Irreviews

I’ll give The Way Back one thing: Peter Weir definitely took his time telling this story, and I respect that. The problem is he didn’t fill that time with much of anything. The set-up is poor, and there is not nearly enough interesting dialog-based detail, telling us things like where they are, how long each segment of the journey is taking, how their supplies and clothing are holding up – anything to give the journey some texture! It gets boring watching these guys stumble around aimlessly in the middle of nowhere.

Character development is sparse and inadequate. For example, the four guys who were supposed to be friends didn’t even seem like they knew each other once the journey started, and as for sketching the individual personalities in the group I can report that two of the guys I never was able to tell apart, all the way to the end of the movie. I still don’t know who was who. You never bond with any of these guys because no time is spent making any of them seem interesting. This is just bad.

This movie needed some serious editing. I like that Weir tried to capture in great detail their endless travail in escaping for Siberia, but it should not seem to the viewer like we are actually walking the entire way through the Mongolian desert with them! I think that capturing the boredom of such a journey is something that is best done implicitly.

Also, the accents in this film are a bit out of control. My wife and I had to keep backing up the DVD and playing scenes over to understand what they were saying. Couple this with their incessant mumbling and it makes for an arduous viewing experience, especially in the beginning when the only interesting dialog is taking place.

Still, despite all this, I have seen worse movies this year and last year. Even with its slow pace, poor character development, and sub-par dialog (after a while it’s reduced to “even though we have water, without food we die” and “if we don’t find water soon, we’ll die!” and so on) the film was still somewhat interesting, although this may have largely been because they tell you in the beginning that only three make it. You basically endure the whole film just to see who croaks, ’cause God knows they aren’t saying anything interesting to each other, and no one is getting laid either, that’s for sure. Now that I think of it, that was very “reality TV” of Peter Weir to tell us that up front. It reminds me of a reality show I saw advertised before some movie last year, where people were doing some sort of extreme combat – in the advertisement, the one guy says “there’s gonna be one serious fatality … I just hope it’s not me.” If this ridiculous line is all that was conjured up for me by watching The Way Back, I think that tells you something about the artistic merits of this film.

I give up. It seems I simply cannot defend this movie. I’ll just end here by saying it was a good story idea (whether or not it was actually true) that came together in a rather bland and uninspired fashion. It is not a terrible film. If you are choosing between this and Cats and Dogs: Pussy Galore, maybe pick this.

The critics are comparing this to Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne, 2006). All I can say is: forget it! This film is nowhere near Tell No One, which is probably one of the best films of the last decade.

But The Double Hour is an interesting and dignified Euro thriller that has a really strong atmospheric quality to it. The story and characters are solid and interesting. And it’s very creepy – it’s a more effective horror film than most Hollywood horror. Kseniya Rappoport has a great presence on screen, as does Filippo Timi, and they have really good chemistry.

So what’s the problem with this film? The problem is that the story is told in such a way that really does not leave you with very much afterward. It a subtle thing – it’s not that the story is bad, but it sums up to considerably less than its individual parts.

I would recommend it, but don’t expect anything at the level of Tell No One, or The Secret in Their Eyes. The Double Hour is a nice little film, but very far from a classic thriller.

Shame on Cate Blanchett! Shame on her! Shame!!

Shame on her for participating in this “vomitorium.” Same goes for Tom Hollander and Saoirse Ronan.

Hanna is one of the revolting new breed of “video game movies” that are currently assaulting us. Do not fall for the preview, which makes the movie look a bit like SALT, because it’s nothing like SALT or any other semi-dignified political action thriller. Everything in Hanna is completely and absurdly fake – the characters, the sets, the fighting, the action, everything – to the point where one’s brain quickly glazes over from the comic book-like abstraction of it all. There is literally no story, unless you call “a genetic super-girl exists whom everyone is trying to kill” a story – I would say that is not even a story idea, but merely a pitiful excuse for two hours of pointless violence and chase scenes.  When the credits rolled, I whispered to my wife “Screenplay By: a retarded sixth grader.”

Listen to the set-up for this movie and tell me it is not written for people with bubblegum brains: Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan live in the arctic wilderness, bow hunting and reading to each other from the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Somehow, Ronan has learned to speak every language on Earth fluently (don’t ask.) Okay, Bana has an electric box that tells the CIA where he and Ronan are located. He tells Ronan: “flip that switch and ‘she’ will never stop until she’s killed you.” So Ronan flips the switch (of course – who wouldn’t?) and she and Bana outline the plan: they are going to go from Arctic Norway to some house in Berlin, separately. That’s the story, literally. Bana then does a close shave, changes out of his arctic survival gear and into a blue pinstripe suit and walks hundreds of miles through frozen wilderness (in wingtips and with no topcoat!) and then strips to a jock strap and swims across the North Sea. Simple! The movie, then, consists of people chasing them with the intention of killing them by whatever means necessary, and slaughtering anyone even remotely involved with either of them.

