from the heartbreak of his last relationship, Scott is content to simply spin his wheels until a mysterious American-Ninja rollerblade delivery-girl begins using his head as a subspace highway (stay with me here). He quickly becomes infatuated with the girl, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and as twee romance takes hold of the two, Ramona’s past comes back to haunt Scott in the form of evil exes. See, Ramona’s past lovers have formed a league of evil ex-boyfriends, seven in all, who seek to destroy Pilgrim using kung-fu, mystical powers and veganism (which, unlike ovo-lacto vegetarianism, bestows immense psychic powers). Scott’s wiry frame hides his incredible fighting prowess and so he steps up to dismantle Ramona’s old flames by using his fists, his wits, and the unstoppable force that is a three-piece indie band.

So, Scott Pilgrim is basically a romantic comedy, just one that's spent all its quarters for sanity meds on arcade tokens instead. The world of Scott Pilgrim is an 8-bit one, even though those are real people you’re watching. Based on the comic series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Pilgrim’s world is much like our own, only it’s been run through a Nintendo cartridge a couple of times times. Scott earns points for daily activities, and even levels up at key moments. In Scott’s world, 1-ups wait for those who earn them and people can store five foot sledgehammers in a purse, Granny tweety-style. There is absolutely ZERO explanation given as to how such a world functions and, you'll either buy the bit and premise, or you won't. The film doesn’t stop for anything, and while it doesn’t take anything too seriously, the interpretive physics and wire-fighting are played straight, without ever seeming like some sort of parody.  The nonchalance everyone shows for flaming katanas and lesbian ninjas lets you know that this world doesn’t care why such things exist, so why should you? O'Malley's knack for blending fan-boy absurdity with the everyday makes for a terrific blend on film; wouldn't every bad date movie find just a little life by throwing in some pyrotechnics for no reason?

While the rules are more or less game-based, director Edgar Wright presents his adaptation as if the viewer is watching a comic book in motion. There are many, many comic book movies out there, but most are a translation of the story instead of the way it gets told. With Pilgrim, Wright has made a movie that feels like a comic book come to life. Shot changes feel like moving to another panel and each scene transition plays like a turning of the page. Most shots are accentuated with little comic book elements ranging from visual onomatopoeia, to HUDs showing vital character statistics. It’s a real treat for the eyes, one that will no doubt benefit from multiple viewings in order to soak up all the hidden Easter eggs. The whole movie is structured like a video game and as Scott’s trials increase in difficulty, so too does the insanity.

It’s not long before the fist-fights become bass battles and sword clashes, which can be a lot to handle. The escalation can lead to fatigue before even half the exes are dispatched of, and the film sags during the second act. Yet every fight brings something new and fresh to the experience, leaving the viewer excitedly waiting to see what’s in store for the next brawl. And it’s during these intense sequences that director Wright really shows his talent for filming complex action, which was hinted at by the 30-minute shootout that capped off his last film, Hot Fuzz. Wright’s always had known how to inject energy into mundane tasks (a trademark he takes time to skewer here) but hasn’t had a chance until now to go all out. Here, his highly kinetic filmmaking is applied to a property that needs a lot of energy, and the results are impressive.

Despite weighing all of 120 pounds, Scott is a 1st class ass-kicker, and Wright’s willingness to go over the top fits in perfectly with the material. Scott will be fighting more than half a dozen foes at one time but the action is never cluttered because the choreography is so well thought out. Most fights contain extensive shots where you can visibly see Cera belting out and taking shots, and you never feel like you’re just watching a stunt double. Even when a battle between the anime avatars of rock sub-genres breaks out, Wright’s measured approach to chaos makes the mayhem effortlessly watchable. As an action picture, Pilgrim is a winner because instead of trying to walk the tight-rope of plausibility, it says “to hell with it”, and instead focuses on being as crazy as possible, back flipping and roundhouse kicking all the while.

Yet, Scott Pilgrim’s success as a comic book/video game come to life means it has substantially more difficulty with an area that is a pitfall for both mediums: character. While O’Malley’s creations are endearing in print, on the big screen, they feel far more two-dimensional. There’s an uncanny valley to real people acting like cartoon characters that’s a bit jarring at first, and the only way to get over it is to realize that these aren’t people you’re watching, but instead the kind of broad archetypes you would find in a comic book. There’s a distinct lack of depth to everyone, including Scott, which makes the introspective elements of the story feel hollow. In fact, the central romance between Scott and Ramona seems incredibly dysfunctional, with Scott being inexplicably obsessed with a girl who’s consistently cold and fickle. Then there’s the treatment of Scott’s high school girlfriend, the inventively named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Scott thoroughly mistreats her, an addition to the film not found in the books, and the resolution to their relationship is rushed, leaving you thinking of Scott as kind of a dick.

The lack of depth in the characters will be exacerbated for some people by the film's overt "hipness." Remember, this is a film about young twenty somethings in Toronto, where seemingly everyone is in a band, and the dress code is strictly value village/Urban Outfitters. Be prepared for dialogue that’s steeped in irony and sarcasm, though it helps that its often very funny all the same. Despite its more youthful sensibilities, the complete lack of self-seriousness lets the actor’s words come off as light-hearted and goofy as opposed to obnoxious. A lot of that is due to the fact that the massive ensemble cast is excellent all the way through. Between its two leads, seven villains and a dozen other supporting characters, Pilgrim is bursting with charming and memorable performances that stay true to the source material, which is especially impressive since some characters are on screen for less than five minutes. Stand outs from the supporting cast include Anna Kendrick as Scott’s know-it-all sister, and Kieran Culkin as Scott’s exuberantly gay and equally hilarious roommate. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is perfectly mysterious as Ramona, which makes it a shame she doesn’t have more to do here. But the real star is Cera as Pilgrim, and if anything is going to convince people that he has a future as an actor, this is it. Breaking out of his more nebbish roles, Cera is playing the hero here, one you mostly want to root for, despite his shortcomings. About the highest compliment I can give him is that at no point did a think I was watching Michael Cera, which is a pretty damn big step forward.

There’s really no other movie out there quite like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. While it may fall short as a love story of fully realized characters, the film manages to create a world of such imagination and energy that it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in it. Staying true to its niche spirit, the movie never settles for broad appeal and knows what it wants to be: a tribute to the wonderfully weird worlds of video games and comic books.

4 out of 5

Directed by Edgar Wright

2010, USA

Review: The King's Speech

Originally Posted December 28th, 2010

Albert Frederick Arthur George did not have an easy life growing up. He was plagued with health issues and was constantly tormented by his older brother Edward. His father, who left him in the care of various nannies, expected greatness from him, even though Albert's older brother was likely to inherit the family legacy. Although meek as a boy, Albert eventually began a career in the navy, seeing limited action during the First World War due in part to his poor health. He would eventually attain the rank of Commander in the Royal Navy shortly after the untimely death of his youngest brother John at the age of 13. In 1920 he met Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the woman who would become his future wife and the mother of his two children, Elizabeth and Margaret. Albert entered into the latter half of his life as a representative of his father's estate, seemingly content with where his life had taken him. But then something unexpected happened. Only a year after the death of his father in 1936, Edward made the unprecedented act of resigning as head of the family estate in order to marry, leaving Albert in charge. Of a kingdom. The United Kingdom.

