Irreviews

My wife wanted to see this when it was at IFC, but we were both a little unsure about it, and wound up skipping it, even though it hung on there for months and months. Finally catching up with it last night on Netflix, it turns out it is much better than we feared it might be. We both liked it a lot.

Mike Birbiglia self-direction weaves stand-up, narration, and interpersonal scenes quite skillfully, maintaining a good momentum throughout the film, efficiently developing multiple characters, and actually giving you a sense of the main character without being at all heavy-handed. I expected the usual shit-fest these kind of films generally are, but this one’s quite well put together and enjoyable. His stand up is not hilarious, but it does have its moments.

If you like stand-up comedy and tales of trying to make it in a tough industry, I recommend Sleepwalk With Me. It streams on Netflix, so there’s no reason to not give it a whirl.

Greta Gerwig is one of the most adorable actresses out there, and a good part of this film’s appeal is just watching her do her thing. But this film also has a pleasing and satisfying story, pretty decent dialog and character development, good casting, a good score, and a few laughs. Plus it has a satisfying ending, and I never found found the film cloying or insulting. It might even be described as a poor man’s Next Stop, Wonderland. Given the current tendency of this particular genera (single women unable to find love) toward existential angst and insipidness, Lola Versus is a very refreshing change.

I recommend it.

Why on earth were critics so mixed on this film? It’s delightful! Nicely acted, well-written, interesting, and fun. It has something to say about getting older and feeling less relevant, about the creative process, about creative collaboration, about advertising and creating media hype, about Hitchcock himself as an artist, a person and a husband, and about the historical inequality between men and women. It’s a very satisfying movie. My wife and I agreed we might even watch it again at some point.

And why didn’t Anthony Hopkins get an Oscar Nomination? They’ll give one to Joaquin Phoenix for doing nothing but groaning and spazzing out in that abomination The Master, but nothing for Hopkins, who managed to submerge his many tics and his overly strong personality to give us a very convincing and human Alfred Hitchcock. Helen Miren got a best supporting actress nomination from the Golden Globes, even though it’s clearly a leading role (Scarlett Johansson and Toni Collette are supporting roles, what’s wrong with these nominators?) but any recognition of her performance is well deserved. Speaking of Scarlett Johansson, now that she has stopped playing herself in movies and started taking real acting roles, she is proving to be a really good actress with a wonderful presence, and Hitchcock is no exception. All the other supporting casting and acting is pretty solid, and the incidental casting is adequate.

There’s no reason to not see this film. It’s very fun and rewarding. You won’t be sorry.

Zero Dark Thirty is getting rave reviews, but it’s really not a good movie. There is probably a good story buried in there somewhere, but the structuring of information in the film is so poor that you really only come away with a superficial, broad-brush tale – they tortured people, got information, no one listened to the girl, and then she was right in the end. Throw in a lot of scenes of water torture, some dull surveillance sequences, and a final quarter filled with nothing but military jargon, guns, fancy helicopters and guys in desert fatigues yelling “GET DOWN! GET DOWN!” and there you have it – your typical overrated future Oscar nominee.

I think Jessica Chastain is a fantastic actress, one of the absolute elite, but her performance in this movie struck me as really bizarre and ineffective – it must be a combination of the (lack of) dialog and the way she was directed, because her prior body of work suggests she can play almost anything convincingly. I didn’t even believe she was CIA. She plays the character like some kind of annoying, spastic brat. Obviously this was a huge disappointment, since I went to the movie largely because she was in it. The fellow who really was excellent was Jason Clarke, playing the main U.S. torture guy – he’s fabulous. The always formidable Jennifer Ehle is also solidly good here, and because Chastain’s scenes are usually shared with one or both of them, this only emphasizes her weird, awkward performance. (In fairness, they both had much better dialog to speak than did Chastain.) By the way, I don’t know why Joel Edgerton is listed as a star – he’s hardly in the movie, and has almost no lines.

