Irreviews

The only purpose of this film is to show (in graphic detail) all the different ways someone could die violently in the Middle Ages. That’s what they are referring to when they describe the film as “historically rooted.” They pretty much have one example of every kind of violent death imaginable: one guy gets his head whacked off, one guy gets his arms whacked off, one guy gets his head smashed by a mace, and on and on and on. What’s more, I did not notice any repeats, which is a dead giveaway as to the priorities of the filmmakers.

The beginning of the movie is not too bad – they even make an attempt at a set-up, with some dialog between characters as they make their trip to the mysterious village that has avoided the plague. But once they get to the village it becomes a comic-book exploration of religion and morality. I think the filmmakers thought they were making a deep and thought-provoking movie, but in the end it’s all rather silly and excessively violent, and not all of it is historically rooted (one of the characters yells “I’m gonna fucking kill you bitch!”)

Avoid, unless you want to spend 90 minutes watching people die a wide range of horrible and ignominious deaths.

Jesus, you figure that if all those actors and filmmakers dragged themselves all the way out to the middle of fucking nowhere to shoot this film they could have at least filmed a fucking ENDING for the movie! I can see if an entire film is made in one room, fine, maybe you consider just stopping the film right in the middle of the story and calling it an “artistic statement.” But some real physical effort and discomfort when into making Meek’s Cutoff. Those actors were filthy-dirty, sweating profusely in heavy wool outfits, breathing dust day after day, hewing wooden wheels in the baking hot sun, walking neck-deep through icy rivers, shooting all those scenes in the pitch dark. Those poor actors – couldn’t they have thrown them a bone and … given them something to make it all worth while?

Meek’s Cutoff is a perfect example of what the glorious Indie Renaissance of the 1990’s eventually became. Modern filmmakers looked at the Indie Renaissance and somehow totally managed to miss what made it magical: super-efficient and marvelously written dialog, sparse and unusual scoring, exceptional story pacing and rhythm, a holistic approach to individual scenes, emphasis on soulful realism, and that all-important and elusive extra something: the cultivation of texture. Instead, what they took away from this movement and incorporated into the current indie wasteland is the following: No dialog (just the incoherent stammering of normal people in real life), no music, complete insensitivity to story pacing and rhythm, scenes that never end, emphasis on depression, angst and existential despair, and a stupefying realism that elevates every little detail (whether or not it is interesting) to the level of near obsession.

That’s Meek’s Cutoff in a nutshell. This film is very, very boring. The actors hardly talk to each other and when they do they mumble so badly you only hear about 75% of it. And for the life of me I could not figure out why it often sounded like they were talking in a small metal barn when they were in fact speaking in the middle of 100 square miles of flat, open desert – clearly something went amiss with their “sound-design.” The set-up is pathetic (the all-important first fifteen minutes is spent watching them all cross a river in silence.) You don’t know who these people are, what they are doing, where they have been, where they trying to go – nothing! If I hadn’t read the plot summary on the poster I would have no idea what the film was about. Given this starting point, plus the fact that no one in the film is particularly likable, it should not be surprising that the rest of the film is excruciatingly dull and pointless.

These filmmakers are obsessed with realism: they shot all the night scenes lit only by a tiny campfire or by starlight! Great, all that means is you can’t fucking see anyone as they talk! It’s like a parody of Barry Lindon.

I don’t know what it is about Michelle Williams, but she is the most depressing actress I have ever seen. Every time I see a movie that she is in, I come away depressed, and with the distinct impression that she was primarily responsible. I think I am going to swear off Michelle Williams movies as a result.

I know this film has incredible buzz right now, but it really is a very feeble piece of art.

Don’t pay any attention to the critics. Country Strong is a wonderful movie, probably one of the best films from 2010, in my opinion. And ignore the movie trailer which made it look like some throwaway piece of trash. Country Strong is a really good music movie.