The King's Speech premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in early September of this year to rave reviews. It would win the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival and I was not pleased. 2010 was the year that delved deeper into dreams than ever before, explored the too-good-to-be-true origins of the internet's first billionaires and gave us a raw detective mystery set in the meth-addled Ozarks. The last thing I wanted was another fucking period piece about the British royalty to come in and win over critics the way so many others have in recent memory. The fascination that Western society has with the monarchy is odd to say the least and why the Queen adorns most of the contents of my wallet is an entirely different conversation. But look at any news rag and you’re sure to find at least one massive spread about Prince Williams engagement announced more than a month ago. Film critics in particular seem infatuated with royalty, just look at the scads and scads of awards picked up by films like Elizabethand The Queen. I've always felt that the gravitas of these pieces often outweigh their merits as a narrative, falling back on the work of the actors (and often costume design) more than the actual plot. Hell Judi Dench, a tremendously skilled actress in her own right, managed to pick up a best supporting actress Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth I for 8 minutes.

So it is with great joy that I tell you that The King's Speech is in many ways the antithesis of your average regal biography. As the Duke of York, Albert shows qualities hardly befitting of a king; he's short tempered and is easily cowed by both his brother and his father. It's easy to be caught off guard when he spends a solid minute purposefully reciting every expletive he can think of, because it's, well, funny. Humour is often in deathly short supply in historically accurate period pieces and especially when people of such standing are involved. But the film is more interested in George's journey to becoming a king then his action's as one and it's that journey that's simultaneously charming and soul stirring. The film shatters the veil surrounding the monarchy and shows them as regular people asked to become extraordinary ones, a task which not everyone is given equal chance. Among Albert's many personal defects, he developed a terrible stammer at a young age, leaving him a largely ineffectual public speaker. The film opens with a disastrous address at Wembley stadium, a scene that recalls director Tom Hooper's The Damned Untied, another film about a leader, in his case football manager Brian Clough, who must face down personal flaws before attaining true greatness. Albert's inability to address the people is compounded by the advent of radio and recording devices, and the prospect of a king who can't address his people largely spurs Albert's wife Lady Elizabeth to seek a speech therapist.

Geoffrey Rush plays Lionel Logue, an unconventional speech therapist who, unlike Albert, has dreams of being a monarch, although his are confined to the stage. Logue, though initially struck that his meeting with misses Johnson is actually with the future Queen of England, sets out to treat Albert, but only under the condition that he be treated as a person, not as a prince. The relationship between Albert and Lionel, one royalty, the other the son of a brewer, is where much of the film's humour comes from and it's delightful to see Rush's playful performance bounce off of Firth's initially reserved personality. With much of the film portraying the two’s various speaking sessions, The King’s Speech could have been easily mired in static back and forth but Hooper knows how to highlight the centre of attention in a conversation, particularly, Firth's struggle to simply uphold his end of it. Logue's unorthodox training methods lend themselves well to some very creative montages and moments of small triumph and failure highlighted by pronounced camera movements. The film is at times sluggish in its development of the pair's relationship and much of the more biting humour is reserved for the first half but as Logue's treatment begins to become more psychological than linguistic, the gravity of Albert's situation becomes more and more apparent. As a king, he has no real power beyond representing the voice of his people and with the rise of Nazi Germany, the need for a leader who can rally his people increasingly dire.

I hope you don't think me a hypocrite to say that the film largely stands out for its sublime performances. Firth range covers a wide breadth, and it’s made all the more remarkable by his constantly changing speech patterns. Joke all you will about handicaps as Oscar bait, this is a case where the “gimmick” actually punctuates the skills of the actor, as Firth shows Albert as both a man unprepared to handle his legacy and a king ready to lead his people, one frustrating word at a time. In particular, the scene in which Albert reveals his harsh upbringing to the commoner who's gone from his secret therapist to his only friend showcases the work that garnered Firth a nomination last year and almost certainly a statue this year. Rush plays Logue with enough energy to inject just a hint of whimsy into the film but never at the expense of the otherwise sombre tone. Finally, Helena Bonham Carter shines as Lady Elizabeth, a woman who has been learning what it means to be royalty since she married Albert. Carter’s been doing great work for years now and she’s as brilliant here as her role is brief.

Historical pieces often have a bad habit of overstaying their welcome so the fact that The King’s Speech left me wanting more is something I altogether didn’t expect. It’s easy to lump crowd-pleasing films together because it’s often the way a film ends that sticks out, but here’s one crowd pleaser that dares to show a different side to figures we ultimately don’t know all that well. In the titular speech King George gives at the outbreak of WWII, he says he wishes to address his people as though he were in their homes and this was indeed the first step towards the modern monarchy. We know more about our royalty’s personal lives than any previous generation, and for better or worse, technology, like this film, has revealed them as who they are; people who must weigh the greatest of privilege with the greatest of expectations. But still just people.

5 out of 5

Directed by Tom Hooper

2010, U.K., U.S.A

Review: The Expendables

Originally Posted August 25th, 2010 

Come on. We all knew this was how it was going to turn out. No matter how badly we wanted to believe they could do it, too much time has passed. When we all heard that Sylvester Stallone was going to unite the biggest action heroes of the last thirty years under one blood-soaked banner, the internet's collective jubilation was laced with a deep-seated fear that this would be an impossible feat to pull off. In trying to recapture the spirit of the 80’s action flick, The Expendables plays more like a relic, just with modern trimmings. Its aging stars and uninspired script, which must have been about twenty pages if one-liners were excluded, make you wonder if this was a genre that should have just stayed put in the more reptilian crevices of your memory. Even when trying to deliver the gratuitous explosions and gunfire that made the likes of First Blood and Commando genre classics, The Expendables can’t get a grip on the advances of special effects, and sacrifices authenticity for the sake of one-upmanship.

After a ponderously slow first few minutes, we meet the titular group of manly-men mercenaries, including Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy “The Natural” Couture and the leader of the outfit, writer/director Sylvester Stone. The foreplay is brief, as it's mere moments after the introductions that a pirate is literally blown in half by a shotgun blast. You might say the dismemberment and copious CG blood are holdovers from Stone’s last directorial outing, Rambo, as it’s a good barometer for what the next hundred or so minutes are going to be like.

After successfully returning to their tattoo parlour/bar/all-around-man-cave run by Mickey Rourke, Sly accepts a suicide mission from a CIA handler played with deadly seriousness by Bruce Willis, in an overly advertised and far too brief scene featuring Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same room. It’s hard not to bro-out a little during the scene, as Schwarzenegger’s entrance is punctuated by an inexplicable divine light, while the winks and nods between the three great apes are telegraphed with the finesse of a bat to the face.

Being the good soldier of fortune that he is, Barney signs up the crew to take down a military dictator in the sinisterly named island nation of Vilena, where there’s some scheme involving coke fields, an ex-CIA spook and Steve Austin. There are betrayals, unrequited loves and perfunctory speeches about the soulless life of a mercenary, none of which are handled with much subtlety, but subtlety isn’t what this movies about now is it? It’s about shit blowing up, bones being busted, SMASH-BAM-POW-GAAAR. Which isn’t so much The Expendables's only redeeming trait as it is pretty much its only trait period.