When I walked out of the theater, I stared comparing Zero Dark Thirty (unfavorably) to Fair Game, but really it’s not good enough to justify any comparison to that masterpiece. Let’s set the bar lower: how does it compare to Argo? It can’t shine Argo’s shoes, basically, and I say this as someone very aware of Argo’s flaws and limitations. Sense of place and location is much stronger in Argo. The set-up is much stronger in Argo. Dramatic action scenes are structured and filmed much better in Argo. Even though Argo was a much simpler story, it feels deeper and more satisfying because it’s so much better written. And even though Ben Affleck’s character is pretty much a mystery man, I came away with a better sense of who he was than I did for Jessica Chastain’s character, largely because Affleck’s performance is (gasp) better.

I will say this about Zero Dark Thirty: It’s a very slick film, and that plus its irreproachable topic and the recent Oscar pedigree of its director virtually guarantees that the critics will fall in line behind it. It’s so slick it seems better than it actually is while you’re watching it; only afterward does it dawn on you what a structural mess it was, how unbelievable the main character was, and how much of the story you just went with on artificial momentum. But no matter how slicked-up this messy film is, it’s still just a mess, one that you would never, ever need or want to experience again.

I have to laugh that this film is described as a love affair between FDR and his cousin. Laura Linney’s character comes across as slightly retarded, and the “love affair” is really a lot closer to FDR sexually abusing a mentally disabled person. It’s fucking creepy. That’s why they omitted this whole part of the story from the preview.

As for the story of the King’s visit, it’s boring and horribly done. It is marred by terribly written narration, made worse by Laura Linney’s lackluster delivery, but really all the dialog is painfully tedious, the humor is ponderous at best, and nothing interesting happens or is said. All the performances are lacking, including Bill Murray, although with material this crappy I’m not sure any of them had a chance.

Skip this film.

Les Misérables is a remarkable movie. I’ve never seen a stage musical translated to screen with such spectacular success. Unless you hated Les Mis the musical, this movie is probably a must see.

First off, I found Anne Hathaway’s performance of I Dreamed a Dream to be so powerful it was almost overwhelming. I literally had chest spasms during her performance, it was so viscerally wrenching. If they give her an Oscar for this, I have to say she probably deserves it. And I feel extremely happy that she has completely and forever redefined that song, one of the most over-sung and over-rated songs in history, wiping away all performances that preceded it (including the London and Broadway versions, and the much lauded rendition of Susan Boyle.) I still don’t think I Dreamed a Dream is a very good song, but Hathaway’s performance does wring every last bit of emotional potential out of it.

In a similar manner, the filmmakers managed to completely reinvent this entire musical, to make it relevant again, and transcend the very dated sound of the 80’s cast recordings. Don’t forget, Les Mis was essentially a synthesizer musical at the time, and some of the key singers, while excellent, were quite stylized – I’m thinking here of Colm Wilkinson and Frances Ruffelle (both of who are given small roles in this movie version.) They re-scored the entire musical very elegantly, added a nice song for when Valjean goes off with young Cosette, and they really improved the depiction of Valjean’s growth and evolution as a character over what was done in the musical. All the casting is superb, with the partial exception of Russell Crowe, and the editing and scene composition is fantastic, maintaining the pacing of a musical throughout (except for the somewhat slow battle scenes.)

With all this said, it should also be noted that the movie suffers from the same problems the musical did, namely, that the music is just not very good. Many of the songs are extremely mediocre and gratingly repetitive and really only one song (In My Life) strikes me as a good (not great) show tune. Also, Russell Crowe is a bit of a problem in that he’s not a very good singer, and is very uneven in his solos – he’s better in his numbers with Jean Valjean, where Hugh Jackman props him up. Lastly, the CGI crap looked fake and irritating, like it always does. But I must say, I’m surprised how little these problems interfered with my enjoyment of the movie – it’s a testament to how well the film is put together.