The first thing you notice when watching Country Strong is that they actually wrote DIALOG for the film, good dialog! This happens so infrequently these days that it’s always a shock to me when I experience it. The story set-up is really solid, and the four main characters develop continuously and quite beautifully over the course of the entire film. They also pulled off a romantic story line with four (four!)  interlocking love triangles, and made each triangle nuanced and interesting. Considering that this film is at least half musical performances, that tells you something about the efficiency and quality of the dialog.

But what really distinguishes Country Strong is the music and the way it is handled. First off, as far as I can tell everybody does their own singing, and they are all great! Not “good”, great. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon were “good” in Walk the Line. These actors (Paltrow, Meester, and Hedlund) sound almost like they could have their own careers as country artists – in other words they each have a quality to their voices that transcends being able to carry a tune well, and the extra realism this provides the film cannot be underestimated.

Of course it helps that they are performing music that for the most part is head-and-shoulders better than any country music of the last 15 years. I pretty much hate modern country music and I loved the music for this movie. Leighton Meester’s character is clearly supposed to be some Taylor Swift clone, but the music she performs in this movie absolutely destroys anything Taylor Swift has ever done, trust me. Compare Garrett Hedlund’s music to the (stylistically similar) crap written for Crazy Heart and it will be obvious how pathetic Crazy Heart was as a “music movie.” And consider the song “Coming Home” that Paltrow wants but which is given to Meester to record. The song needs to sound like a smash hit when Meester sings it, and then sound way better than a smash hit when Paltrow sings it at the end. For this to work (and it does) not just any old song will do, obviously. They did a fabulous job with the music.

The other thing I loved about this film is that they had the guts to really emphasize the music. The performances are not cropped, they are exciting and interesting, and they blend performances and montage sequences really well.

I would like mention one little magical moment from the beginning of the film – when I saw this scene I knew the film was going to be great. Paltrow is in rehab and Hedlund is hanging out in her room, playing her the beginning of a song he has written. Paltrow questions his lines and he cajoles her to take up his guitar and do her own version. I don’t think I have ever seen this kind of thing done any better. It’s not just that her version is (of course) superior. It’s that it really seemed like it was completely spontaneous, she sang like someone who could really sing but might not have sung at all recently (accurately reflecting her character’s current circumstances,) and her delivery communicated as subtext her complicated feelings for him and the depth of her character’s artistic soul. It’s a lovely little scene that has that certain something that has become so rare in films. When Hedlund is stunned by her version, it’s not just because that’s what they are acting in the scene. It’s because it really is a bit stunning.

I am not a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow but she is marvelous in this film! They should have given her an Academy Award for this performance – her performance makes Natalie Portman’s Black Swan look like a complete joke. Everyone else is really strong as well.

I highly recommend this film.

The Other Woman is a good movie. It’s not a great film, but it is well done, earnest, and avoids a lot of common pitfalls in this genera (the kid being too cute, the ex-wife being too unsympathetic, etc.) I’d say they captured everything pretty well, it’s just that they failed to capture it all in a thrilling way. But if you consider, for example, the current selection of movies at the Union Square Theater right now (Hanna, Thor, X-Men, Pirates IV, Priest, and Fast Five) failure to thrill intellectually and emotionally is hardly a crime!

I’m not a big fan of Natalie Portman but I thought she was pretty good in this role. I thought she was better in this role than her ridiculous role in Black Swan – they should have given her an award for this if they had to give her an award. The rest of the cast is solid, particularly Lisa Kudrow who is one seriously underrated actress in my book. It was nice to see Scott Cohen (Rory’s teacher in the first season of The Gilmore Girls)  get a serious movie role and he does a good job, and it was also nice to see Anthony Rapp (Mark in the musical Rent) get some work, even if it was a nothing supportive role that could have easily been deleted from the movie.

The Other Woman is definitely worth seeing – Netflix it!