This is an action movie from start to finish, so it won’t confuse anyone who accidentally walked in thinking this was Eat Pray Love. To his credit, Stallone knows how to stage shoot-outs and fist-fights, and boy are there plenty. The number of baddies disposed of by Stallone’s motley crew borders on genocidal, and it’s a rare feat that an action scene can be so skilfully chaotic that a man’s head literally blowing up isn’t the centre of attention. The action is by no means flawless, as all the gunfire and exploding can be desensitizing by the time the film reaches its bombastic final twenty minutes, and a pair of car chases in the film’s first half may be some of the worst filmed in recent memory.

What really holds back blood-n-guts orgy are the attempts made to use newer special effects to beef up the skirmishes, the apparent aim being to make every other action movie obsolete. It was probably because of Rambo that Stallone decided you could get more blood for less by adding it in during post-processing. And hey, while we’re at it, why not get rid of the rigidity inherent in actual explosions and just code it for cheap? It’s understandable really, audiences just aren’t wowed by violence the way they once were and the solution is always just to add more and more. But in doing so, The Expendables betrays the very films it seeks to honour. Sure John McClane only blows away about a dozen dudes in Die Hard, but it looked real. When the roof of the Nakatomi Plaza blew up, you were watching a giant explosion consume a building and it felt real. With TheExpendables, the sheer overload of the set pieces combined with the CG effects, which range from passable to laughable, dissolves what little sense of reality the film wants to maintain.

This wouldn’t be quite so frustrating if the movie were good at anything besides action, but Stallone’s words don’t flow nearly as well as his fists. When your characters are a biker gang of Neanderthals, there’s no real room for character development, and attempts at being reflective about the whole killing business feel shoehorned in. The greater shame is that the film’s many, many one-liners, a staple of the genre, are almost entirely forgettable, and it doesn’t help that between various accents and Stallone’s growling that much of the line delivery can be tough to interpret. But again, brilliant writing isn’t one of the things The Expendables is aiming to achieve and it looks to supplement words with casting. Despite his noticeably aged face, Stallone’s giant everythings ensure he’s who you imagine leading a suicide squad of mercs, and Statham brings his trademark frame and charm to what few scenes he’s in that require actual acting. It’s a hell of a crew Stallone’s assembled, almost to a fault. Crews is under-utilized and it’s easy to forget that Couture is even in this movie, although he does once and for all finish the debate between the UFC and WWE fans.

Be wary of advertisements claiming that this will be the first and only time we’re going to see such a macho medley of beefheads join forces, as receipts have been strong and the film’s ending presents future jobs for The Expendables as a certainty (which also enforces how much of a misnomer their title is). But what could have been a testosterone fuelled tribute to filmmaking of years past turned out to be a retread that simply drags out a genre and cast that’s just not as youthful as it once was. You got me this time Stallone, but by invoking the hallowed images of your past works and actors like you, you set yourself up to sit in the shadows of the classics that defined the action movie. And no amount of CG blood can cover that up.

2 out of 5

Directed by Sylvester Stallone

2010, USA

Review: The Kids Are All Right

Originally Posted August 17th, 2010

Arriving just in time to send the summer off in style, the year’s biggest art-house flick not involving Swedish goth hackers is The Kids Are All Right. The film, about the mounting struggles two women in a domestic partnership face when the biological father of their children reenters their lives, is both familiar in set-up, yet fresh in how it approaches the usual tropes of a modern family drama, with a maturity that’s both thoughtful, and warming.

Without preaching, The Kids Are All Right, manages to draw a well-realized portrait of a self-described “unconventional” family that deals with the same issues a thousand straight families have dealt with in other movies. Themes of love, growing up and sexual identity are all addressed here, and the film has nothing terribly new to add to the discussion of child rearing, just that a same-sex household faces the same hurdles as any other marriage. The film’s near ambivalence as to which sex combination makes up a family lets it stay more focussed on being one of the most sophisticated and delightful films of the summer.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple raising two teenagers in the wine-soaked hills of present-day California. Like many others living in relative luxury, their daily life is filled with quarrels about minor things, mostly involving their kids, but their's is a relationship that’s built on a solid foundation of trust, the likes of which is formed only after spending many years with another person.  Nic’s perfectionism as the main breadwinner of the household can put her at odds with Jules’ more lenient approach to things, but their little spats dissolve almost effortlessly.

The strength of their relationship with one another seemingly carries over to their children, in parent-child dynamics that ares open and communicative, which alone is uncommon for most pictures dealing with parenting at middle age. There’s a moment where, after giving her rendition of a Joni Mitchell tune at the dinner table, son Laser jokingly tells Nic not to quit her day job, before returning with a compliment. It’s little moments like this where the kids channel the mostly tolerable embarrassment of living with your parents when you’re almost an adult, and they do so without ever resorting to the levels of overwrought angst and drama that commonly define onscreen teens.

Their daughter's final summer at home is interrupted when Laser, wanting to learn more about their biological father, gets in contact with the sperm donor that was used to conceive the half-brother and sister. The donor, Paul, played with relaxed aplomb by Mark Ruffalo, takes a shining to his two offspring, and quickly becomes increasingly involved in their lives, as well as those of Nic and Jules. Paul, an organic farmer and restaurant owner, while laid-back and maybe a little dim, is basically a nice guy who’s finally beginning to see what he’s missed out on by leading the bohemian life of the handsome bachelor, and the film respects him enough to create a character instead of just a roguish wedge used to drive a family apart. He inevitably does, of course, as everyone but Nic seems incapable of getting past his free-spirited charm, but again, the film is far too mature to let a single person be responsible for all the developing cracks in the household. Rather, The Kids Are All Right, serves as a lesson on how all the unspoken crap a family accumulates through the years can boil over when a new element is added to the status quo.

What’s most admirable about director Lisa Cholodenko’s picture is how little of the picture is centred on the idea that it’s one single issue that leads to this families eventual breakdown. The fact that the central relationship in the film is a homosexual is never given much mind by the characters, and any opinions on the idea of a same-sex family are left to the viewer alone. Having two mothers for parents is played for laughs where appropriate, mostly in bringing Paul up to speed on the situation, but it’s for the most part regarded as inconsequential, as you’ll quickly get used to Joni and Laser referring to their mothers in the plural. Similarly, having one kid born from each mother sets up an obvious dynamic of child against child as a proxy comparison of the mothers. Again, The Kids Are All Right doesn't take the simple route, and has far more much fun in showing how family members can be eerily similar, even if genetically unrelated . The main plot points of the film, such as the appearance of Paul and the looming end of Joni’s life at home, are seen as not the real issue here, they’re merely events that continue to chip at the foundations of one family's normal.

In broadening its scope beyond a single salient issue, The Kids Are All Right encounters its only real difficulty by adhering to the usual elements of the family drama, and beyond the premise, there’s not a whole lot about it that's groundbreaking. Affairs are had, tears are shed, and everything eventually gets more or less resolved by one big speech (granted, it’s a good one), which is a synopsis fitting of a hundred other pictures. While the film smartly refuses to exploit its premise for the sake of novelty, it makes this unconventional group's story feel surprisingly familiar, albeit one that’s better realized than most. Cholodenko’s dialogue is written for real people, youthful and realistic without straining to sound hip, and the script goes for modest, consistent laughs as opposed to great big gags that cash-in on setup. The acting is top-notch, most notably from the two leads, as Jules' strikingly poignant moments of self-reflection are countered with Nic’s social boozing, including a particularly funny tirade about California's progressive environmentalism. The state itself is gorgeously captured across expansive vistas and lavish meals, but the quality of the dialogue and acting are what give the film its own distinct flavour.