Since this movie really only exists to convey scenes of violence and death to the viewer, I’m going to limit my comments to that, so as to get this review overwith all the sooner. The fight scenes are, collectively, the worst I have ever seen in a movie. Period.  At their “best” they look like people playing fucking pattycake. At their worst they define the new low water mark for the art, and literally look like the crap-ass animation one finds in XBox video games. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the fakeness of the sped-up fight choreography that we’ve seen in action films for the last decade or so, typified by the Bourne movies. I’m talking about fight scenes where the filmmakers actually abandon the cinematic art in favor of the visual dog shit that a nation of video game obsessives is apparently used to seeing and now expects. The scene where Eric Bana meets and fights with the four guys in the subway is the most offensive example of this, and as such is the worst movie fight scene of all time. I can’t even imagine what they did to take a live action sequence involving actual human beings and turn it into something that looks like jerky, visually-discontinuous video game fighting! There are other fight scenes which also stoop to this new low, and I found these sequences deeply offensive and saddening, and felt like demanding my money back for having to watch them.

As for the violence, there is a lot of it, it’s ultra glamorized and none of it makes any sense.

Enough of this! Fuck this ridiculous movie!

I liked Henry’s Crime, but I didn’t love it. It’s a very strange, off-beat little movie. I’ve never liked James Caan, but Vera Farmiga is her usual, incredible self, turning in a fabulous performance. As for Keanu, I’ve always liked him, and I thought he was really good in this film, especially in the Cherry Orchard scenes.

You know what really bothered me about this film? The Daptone Records soundtrack. My wife and I went to see Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings this past New Years in New York and they sucked! I have all the Dap Kings records and really like them, and I’ve heard that they are usually great live, but I guess Sharon was having one of her famous “bad nights” and the whole thing was just really bland and lifeless. Ever since then I have kind of had mixed feelings toward the band, and having all their songs running through this film was distracting and off-putting. It’s funny how subjective our evaluation of movies can be – if I had never heard a song by Sharon Jones I’d probably be raving about the sound track to Henry’s Crime.

Music aside, Herny’s Crime is a quirky and fun distraction, but it does not leave you with much. Maybe Netflix it if you can’t think of anything else to put on your cue.

Love and Other Drugs got panned by critics and was a flop because it portrays the pharmaceutical industry in a negative light, simple as that. The reality is that this movie was a lot better than I expected.

Basically the film’s problem is that it is uneven narratively.  In the beginning the film is a really enjoyable skewering of big pharma (complete with a good deal of anti-prescription-drug rhetoric) and a rather funny portrayal Jake Gillenhall’s character as a smart but bored and women-crazed young guy who is not sure what to do with his life. Many sexual escapades with Anna Hathaway are also featured, and Anne Hathaway’s breasts are featured so prominently they should have gotten separate billing. There are actually some pretty good laughs in this first part, which is saying something considering that 90% of modern comedies don’t make me laugh at all.

But then the movie starts to loose its way a bit. It begins to laps a bit into a Sunday night affliction movie (a good one, perhaps, but still …). The narrative starts to fragment – there’s the affliction, the love story, Gillenhall’s personal torment, the sex-crazed doctor, the sex crazed brother, the jealous ex-marine sales dude, and all these different storylines start pulling in different directions. But in the end the film pulls the main storyline together and delivers a pretty moving and well-done climax scene, and I left the film feeling pretty satisfied. I thought Gillenhall was really good in his role, and Hathaway was solid in hers.

As for the brother doing a Seth Rogan imitation (this is what critics said), I don’t see it. The brother is funnier and more interesting (and a better actor) than Seth Rogan ever was or ever will be.

I would ignore the critics and give this film a chance. It’s actually not bad at all.

Seems like everyone is pouncing on this one. For example, Anthony Lane went all “Irreviews” on it in the New Yorker (I swear these New York critics are reading this site and getting new ideas, or at least their assistants are.) But I don’t know, I guess this film caught me in a soft mood this past Friday – for some reason it didn’t offend me that much.