This movie needed Tina Fey – both the humor and dignity of her writing and her comic presence on-screen. Not that I am some huge Tina Fey fan, I’m not, but I admit her material is great compared to most modern comedy. The comedy in Bridesmaids feels to me like warmed-over Tina Fey, executed by a collection of people who just couldn’t pull it off. Bridesmaids reminds me a bit of Mean Girls in spirit and overall comic feel, but it has almost none of the latter film’s smooth pacing and comic snap, and it certainly doesn’t have actors like pre-meltdown Lindsey Lohan (people forget that she was once really good) and the fabulous Rachael McAdams to glue the whole thing together.

I like Kristen Wiig, but she’s no Tina Fey, and I must conclude from this film that she cannot as a lead character carry a weak script. I’m not sure she can carry a strong script, but I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt until the day that someone writes a really good movie and puts her in the lead role (don’t hold your breath.) Kristen Wiig does have some funny moments in this film, but she also has a lot of flat moments and moments that feel a bit forced, and she somehow makes her character really unlikeable. You are supposed to despise her nemesis Rose Byrne and root for Wiig, but by the end of the film I liked Byrne a lot more, and basically wanted Wiig to go away.

Rose Byrne is an actress who has really grown on me – I once referred to her in a review as a “soulless widget,” but I have long since realized I was wrong. Her performance in Sunshine sold me on her, but she’s been great in a wide variety of different roles.  As my wife pointed out, she has this incredible ability to change the way she looks – she’s really beautiful but can very easily “dial down” and look plain and unremarkable in different ways. Byrne gives a great multi-layered performance as the character everyone is supposed to hate, and her confident presence and screen warmth kind of make Wiig and Rudolph look a bit like amateurs. Maya Rudolph does not have much to do in the way of comedy in this film; she’s kind of just a place-holder, and not a very likable one at that. As for Melissa McCarthy … well, my wife was happy to see her getting a role that was something other than the “overweight best friend” or the “overweight family member,” and she liked that the character was really confident and powerful, and also really successful. I agree with all that, but I also found her character to be really disgusting, and I couldn’t get past that. I guess that’s just my problem.

The only time the film had any kind of emotional life to it was right at the end, during the Wilson Phillips song, but it’s not because the song is used well in the movie, or even makes sense in the story. It’s simply because the film is so emotionally blah that suddenly hearing that great (if cheesy) 80’s song kind of snaps you out of the malaise you’re in from having watched the rest of the movie.

Bridesmaids: it has its moments, but for me at least it’s a hodgepodge of gross comedy and unlikable characters, mostly lacking in comic inspiration and heart. I liked Dinner for Schmucks a lot more, believe it or not.

The critics hated Dinner for Schmucks because it is based on a fundamentally negative depiction of rich, powerful people. I am noticing this more and more: decent films that are panned and total flops, which curiously also depict the rich and powerful unattractively.

I’m not saying Dinner for Schmucks is a good film – it isn’t. Much of the humor is really obvious and predictable (example: two cell phones on the table and Paul Rudd takes the wrong one, with disastrous consequences – there’s a good amount of stuff that’s been done a million times before.) But there is also a lot of off-beat, quirky, sort-of original humor, and the character of Kieren is really a hoot. Furthermore, Dinner for Schmucks has heart. And it has Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, both of whom make up a lot of shortcomings with their talent and warmth on-screen. I actually enjoyed this movie, even though it was not that good. I found it funny in parts, touching, and quite entertaining. And I thought the mice were adorable!

Ignore the critics and give Dinner for Schmucks a chance, especially if you like Rudd and Carell. It’s actually a pretty cute movie.

What on earth is Kristen Bell doing to her career? Anyone who has ever seen Veronica Mars knows what a great on-screen quantity she is – attractive in an unusual way, great sarcastic comic delivery, good all-around actress. Why does she keep taking these roles that are based on painfully lame physical comedy? Or more to the point, why can’t someone write a decent role for this chick?

The scene with the dentures sums up the whole film. You know she is going to be transformed back into her high school self, you feel it coming from a zillion miles away, and then she puts the glue on the dentures, sticks them in granny’s mouth, touches her hair with her gluey hand right at her bangs, and her hand is glued to her hair. So what happens? Her ancient grandmother who can barely walk suddenly moves like The Flash, grabs scissors, and before Kristen Bell can react in any way or even scream “no”, PRESTO: her hand is free and she has ugly bangs just like she did in high school. I swear to God, who gets paid to write this shit?