Much like the bottles of wine prominently displayed in the film, The Kids Are All Right is at first glance, a known quantity, featuring the usual bullet points found in most family dramas, seemingly distinguished only by a twist on the common premise. But thanks to Cholodenko’s charming characters and smart script, the rest goes down smoothly. The perfect summer film for the thinking person, The Kids is more than alright.

4 out of 5

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko

2010, USA

Review: Recount

Originally Posted July 20th, 2010 

When major decisions are determined by thin margins, it’s easy to ask oneself, “What if…?” Take, for example, the presidential election of The United States in 2000, a race that was, at one time, separated by less than two hundred votes. What if the machines in Volusia County hadn’t gone haywire and altered the voter tallies? What if the ballots hadn’t been double sided and so hard to punch? What if there had been a film that explained what was going on in a way that even a political dunce like myself could understand? After watching Recount, I have an answer for the last question, but more importantly, those first two questions become uncomfortable, even dispiriting, to consider.

Recount has a tricky line to walk - it needs to recreate the events of the Florida recount in a manner that's entertaining, but also truthful. Based on extensive research and countless interviews with nearly all the key figures, Jay Roach’s film plants the viewer right in the heart of both the Republican and Democratic campaigns, as each party tries to wrest the outcome of the election away from the other. Centring the film is Kevin Spacey as Ron Klain, the Gore campaign's prodigal son, whose shot at political restoration fuels his no holds barred approach to getting the votes counted. Spacey is backed by a bevy of other seasoned actors who, in addition to being universally convincing, also look eerily similar to their real life counterparts.

Scenes hastily jump back and forth between party camps as they respond to rulings and polls, with each group trying to outmanoeuvre the other. By showing the reactions on both sides, Recount is able to clearly communicate to the viewer the importance, if not always the details, of the day's battle. Easily the greatest strength of the film is how it manages to make mounds of political jargon and legal proceedings not only understandable, but exciting. Numerous court rulings concerning the validity of a dimpled chad (voting bubble) have the weight of a referee decision in overtime. There are so many small victories for each side that every ruling and arbitration feels like a another sway in the direction of an all-out war for the White House.

While the film wants to be taken seriously as a factual re-enactment, much of Recount’s impact comes from how well it dramatizes seemingly inconsequential events. When indication is first given that something is wrong with the voting machines, there’s a frantic race to stop Gore from giving his concession speech. It’s all heightened for dramatic purposes, but it’s certainly entertaining. Similarly heart-pounding is the appearance of a mob at one of the recount centres, where Bush supporters assault a Gore lawyer carrying a sample ballot. Again, it’s engaging because such confrontations actually happened. But as the adaptation elements begin to overtake the documentary ones, it becomes clear that anyone looking for a neutral appraisal should look elsewhere.

Recount’s only real failure is that in taking a dramatic look at the California recount, it loses its chance at being a balanced take on the events. It can be hard to blame the film though, because in reality the Democrats were, from the get-go, in a more sympathetic position. While the Gore campaign was broadcasting the idealistic motto of “every vote counts”, the Republicans had to respond by stopping the counting of invalid votes, even though they had by all accounts won. Just about every court and legislative body concerned with the recount at that time was either Republican, or somehow associated with Bush. Again, these are facts that simply enhance the perception that Gore is somehow fighting uphill against impossible odds. The Democrats come off as the scrappy underdogs while the Republicans can’t escape the appearance of having tried to not so stealthily pull the wool over the public’s eyes. Though the film can be forgiven for any opinion generated by the circumstances of the recount, certain dramatic elements only serve to reinforce the feeling that the creators are coming at the material with a strong opinion of their own.

By anchoring the story around the Gore campaign’s leader, any semblance of impartiality goes out the window. There’s some backstory given about Klain and Gore’s uneasy partnership in the past, but that history serves only to make the audience sympathetic with Klain’s attempts to redeem himself. There’s no one to humanize the Republican side the way Klain does for the Democrats. While the film makes a point of indicating that Klain was more interested in the votes being counted than the actual winner, he’s still the nice guy trying to make good, and you want him to succeed. The only person on the Republican bench given adequate screen time is Laura Dern as then Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who comes across as more of a preening debutant than an elected official.

It’s the subtleties of how the Republican Party is treated that are more concerning. Every action by a Bush supporter feels much more cloak and dagger than anything done by the liberals, and there’s an air of subterfuge about every closed door meeting and late night rendezvous. Even the Bush campaign camp, led by a Dr. Pepper chugging Tom Wilkinson, feels more based on caricatures, thanks to an almost entirely white, crew-cut sporting army of lawyers. The Bush camp contrasts heavily with the more ethnically diverse Gore crew, which operates more like a team. It’s often hard to tell where the re-enactment part of the film ends and the dramatic elements begin. It’s not the fault of the creators that they have an opinion, it just feels like any approach that isn’t apolitical is a betrayal of the authenticity that the film flirts with.

HBO was smart to approach Recount as a made for TV-movie as opposed to a big screen release. The election of Barrack Obama was mere months away, and it seems doubtful that people would pay to watch a movie about the difficulties of simply casting a vote. It’s a reminder of a period many have forgotten, but for others, would reopen the old wounds of a power transfer that looked less like an election and more like a barbaric tug-of-war. Yet, Recount’s timely release is all the more important because even though its politics aren't so subtle, it's good to know that, yes, every vote matters.

4 out of 5

Directed by Jay Roach

2008, USA

Review: The Losers

Originally Posted July 23rd, 2010 

In 2010, a crack commando unit was accused of a crime they didn’t commit. Hunted by law enforcement, they promptly escaped to the underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The Losers!

Wait, that’s not right. That’s the set-up for the new A-Team movie. Stupid mistake. The A-Team was about an Army Ranger unit that was framed for a crime they didn't commit and had to seek out justice as fugitives from the law.The Losers is about a CIA Special Forces unit that gets framed for a crime they didn’t commit and has to get revenge while fugitives from the… huh. Well what about a van, do The Losers ever drive around in a van? …They do…Well what about an ending gun fight in a downtown harbour, I bet The Losers doesn’t have that! They do?…okay, now this is just spooky.

With The A-Team getting released barely two months after The Losers, comparisons of a Deep Impact-Armageddon variety seemed inevitable. Despite more than fifteen years separating each's source material, the set-up for both films is more or less identical, just with one elite army agency swapped out for another. Both films are sold as being flashy, brainless action romps with quasi-militaristic overtones. They both also feature cartoonishly evil bad guys, and a single female character whose sole job is to provide sexual tension. All these similarities are plenty evident, yet little mention was given when The A-Team rolled into town. That’s probably because The Losers, based on the Vertigo comic series of the same name, isn’t a particularly memorable film; it combines mediocre thrills with a mercifully short running time into a movie you’ll likely forget existed at all, let alone as a piece of parallel programming.