If you saw Les Mis when it was first on Broadway, this movie will let you rediscover it all over again; for younger folks who never saw it, it’s an excellent recreation of the excitement and spectacle of the original show. Either way, it’s well worth seeing.

Rust and Bone is part of that new genera in France where they are trying to outdo Hollywood at their own game. I think it’s all riding off the incredible success of Tell No One, but unfortunately they don’t seem to realize that aping the style of that film and its American sound track does not reproduce what made it special (the incredible story, writing, and the way its music was used.)

Rust and Bone benefits from a clever preview that makes it look like it’s all about Marion Cottilard. In fact, it’s mostly about the guy, and unfortunately he is kind of an unlikable oaf. He’s stupid, a terrible father, and he leaves his girlfriend Marion Cottilard stranded in a bar to go off and fuck some completely generic blonde bimbo, which makes him probably the biggest asshole on the planet. Compounding this problem is the lack of quality dialog (they shouldn’t have copied this feature of Hollywood films!) which is a shame because they clearly assembled a really good, low-key, talented cast that could have done something with better material. The fact is you don’t really get to know either of these people, which places a rather low ceiling on the film’s potential. Plus, his whole fighting career is a little unbelievable, frankly.

I’m not sure I can recommend this. It’s like Hollywood crap, done by French people.

The Girl is a very sweet little movie about a poor young mother from Texas (Abby Cornish) who attempts to smuggle Mexicans across the border to earn extra money, a somewhat desperate move she undertakes because she’s convinced she’ll never regain custody of her son without more cash. When it blows up on her, she winds up with a little girl stranded in the debacle. The story is about her attempt to come to grips with this situation.

The Girl feels like some of those great old indie films from the 90’s. It features a gritty and real depiction of being poor in America, an interesting father-daughter relationship that is sketched with old-school efficiency, and the acting from Abby Cornish and Will Patton is excellent. The central story with the girl is moving without being manipulative or overly sentimental.

I saw The Girl at Sunshine, which means it probably does not have very good distribution, but if you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it!

I remember the Central Park jogger, and the media whirlwind surrounding these kids and the whole concept of “wilding.” Many people could see the case stank from day one, but the police, the prosecution, and the media rammed it through anyway, and years later after confirmation of the kids’ innocence emerged these institutions still refuse to admit their errors. The story is interesting and thought-provoking, especially concerning the vulnerability of minority populations in society. However I would not say it is a fascinating story destined to captivate your imagination long after seeing it. Rather, it’s the kind of thing where you see it, enjoy it, and then you’re completely done with it.

The important question for this review is, of course, how effective a documentary is The Central Park Five? I would say it is a solid, professional job, no more than that. It is not great in any way, and I’m not sure I would even call it “really good.” I enjoyed it, but was not wowed by its style or technique . The pacing is a bit slow, all across the board. It feels a little academic, largely because they insist on being so thorough about presenting every little detail for the viewer. I thought they did a really good job presenting the five with dignity and without too much pathos, and they used period footage well. But the views and opinions from the various commentators who are interviewed starts to feel a little ponderous after a while.

Still, The Central Park Five is definitely worth seeing. I can’t imagine it got much distribution outside New York and a few other cities, but be sure to Netflix it when it makes it to disk.

Charlie Bartlett is a very sweet little movie about a creative and resourceful (and rich) misfit determined to fit in at his high school. It’s quirky, surprising, and amusing. In a sea of painfully formulaic high school movies, here’s one that manages to defy expectations consistently from start to finish. They even made an attempt to pull the whole thing together at the very end, like an upper-echelon romantic comedy; it didn’t totally work, but I’m impressed at close they came given how quickly they had to reveal Charlie’s depths at the very end. All the acting is solidly good, and the dialog is definitely above average.

In the mood for an intelligent and fun comedy about high school? Good luck finding one in theaters, but Charlie Bartlett streams on Netflix – I recommend it!