Please someone, write a great movie for Kristen Bell to star in – she deserves it.

I really wanted to like The Runaways because I like that band – I think they were cool and I think their music was cool. Their music was part of the last dying breath of real Rock & Roll, before it was neutered by sanitized metal and hair bands in the mid-to-late 1980s, and Nirvana subsequently dealt it the death blow in the early 1990s, finishing it forever. Think back to that time: The Runaways, The Ramones, The Clash, Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, BOC, J Geils, The Tubes, Toto, early Blondie, early Heart, early Van Halen, whomever – it was wild, it was fun, it was interesting, it was spontaneous sounding. No one was in tune, no one played in good time, but none of it mattered because each band was a beautiful and musical organic whole, much greater than the sum of it parts. If you ever want to hear how painfully awful modern popular music is, take a trip down memory lane with some of these bands, and marvel at (to give one example) how much better the natural human voice sounded than the creepy, autotuned “robo-voices” of our sad, benighted era.

The problem with The Runaways is that they did not capture the energy and attitude of the music properly, simple as that. The closest they came was the “Cherry Bomb” scene, which was okay (despite some painful overacting by the guy playing Kim Fowley) but was far from great. Other than that, the music scenes fall really flat, and often come across as an afterthought. They made an attempt to capture the energy and attitude of the band members (mostly unsuccessfully I think) but that is quite different to capturing the music itself, and the later artistic challenge was the much more important one.

Listen to what The Runaways actually sounded like (live, in 1977), and decide for yourself how close the filmmakers got:

Compare The Runaways to Walk The Line, in particular the way Walk The Line captured the spirit and energy of Johny Cash’s music, both its creation and its performance. The concert scenes were electrifying in Walk The Line, especially the duets with June Carter, because they paid a lot of attention to how the music was recorded, presented, and came across in the context of a movie, and they made sure the voices they cast did justice to the originals (in my opinion, they actually exceeded them.)

The Runaways needed this kind of approach, but they completely dropped the ball. They totally failed to capture Cherie Currie’s husky voice and the characterful way she used it in their music. Dakota Fanning made an attempt to mimic her, but it was a lame, doomed attempt. Let’s face it: they needed to cast that character for her voice. And Kristen Stewart sounds nothing like Joan Jet – when she is singing, Kristen Stewart sounds like … a slightly more animated version of Kristen Stewart. Fanning’s songs were lifeless and disappointing; Stewart’s just sounded wrong.

They also totally missed the confidence of Lita Ford’s playing – they needed a much better guitarist to play the Lita Ford parts. And I was surprised how Lita Ford got the shaft all throughout the narrative – they make her out to be a cardboard bitch and they don’t even tell you what happened to her (or Sandy West) after the band broke up. Not only is that crappy, it’s just plain bad storytelling.

But it’s not just the music they blew, they pretty much blew the whole rest of it too. The film wastes a great deal of time on uninteresting stuff like Currie’s family life ( which leads nowhere and in the end does not even provide a compelling explanation for while she leaves the band), lame-ass faux-arty lesbian sequences between Fanning and Stewart (why did they even bother – who could this possibly be aimed at?), and the drug and alcohol exploits of the girls. It spends almost no time on all the critical stuff: the song writing, the instrument playing, the relationship of the various band members with each other (they hardly say anything of substance to each other), how they became popular, the Japanese tour (how big was it, and why?), and why the band eventually broke up. Maybe I’m overstating the scale of the disaster, but this movie really took the very easy way out: shove the “rebel” Stewart and cute little Dakota Fanning on the screen, all dolled up, and have them act like sluts.

I wouldn’t say this film is not worth seeing, especially if you like rock music movies. But it is fairly disappointing when you compare it to what it should have been.