Starting out in the Bolivian jungle, The Losers wastes no time in acquainting you with the titular group of rough-and-tumbles. There’s the leader Clay, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (whose charisma is mostly owed to his tailor), the grizzled weapons man Roque, played with unflinching seriousness by an utterly wasted Idris Elba, and a surprisingly enjoyable Chris Evans, who gets plenty goofy as the techie Jensen. There’s also sniper/cowboy hat aficionado Cougar (Óscar Jaenada) and wheel man Pooch (Columbus Short). From the opening poker-game played with weapons instead of chips, it’s clear that no one could decide which character would get the title of “The Badass,” so they went ahead and gave it to everyone. After a bombing run on a drug lord is thrown off by the presence of a literal busload of children, the team, in gallant disregard for orders, intervenes, and winds up getting themselves framed by a mysterious villain known as Max. Just a tip for future reference: if mention is ever given of a change as to who’s going on the last helicopter out of dodge, get as far away from that chopper as is humanly possible. It’s not long before the gang is given means to exact their revenge thanks to the alluring Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who, despite having less meat on her than a starved gazelle, can break bones and chairs with the best of them.

That’s about all the set-up you’re going to get because once The Losers leaves the driveway, it doesn’t stop for anything. What follows is your typical checklist of action movie set pieces across some of the brightest, sweatiest places this side of the Atlantic. The amount of lens flare in some scenes made me feel physically tanner. There are flashes of excitement in most of the action sequences, but they're nothing wholly original. The meet/beat-cute between Clay and Aisha is pretty much right out of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and is mostly enjoyable because of Zoe Saldana’s complete disregard for the safety and well-being of all pieces of furniture within her five foot radius. And for as built-up as some of the action sequences get, you’re usually just left wondering, "is that it"? If a movie's main selling point is leaving physics and rationality at the door, you need full-blown commitment to lunacy, and The Losers just feels like a series of half-measures. It’s unfortunate, but airlifting an armoured car with a magnet attached to a helicopter just isn't enough these days. Here all you get are a couple of pretty good explosions sandwiched between timid gun fights and some really unconvincing CG effects.

Then again, what aspects do go for broke still find a way to make The Losers a sub-optimal viewing experience. Breaking up the shootier bits are interludes where we check in on our villain, who seems incapable of elaborating on the next phase of his diabolical plan until he’s in a new time zone. This is where any energy that gets generated by the aforementioned shooting runs into the brick wall that is Jason Patric’s performance as Max. Now, The Losers is by no means a serious film, and everybody is clearly having fun with their parts, but Jason Patric wants you to know that he is having more fun than anyone, ever, ever. With a level of restraint that makes Jack Nicholson’s Joker look docile, Patric goes out of his way in every scene to try and be menacing, but it almost always comes off as buffoonish or just plain ridiculous. After reminding his head goon how badly he needs eighteen gunmen in twelve hours, you think that there’s no possible reason that he’d repeat himself it a third time; and then he does. And then in the next scene, he orders those gunmen to be killed. Why? Because he’s evil, that’s why! At one point he responds to a bullet in his shoulder not with, you know, signs of pain, but with a level of mild annoyance reserved for when someone hits you with a rubber band. Oh, and then he sticks his finger in the wound and has a taste of his own blood, which, I imagine tastes pretty good thanks to the Cost-co sized cans of energy drinks he must have been downing between scenes.

As certifiably insane as Patric is, he’s about the only thing that’s aggressively bad about The Losers. Sure there are a myriad of gapping plot holes and unexplained motivations but this is a movie about characters and action, not story. To their credit, everyone else in the cast is competent enough and it can be occasionally fun to revel in their brainless exploits. Chris Evans is the real standout, as he manages to make the most out of every scene thanks to a mix of crass humour and brazen self-awareness. His natural response to the absurdity of bringing a crossbow to a gunfight is simply to declare “that’s right bitches, I’ve got a crossbow.”

The screenplay, written by Zodiac scribe James Vanderbilt, is drenched in these sorts of immature one-liners and really the only word I can think of to properly describe The Losers is juvenile. Every yo momma and dick joke seems perfect for the PG-13 audience the film no doubt hoped would flood cinemas but didn’t. I mean for god sakes, the bad guy’s weapon of choice is called a SNUKE. Even the film’s romantic subplot, which consists of Zoe Saldana showing up with a bottle of tequila followed by immediate boning, is designed to target barely pubescent thirteen year-olds. Which pretty much sums up The Losers; it’s all action, no foreplay and completely forgettable.

2 out of 5

2009 USA

Directed by Sylvain White

Review: Salt

Originally Posted August 8th, 2010

You can tell a lot about the political climate of The United States based on who the preferred villains in the popular culture are. Regan era nationalism made the 80’s the decade of exceptional American heroes fending off foreign invaders, while the economic downturn and dragging war overseas probably contributed to the domestic cynicism of the mid-to-late Aughts. The new set of bad guys were more complicated, but not altogether more complex; the popular Bourne franchise, which was steeped in suspicion and mistrust of intelligence agencies, put most of the blame on a few bad apples up the chain of the command, rather than on the systems they operated within.

The appearance of a new president and a more optimistic market has left America feeling better about itself, and it's translated into a shift back towards an older antagonist, Soviet-era Russia. The most popular video game in years, Modern Warfare 2, is based on a classic 80’s nightmare scenario of Russia invading the USA. There’s a remake of Red Dawn due for release sometime later this year, as well as a new Jack Ryan movie in the works that’s tentatively titled Moscow. It’s pretty clear that America is done with looking for someone to blame internally, and is once again ready to get back to the “us against the world” mentality of the 80’s and 90’s.

Rekindling the old conflict with America’s favourite enemy is Salt, a distinctly cold war thriller with the trappings of a modern actioneer. Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA covert operative who we first meet being tortured in a North Korean prison. It’s of no real relevance to the plot and feels mostly like a rehash of the opening from Die Another Die, but it serves to remind you that the enemies of the cold war are still assholes. As it turns out, Salt was in North Korea because her cover-marriage was to a “world-renowned” arachnologist who has access to the North-South border. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is more baffling, the idea of a spider specialist reaching worldwide acclaim or the fact that such a title is enough to let you in and out of North Korea on a whim. Anyway, it’s a few years later and a now desk-bound Salt is accused of being a Soviet sleeper agent with orders to kill the visiting Russian president, as part of an appropriately doomsday-ish plot called Day X. An innocent Salt, fearing for the safety of her husband, goes rogue, and is soon on the run from the CIA.

Or is she? That’s the main question that the movie is trying to impress upon the viewer, as Salt’s motives are never made clear to the audience. Considering she's tying up valuable government resources by going on the lam, your left to think she has a low opinion of her agency's ability to safeguard her husband. What follows is a lot of Salt being chased from set piece to set piece, all the while laying the hurt on anyone who gets in her way. It’s somewhat bizarre that Jolie is being marketed as the main draw here, because as an actress, she has almost nothing to do.