From the perspective of film-making craftsmanship, The Conspirator is I concede a pretty lame movie. The music is completely generic, it’s shot through a gray filter that makes it look completely fake, and the narrative structure is a bit dull and not super-suspenseful, never a good attribute of a courtroom drama! My wife’s perfect example of its narrative failure: the scene where the defense witness suddenly changes his testimony on the stand had no dramatic impact because they failed to show the implied earlier scene containing his original testimony to McAvoy, just fundamentally bad scriptwriting. The marvelous James McAvoy doesn’t have much to do, and the even more marvelous Tom Wilkinson has even less to do. Robert Redford’s direction is pitiful – the incidental and supporting acting is atrocious, conflicting accents are all over the place (in a way that is distracting), and the camerawork is ponderous. And who the hell thought Rory Gilmore and that dude from Going the Distance would make positive additions to this kind of film?

But this movie isn’t Transformers 3, and I respect that. Redford tried to make a film that had something to say about how democracy and respect for truth, liberty, and due process of law fall by the wayside when people get scared (just like with John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Iran Contra, and 9/11). It’s remarkable how quickly and easily we Americans are willing to surrender everything and become totalitarian in tough times, almost as if deep down we doubt our democracy. Luckily we also tend to get bored with that kind of thing pretty quickly and thank heavens there is enough of the Constitution left to enable a hasty retreat from the ridiculous attitudes we adopt. I think this idea is worth making a movie about, if for no other reason to have something to watch besides Battle for LA, Thor, Green Lantern, Green Hornet, Captain America, Avengers, X-Men: First Class, Spiderman Reboot, GI Joe 2, Iron Man 3, Ant-Man, Woverine 2, Batman 3, Hancock 2, and Kick-Ass 2: Balls To The Wall.

Furthermore, I would rather people go see The Conspirator than have them sitting at home playing Homefront on their X-Box and developing a warped conviction that the United States is in real danger of military occupation by North Korea.

Is The Conspirator the kind of movie that you will return to again and again? No. Is it the kind of film that you leave the theater raving about? No. But I think Robert Redford succeeded in making a film that is worth seeing and fairly enjoyable. Given his “lack of things to do,” James McAvoy nevertheless succeeds in bringing a decently strong presence to the role that smooths out some of the film’s rough spots. The historical story is not super interesting, unfortunately, but for some reason it seems a little more interesting in the film than it actually is. Despite the film’s flaws I was pretty engaged throughout the movie, and I’m not sorry I went to see it, like I am with most movies I see in theaters. I would recommend it with reservations – don’t go expecting a timeless classic. It’s another Robert Redford mess, but it’s not all bad.

Source Code is fun, interesting, gripping, unpredictable, and even a tiny bit moving. It tackles a dream-like netherworld similar to last year’s Inception, but Source Code does it so much better! I’m not sure Source Code is the kind of film I would return to again and again, but it is very enjoyable the first time through.

What distinguishes Source Code from other modern movies of this type is the way the narrative unfurls and maintains its cohesion to the very end of the story. The science behind the story is treated in a “don’t ask and don’t think about it too much” way, sort of like Inception, but the difference is that here it matters much less because the science just frames the human drama that is the real story. The film is like a murder mystery, but it’s also a film about mortality and making decisions in life (it’s not super deep on these last two topics, but it’s not embarrassingly shallow either). And not everything is spelled out at a second-grade level like today’s comic book thriller movies – you have to wait to discover what the deal is with Jake Gyllenhaal and the mission, and the details are skillfully doled out in the context of the developing story, slowly and provocatively. The excellent story pacing is made even more effective by Vera Farmiga’s easy and supremely confident acting as the military go-between for Jake and his mysterious mission – if you ever wanted evidence of how great an actress she is, check out what she manages to do with this highly limited, “nothing” role. It’s really something, in my estimation.

There are so many examples in current movies of thrillers like this where they do nothing more than dress up the basic story idea, cue the CGI action sequences and leave it at that. Inception is the most stark example from last year, but take SALT, for another example: a CIA special agent is a sleeper mole for the Russians who is awakened in front of her CIA peers. A good story idea, to be sure, but that’s as far as it goes: cue two hours of senseless chase scenes and forget developing anything else for the rest of the film. Source Code never does this. Somehow, despite all the action and the technological plot points, the story comfortably sits at the level of everyday human action and emotion. It reminded me a little of that fantastic little move from 2000, Memento – it’s not as good or as interesting as Memento, but they are similar in terms of this low-key human quality, and the quality of the pacing of the narrative.

I should add that Jake Gyllenhaal is absolutely fantastic in this role, and I’ve already mentioned how great Vera Farmiga is in her much more limited role. Michelle Monaghan is very effective as the cute girl sitting across from Jake on the train.