There’s no narration, no internal monologue, just shot after shot of Salt preparing and then executing some unexplained plan. It’s an interesting concept, and it really does make you wonder whether Salt is who she says she is, but this tactic sets up the lead as little more than an ass-kicking cipher. There’s little to the character beyond a commitment to the mission, and personality is replaced by field skills, including the ability to MacGyver a fire extinguisher and an interrogation chemistry set into a homemade RPG. No scientific reason is given as to why such a concoction would create an explosive ordnance, nor is there any time given to think about it, because Salt waits for no one. At about 100 minutes, the film is as lean as they come, with a lack of flab being little compensation for general mediocrity.

If you could call Salt smart about anything, it’s that it knows to distract you with something big and flashy before you can properly comprehend the absurdity of the previous scene. On no less than two occasion does Salt leap five feet up in the air from a standing position in order to dispatch of someone. How is this possible? Who cares, look at what she’s doing now! There are also a handful of gritty fight scenes which are efficient enough to conceal the fact that Jolie is using all 120 pounds of her frame to beat the tar out of trained operatives twice her size. Salt’s only sign of weakness comes from dressing a wound the size of a walnut after using highway transport trucks as an obstacle course.

Such incredible feats of strength are pretty typical of the genre and the film should be given credit for how well it pulls of a female lead in a role originally written for Tom Cruise. Salt’s gender is of zero importance to the people in the film and whatever mediations on gender politics that could crop up are the viewer’s alone. Personally, I found there to be something very fresh about a wife going to the same extreme lengths to save her spouse that other genre films show only men being capable of. There’s a moment where Salt confesses her cover ID to her husband and gives the whole “we won’t be safe” speech. It’s one of the only scenes where Jolie is actually allowed to act, but she delivers it with as much conviction as any other super-spy trying to protect their significant other.

The amount of success that’s derived from Jolie headlining this picture really does put into sharp relief how incredibly boring the picture would have been with a male lead. The supporting cast has little to do here, consisting mostly of Chiwetel Ejiofor functioning as an exposition/expletive machine, while Liev Schreiber as Salt’s partner gets to oscillate between vouching for her innocence and just being a dick to every other intelligence agent.The PG-13 rating becomes increasingly problematic as the body count rises; at one point, Salt unloads an automatic rifle into a downed Russian terrorist at point blank range, with a mild seizure standing in for blood and bullet holes. The action goes for visceral thrills but is frequently too over the top to be wowing, and the plot itself is as ludicrous as it is full of holes (why does 99% of Soviet cold war strategy consist of nuking everything under the sun?). While Jolie does what she can with a limited role, Salt is, at its core, disposable summer entertainment that falls apart as soon as you take five minutes to think about it.

2 out of 5

Directed by Phillip Noyce

2010, USA

Review: Dinner for Schmucks

Originally Posted August 1st, 2010

There are few things worse than seeing a good premise squandered. Even worse is when a great premise can’t carry a movie with a stellar cast. You’ll rarely feel more robbed then when a trailer selling you a good idea and a strong cast doesn't make good on its obvious potential. Last year’s The Invention of Lying was one such film, having so much promise yet delivering on so little of it. You’d think a movie set in a world where everyone but Ricky Gervais has to tell the truth would be a laugh riot, but the final product didn’t live up to the pedigree. Dinner for Schmucks will probably go down as a film on par with Lying, because even with an A-list cast and a premise that seems golden, the end result is shockingly underwhelming.

Paul Rudd stars as Tim, a middle-of-the-pack business analyst trying to muscle his way into the upper echelons of his brokering firm, headed by a delightfully dickish Bruce Greenwood. In order to finally get the promotion and raise Tim desperately needs, he has to pass one final test: find a complete moron to be his plus one at a dinner party for the amusement of his co-workers. There, each employee’s dolt will compete for the prize of schmuck of the evening, an award which would surely grant Tim his promotion. Tim finds his idiot in Barry (Steve Carell), who he meets trying to save a dead mouse for his taxidermy creations, which he calls mouster-pieces. Barry’s various dioramas are a highlight of the film, especially his model recreating the invention of the BLT. Barry seems like a shoe-in for first place at the dinner, his intellect among the pantheon of Carell dimwits landing well below Michael Scott but only a hair above Brick Tamland.

What follows is the evening of buffoonery and wanton destruction that the trailers sold you on. But wait, first we need Tim and his curator girlfriend Julie (played by the lovely Stephanie Szostak) to get in a fight over Tim's willingness to subject some poor sap to humiliation so that he can get ahead. Also, Tim and Barry have to make sure Julie isn’t cheating on him by breaking into the house of Julie’s new client, the animalistic Kieran, played by up-and-comer Jermaine Clement, who's a variation on the Aldous Snow character Russell Brand popularized in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And don’t forget, a psychotic stalker Tim had a one night stand with needs to show up courtesy of Barry’s bumbling interference. That covers only about half of the major subplots and characters in this film. If it isn’t apparent by now, then you should know that Dinner for Schmucks is not the quick chuckle fest about a bunch of bizarre characters at a fancy party the trailers would have you believe, but is instead an overstuffed comedy of mistaken identities and switched cellphones that feels every minute  as long as its nearly two hour runtime.

The movie works hard to set up the characters and situations for the crescendo, the results usually being pretty enjoyable. The titular dinner, which only makes up about the last fifteen minutes of the movie, is every bit as awkward and funny as the trailer would make you think, but getting to that point is a laborious process. The stalker subplot ends in great fashion but to get to that point you have to go through two or three scenes that are more frightening than funny, making you wonder if the character was necessary at all. The plot is motivated almost entirely by people mistaking something or someone for something else, such as the aforementioned cell phone switch, or Barry attracting the stalker online by pretending to be Tim. Such unlikely plot elements might have worked ten years ago when director Jay Roach made Meet the Parents, but by now it feels forced. I think most people today are aware enough to check which phone is there’s when an identical copy is sitting next to it.

The hit-or-miss gag's coast on the cast's delivery as opposed to witty writing, a shame considering the slew of incredibly talented comedic actors forced to make the most out of such a lukewarm script. Carell is the real nucleus here, and his ability to inject heart into even the most block-headed of characters shows why he’s so sought after. The supporting cast is equally exceptional, particularly Zach Galifianakis as a fellow idiot who specializes in “mind control.” Unfortunately though, the most disappointing performance comes from the man who is probably the best actor of the bunch, Rudd, who’s never been blander in a leading role. Now, Rudd has proven himself to be an immensely talented and funny actor over the better part of the last decade, but here, he has to play the straight-man to all of Barry’s wild antics, which leaves little room for his character to breath. He’s defined by his girlfriend and his job but little else, and he probably could have been replaced by any other actor, it’s just that Paul Rudd has come to personify the nice but unlucky guy in recent years.

Somewhere in Dinner for Schmucks, there’s an interesting commentary about the uncertainty of our current employment landscape and the tough choices you need to make when you’re living beyond your means. More importantly, there’s a funny comedy featuring a bunch of talented actors goofing it up at a fancy dinner party. But both are saddled with a mundane, bloated script, that leans heavily on overused plot elements, and runs at a length that completely sinks the laughs per minute ratio. It's a frustrating, borderline maddening little failure, because if this kind of talent can't make good, you start to wonder who can.

2 out of 5

Directed by Jay Roach

2010, USA

Review: Lost in Translation

Originally Posted July 6th, 2010 

On reflection, Lost in Translation has about as short a plot description as you can manage for a 100-minute movie. Guy goes to Japan, guy meets girl, guy and girl explore Tokyo, guy leaves. There's not much all that much to the plot, but that's not to say that nothing happens. Director Sophia Coppola seems content to let her film meander about, almost purposelessly, but it’s a wandering experience built on characters and locations with entrancing magnetism.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, an aging movie star whose career and marriage are passed their prime. The latest stop on his star's descent is a commercial shoot in Japan, an embarrassment perhaps only known to him, as every handler, hotel worker or fan that enters his orbit still glad-hands him like his best years happened only yesterday. His wife sends him carpet swatches halfway around the world to make sure his study has the right shade of burgundy. Bob accepts his life with a sarcasm that’s sadder than it is biting, telling jokes to an audience that doesn’t speak his language. The salad days are behind him and it seems he’s all laughed out. So in essence, Bob is Bill Murray, which is a good thing, because Bill Murray is really great at playing Bill Murray.

Most performances are based on the actor disappearing into the part, but here, Murray’s performance is all the more affecting because you feel like you’re watching him as opposed to a character. Barflies and passers-by approach him and gush over how much they love his work. He sees his faced plastered across skyscrapers and vehicles. The viewer has to wonder how many times such things have happened to Murray in real life, and how it must feel to be constantly reminded of your public persona. Even the names of the actor and character are suspiciously similar. As Harris, Murray brings the kind of honesty and vulnerability that make it obvious why Coppola wouldn’t have made the film without him.

Murray’s counterpart is Charlotte (Johansson), a young philosophy graduate dealing with an equally lifeless marriage. She jokes about Bob’s midlife crisis even though she’s hit hers a few decades too early. Charlotte is part of a generation of creatives who are given the world on a platter, but can’t seem to find their place in it. She’s self-critical as a writer, and wryly observes that being a photographer is just a phase all girls go through, “like horses”. There are numerous shots of Charlotte staring out of her hotel window at the Tokyo cityscape, looking for something, even if she's not sure what that something is yet.

Self-discovery in a foreign land is an enticing little fantasy. The idea of breaking out of one's established culture by absorbing the best parts of another is what kept Eat, Pray, Love on bestseller lists for three years. Coppola recognizes and attacks such an impractical solution to personal identity with both humour and frankness. The idea of fast-food cultural consumption is best satirized via an oblivious young starlet played by Ana Faris, who incorporates aspects of Japanese culture into her identity with seemingly little understanding of what they actually mean. When Charlotte admits to feeling nothing after watching a Japanese ceremony, foreign religion being the sort of fashionable thing sightseers pick up like a fake accent, it becomes clear that the setting of the film is merely incidental; this is a film about connecting with people, not places.

With so much of the actual developments happening internally, the real action in Lost in Translation plays out in the repartee between Bob and Charlotte, which starts with the usual complaints about American-Japanese culture clash. Bob cracks jokes about Japan’s food and language while Charlotte seems to be the only person capable of talking to Bob Harris the person instead of Bob Harris the movie star. Coppola writes maybe one or two too many of these “ain’t Japan weird” scenes, but they reinforce the alienation of the characters and how much of a relief one another’s company is. Their conversations gradually become less sweetly sardonic and more personal the longer the two are together . In the film’s most pivotal scene, the pair lay in bed side by side as Charlotte confesses to being stuck in life, with Bob giving advice as best he can. Coppola is content to just let camera hang over them as Charlotte stares up at the hotel ceiling, which doesn't seem so bland and empty when you're sharing it with the right person.

It’s easy to see where the film’s setup could lead, but thankfully, Coppola knows exactly what her movie is about. Her characters have emotional problems and they need an emotional respite, not a physical one. Whatever amount of sexual tension there is for the viewer to decide, Charlotte’s looks serving mostly as a contrast to Bob’s, her baby blues opposite his pale, weary eyes. Their age difference is largely inconsequential, save for some ribbing at Bob’s expense, and in place of a May-December romance, we get a friendship between two people at the same place in different seasons of their lives.

The other real star of Lost in Translation is Japan, which is a constant marvel to watch. The muted tones of the hotel seem a paradox when housed in the otherwise vibrant downtown of Tokyo. When Bob first enters the city, there’s a childlike fascination in his face as he stares out at a city that’s half New York, half circus. As the leads share drinks in a bar early on, the bright lights of the Shinjuku ward broadcast the sleepless activity just outside. The frenetic neon sprawl of the city is juxtaposed with a trip to Kyoto which is almost otherworldly in its tranquility. There’s a regimented pace to each set piece, almost as if the camera is acting as a tour guide, pinpointing all the major highlights. Japan is captured with such loving detail that it’s hard to think about the film being set anywhere else, despite the story's freeform nature.

Coppola’s film has no great dramatic twist, and instead just focuses on how two very sad people make each other’s lives a little more bearable. Yet there’s a cruel aftertaste to every laugh shared between Bob and Charlotte, because it’s known from the beginning that this is a relationship that isn’t meant to last. When the two finally do say goodbye, it’s a moment of almost unparalleled bittersweetness. For a film to make you feel anything by the end is an achievement, but Lost in Translation manages to stir your emotions on two fronts, leaving you heartbroken at the sight of such a beautiful friendship ending, but also joyful, because you got to experience it.

5 out of 5

Directed by Sophia Coppola

2003, USA

Review: Zodiac

Originally Posted June 27th, 2010

For two years, the San Francisco Bay area staged a desperate manhunt to stop the man responsible for a series of bizarre and brutal murders, between 1969, and 1971. In cryptic letters to newspapers, the killer boasted of his attacks, and made a variety of new threats involving school buses and bombs. The man, calling himself The Zodiac, would become a lightning rod for a restless American psyche otherwise occupied with the ongoing war in Vietnam. Yet, before any arrest could be made, the letters stopped, and The Zodiac vanished. With only one other authentic letter appearing in 1974, the crimes of the bay area boogeyman would quickly fade from public consciousness. To this day, the case remains open in three counties, and no arrest has ever been made.

The "one that got away" is a common component of police procedurals, usually involving a burnt out dick warning another detective not to get too deep into the job when doggedly pursuing of a killer. Losing oneself in a mystery can come at the cost of relationships and sanity. The next time you tell someone a really good brain teaser, keep the answer to yourself and see how long it takes for them to try and pry it out of you. This is probably the main reason why filming the story of the Zodiac murders has taken more than thirty years. The killings were shocking, twisted, and captivating, which are buzzwords most producers like to see on a poster. The problem: any film about Zodiac would have no ending. To this day, the true identity of The Zodiac is unknown. Now, imagine how frustrating Se7en would have been if it had ended without ever revealing the killer's identity. So it’s no small feat that David Fincher has taken the investigation that never ended and turned it into one of the best films of the last decade.

Zodiac’s greatest strength, and some would argue its greatest weakness, is its commitment to portraying the events surrounding case as truthfully as possible. The film is based on the real life accounts of Robert Graysmith, who was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle during the height of the attacks. Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) would become more and more involved in the case as the police investigation died down. His novel of the same name is the blueprint for Fincher’s version, and it is replicated in painstaking detail. Even some of the stranger facts, such as the curiously large number of sweaters worn by Zodiac victim Michael Mageau, are included to make the stranger than fiction details of this real case all the more puzzling.