The only quibble I have with the movie is the very end – I didn’t think it was necessary, but at the same time it did not ruin the movie for me. I should also mention that the bit right before the very end, which I feel would have been a much more effective ending, was really strong – the way the Michelle Monaghan character is finally explained was a lovely piece of writing.

I highly recommend Source Code if you are in the mood for a smart, interesting, dignified, and above-all human sci-fi thriller. It’s a really good time at the movies!

Win Win is a pretty remarkable film, one that I feel confident will emerge as one of the year’s best films. It may not be the kind of film that I personally tend to develop an emotional bond with and return to over and over, but at the same time I can recognize high quality when I experience it. Win Win does so much right that it is rather difficult to come up with any criticism of this film. The story is very fresh, and somehow greater than the sum of its parts. My wife and I talked a long time after seeing this film at Angelika, marveling at how good it was. I consider it a must-see.

You very rarely see a modern film of this genera (indie-style dramatic comedy) that so effortlessly supports so main different narrative levels emanating from its basic story idea (a failing lawyer decides to run a small-time scam on an older client in order to supplement his shrinking income.) Most films would wind up picking one eventual narrative path (like the kid’s wrestling prowess, for example) and just sticking with that one thing, doing something fairly obvious and linear with it. But Win Win amazes with the subtle complexity it spins off from its initial starting point, and with the easy way it weaves all these plot lines together to produce a comprehensive human drama. It has stuff going on at all kinds of narrative levels – it has three different but inter-related family dramas and two independent but overlapping main character arcs developing simultaneously throughout the film. Supporting characters that would be throwaway humor in most indie dramatic comedies are here actually allowed to develop within their relationship to the main characters – I am mainly thinking of Amy Ryan’s role, the role of Paul Giamatti’s “crazy friend” (played delightfully and with great spontaneity by Bobby Cannavale) and the role of the geeky misfit on the wrestling team. This last character, Adam Stemler, struck me as seeming very, very real – they caught that type of geeky kid perfectly, and his eventual friendship with Kyle was beautifully done.

Paul Giamatti’s performance is superb, and he will definitely be in contention for the best actor award here at Irreviews (The Academy will probably skip over him, like they always do.) The kid playing Kyle (Alex Shaffer) is a wrestler who had never acted, but he gives a really solid performance – much like the hockey players who were taught to act in Miracle and wound up turning in really memorable performances. All the supporting performances are strong. But the real distinguishing feature of this film is the writing, the way all these different characters and storylines interact and develop. There is something so satisfying about the way the film comes together. It’s not flashy or easily defined, but it is extremely pleasing. And it has a great ending!

Don’t miss it – it’s really good.

Have you ever noticed that films presenting a negative depiction of rich people don’t get big releases, don’t do very well at the box office, and don’t get very good reviews? My wife and I avoided All Good Things when it was showing at Angelika last year, mainly because of the negative reviews. Boy were we wrong to do that – it’s just more proof that you should never trust the New York Times movie reviewers. All Good Things is a really good film.

All Good Things is based on real people and real events and tells the story of a revolting family of rich people that got their wealth through supporting prostitution and other seedy ventures. Their emotionally disturbed first son is guilted into joining the family business, with tragic results. It’s a tense, interesting story, gripping from beginning to end. The writing is solid, not great, and the same could be said for the dialog. It all could have been better, but it is still quite good as it is. I sort of agree with mainstream critics that Ryan Gosling plays the role too over-the-top robotic (he plays it like Lars and the Real Girl, for Heaven’s sake!), and Gosling has never been a favorite of mine to begin with. But the story is strong and interesting enough to survive has monochromatic approach to the role.

The twinkling star of this film is Kirsten Dunst, an actress that I have raved about before on this site, and who never fails to show her dazzling acting skill in anything she gets involved in. My wife put it best: she lights up the screen, effortlessly. Merely watching the preview to this movie you will see exactly what I am talking about. She has the most marvelous command of her facial expressions as an actress – modern films love to swap dialog for “meaningful looks” but Kiki is one of a very small handful of actresses who can actually pull it off, and she is able to do so spectacularly. Consider the scene where she first snorts cocaine in the restroom and then comes back out the the table – her physical acting in that scene, the way the complex emotions her character is feeling at that moment bubble through to the surface, simply amazing. But calling out scenes like this actually does her a disservice in a way, because she makes even the smallest, most incidental scenes work so well. Thanks to her, any problems with the casting or script become secondary to the emotion and intrigue of the story.

I highly recommend this wonderful little movie!