The film covers more than twenty years, starting with the first Zodiac letters and extending all the way into the 1990’s. In retelling the accounts chronologically, the majority of the film’s action sequences take place within the first hour, and even then there are only a handful. By the time lead detective Dave Toschi (Ruffalo) appears to investigate the one and only confirmed Zodiac killing in San Francisco, audience members should be prepared for an onslaught of the red stuff, and I mean tape, not blood.  This is a film where the big police victory isn’t getting the man, but is instead getting a warrant. The attention to detail given to the investigation will probably discourage viewers used to watching police paperwork covered in a quick montage.  “No need for due process right,” jokes Toschi after watching Dirty Harry, whose villain was based on Zodiac. While certainly less sexy than an episode of CSI, putting the viewer in the thick of the investigation’s minutiae properly emphasizes how easy it is to get crushed under the day-to-day of working on one case.

It’s difficult to convey to viewers how exhausting time can be in a film. A fade out can cover unfathomable amounts of time in a matter of seconds, with the audience being no worse for wear. Spanning more than three decades, Zodiac is one of those rare films that makes you feel the weight of time passing as the investigation begins to slow down. At over two and a half hours, Zodiac will test your endurance. A skyscraper is literally built before your eyes during the time between major breaks in the case. In a brilliantly constructed transition, darkness is set to the cycling sounds of pop songs and headlines from 1972, through 1977, covering America’s “Horse with no name” to The Ohio Player’s “Love Rollercoaster”. In that time, the war in Vietnam ended, and America had a new pet serial killer, the Son of Sam (who had a TV movie less than a decade after being arrested). By the third act, it seems like everyone, including Zodiac, has moved on.

This is where the film picks up speed and moves from police procedural into territory more commonly found in modern thrillers, with Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith taking over the investigation. There’s still plenty of paperwork mind you, but as Graysmith and the case slowly start to unravel, there’s a sense of foreboding that gives reading old police reports a kinetic energy bordering on full-blown frenzy. Gyllenhaal proved himself capable of a slow-burn performance in DonnieDarko, but here, his transition from boy-scout cartoonist to obsessed detective is backed by visible signs of depletion, as his fresh face slowly darkens from restless nights spent hunting a killer the world has forgotten. The soundtrack shifts from era appropriate pop songs to morbid piano pieces, all while San Francisco is caught in a never-ending rainstorm. It’s not long before Graysmith begins receiving mysterious phone calls, and it appears his life is in danger. The tension reaches a crescendo in a scene inside a California basement. It’s one of the most suspenseful and terrifying ever filmed.

Beyond the facts of the Zodiac case, the film reaches into some fairly well worn territory about the way police work stresses relationships with family or coworkers. The friendship between Graysmith and criminal reporter (and one-time Zodiac target) Paul Avery (Downey Jr.) is mostly fictionalized, but their various tête-à-têtes make for some light comic relief. If Fincher is to be faulted with anything, it’s that he cheats a bit with his ending. The film gives a certain amount of closure to the killer’s identity, which, while true to Graysmith’s book, doesn’t properly do justice to the reality, which is far more intriguing. I had never heard of the Zodiac murders until watching this movie, and in a way, I wish I never had. The world let go, and it seems that we’ll never know the truth behind who the Zodiac really was. It’s an answer that I may not like, but it’s one I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

5 out of 5

Directed by David Fincher

2007, USA

Review: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Originally Posted November 5th, 2011 

Since their smoke-filled entrance in 2004, the “Harold and Kumar” films have been easy to like, something that can’t be said for most comedies that take aim at social norms and political correctness the way this franchise has. Despite all the insane stoner antics and gleefully racy jokes, the relatable friendship between Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) provided a solid emotional core for the mayhem to build off of, and the absolute necessity of its stars has kept the brand largely undiluted by DVD prequels and spinoffs. So it’s only fitting that their latest adventure sets its sights on the warmest and cheesiest of genres, the Christmas movie, pulling out all the stops in a total disregard for the sanctity of the holidays, and it gives the well-worn pot and stereotype material a much needed boost.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas picks up six years after “Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” which puts Harold and Kumar much closer in age to their real life counterparts, but further apart socially than we’ve ever seen them. Kumar hasn’t abandoned the bohemian dream of responsibility-free binge smoking, even though Harold has left him for a good job and a hot wife with an absolutely terrifying father (solidly played by Danny Trejo, who brings his trademark so-scary-it’s-funny glowering). A chance reunion of the boys caused by a mysterious package for Harold left at Kumar’s door leads to a mishap that sends the pair off on the most festive of quests: finding a Christmas tree.

The holidays are the perfect background for stories of reunion, and writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg manage to wring out some nice moments of self-awareness when the drug-fuelled escapades keep getting buzz-killed by the assumption that the characters should be growing up. It’s been seven years since “Go to White Castle”, and as Harold knowingly points out, most people lose half their friends in that time, something franchise die-hards may consider when remembering who they watched each film with. To say that the series has been a poignant commentary on maturing relationships might be a stretch, but it’s great to see a buddy-comedy willing to look at how friendships often don’t remain in a static bubble the way that most movie ones do.

Granted, all of this is really secondary to the jokes, which should satisfy fans of the previous films despite being mostly retreads of earlier gags, redressed in a holiday theme. Sex, race and drugs continue as the prime sources of inspiration, but with an increased focus on meta-humour, including a nice dig at Penn’s stint with the White House and a litany of jabs at 3D (more on that in a bit). The Yuletide spirit really elevates the material, with a tired “someone spiked our drink” gag acting as an excuse for an extended homage to claymation specials, and the movie has what’s probably the best A Christmas Story reference you’re like to see in an R-rated film.

The holiday trappings extend into the film’s structure, which uses the often continuity-free magic of a Christmas special as the perfect reason to lean into the series’ increasingly prominent weird side. The shots of coked-out babies, Jesus and a resurrected Neil Patrick Harris that made it into the trailers all come together in a plot that’s not just coherent, but well-paced, moving Harold and Kumar from one absurd comic setpiece to another with great economy. As in the previous films, Neil Patrick Harris is a real highlight, as his revived career only gives him more reason to be a crack-addled womanizer who resembles a sexual predator more and more with each movie.

And in addition to embracing the holiday spirit, the 3D tag in the title is no afterthought, as this is about as great an apotheosis of the technology as there ever will be. Bong smoke billows out at every opportunity and the various objects and fluids shot out at the audience are great gags in and of themselves. It’s a cathartic last hurrah for anyone tired of the extra dimension, but of course, this will likely limit the film’s rewatchability, as the 3D money shots won’t play with the same effect on a standard TV. Still, as a send-up of Hollywood’s most tiring trend, the constant winking at the camera plays well, even without the added depth.

It’s a real rarity, but A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas manages to breathe life into its well-established formula by using the same tricks that reek of desperation in other franchises. By committing to the Christmas movie formula and exploiting 3D to its gloriously stupid limit, a coda to the trilogy is enjoyably achieved. Though a sequel is always an option, leaving these characters as is will no doubt place “Harold & Kumar” among the greats of stoner comedies.

4 out of 5

Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson

2011, USA