Tag: Margot Robbie

I, Tonya

Margot Robbie shines in “I, Tonya,” but the movie often feels tone deaf in its comedic depiction of domestic violence amid Tonya Harding’s tabloid story.

i tonya posterIt’s a cliché to announce at the beginning of your movie “based on a true story,” but it’s almost become as much of a cliché to now be tongue-in-cheek about it. “Based on wildly contradictory interviews,” the opening to “I, Tonya” proclaims. It tells you two things about this movie: that it thinks it has a blank check to take as many liberties as it wants with Tonya Harding’s (Margot Robbie) tabloid story, and that this movie wants to have a sense of humor it maybe doesn’t deserve.

That’s because “I, Tonya” feels tone deaf in trying to meld the goofy, unreliable testimonies of Harding’s family and cadre of rednecks with a more sobering story about domestic abuse and mental torture at the hands of her husband and mother in her pursuit to be the best. It’s a movie about domestic abuse, but hey, let’s try and be funny and edgy too! Continue reading “I, Tonya”

Suicide Squad

SuicideSquadPosterIf “Suicide Squad” is supposed to be fun, kill me now. It’s as much of a mess as “Batman v. Superman,” the other entry in the DC Comics Cinematic Universe this year. Director David Ayer’s film has no attitude, no wit, and though it’s a movie about bad guys, does not even have the pleasure and fun of bad taste.

As the story of a team of screwball, misfit villains teaming up to save the world against their best interest, “Suicide Squad” wants to be an anti-hero remix in the vein of this year’s “Deadpool.” But it also has the irreverent, pop sensibilities of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the overstuffed dream team burden of “The Avengers,” and why not throw in some “Fast and the Furious” or “Scarface” for good measure?

Reports have surfaced about studio meddling that resulted in a shortened writing period, expensive reshoots and versions of the film edited by a company that makes movie trailers. And it shows. “Suicide Squad” patches together story threads, cinematic styles and even a classic rock soundtrack pulled straight from a Spotify playlist, and it never comes together into something coherent or compelling. Continue reading “Suicide Squad”

Z for Zachariah

Craig Zobel’s follow-up to ‘Compliance’ is an intimate love story set at the end of the world.

Z_for_Zachariah_posterThe indie drama “Z for Zachariah” is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi in name only. Movies such as this year’s “Ex Machina” or the horror film “The Babadook” have played with genre as their setting to tell what is essentially a contemporary story. The scene and the plot are merely set dressing for a bigger parable.

Craig Zobel’s (Compliance) film however maintains such a tenuous relationship to its post-apocalyptic scenario that it’s a wonder he didn’t do away with it entirely. “Z for Zachariah” follows the survivor of a radiation outbreak living peacefully alone in her country farm and how she comes to care and love another survivor who stumbles across her home.

More so than a sci-fi, “Z for Zachariah” is a marital romance, and eventually a love triangle. It deals with questions of intimacy, faith, commitment, trust, personality and habit. None of the preceding has much to do with the act of surviving a nuclear outbreak, but these themes are contained in well-drawn and acted characters and a tender, theatrical scope.

Ann (Margot Robbie) is a country girl living in her secluded slice of the world, a valley that has remained untainted by radiation and the effects that seem to have wiped out humanity. John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is another resourceful survivor who has made his way to the valley, only to fall sick and in need of Ann’s help for survival.

In them we see how tragedy, need and circumstance has brought out their core beliefs. It’s a battle of faith versus science, as Ann falls back on her Christian upbringing to help her sustain, while John is analytical and logical. He devises a plan to bring electricity back to her farm, but only at the expense of tearing down Ann’s cherished chapel.

They grow close and nearly intimate but withhold their temptations. These things need time, and they’ve got nothing but time, John explains. That changes when the drifter-type Caleb (Chris Pine) arrives on their doorstep. He’s a slick country boy with an equal helping of faith that John lacks, and his mere presence consistently makes him an untrustworthy figure driving a stake between Ann and John.

Ejiofor quite often steals the show, paring dialogue down to its quietest and simplest. He just seems profound and shrouded in feeling no matter when he’s speaking, including a bombshell about his past before arriving on the farm. But he even gets the chance to stretch himself, playing broad when initially exposed to radiation and comic when he gets drunk and learns that Ann, “even at the end of the world, ain’t gonna drink no cherry soda.”

Pine too has proven with this film he can act, casting sly glares and piercing glances that keep his character’s intentions ambiguous. As for Robbie, she’s a budding star who earns her keep as a tough, capable farm owner despite how low-key and coy she remains. Ann unfortunately becomes “the woman” and has far less to do once Caleb arrives and turns the romance into a love triangle.

Together the three of them bring unexpected depth to a story that’s as worn and traveled as the man at the end of the world. And yet Zobel can do little more than make his film a travelogue. Shot in New Zealand but done up to look like the American South, “Z for Zachariah” is less an atmospheric story than its plot suggests. The film is intimate enough that it could sub on stage, but it loses some of its cinematic qualities. in the process

Near the film’s ambiguous ending, Caleb expresses a desire to travel further south in search of what word has is a community of survivors, despite the refuge he’s found. Take “Z for Zachariah” out of the apocalypse and you’d have the same movie. That core story is something quaint and special, but there must be something more out there.

3 stars

The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” makes “Spring Breakers” look tame.

Of all the excess bursting from the frame in “The Wolf of Wall Street”, what’s missing is a trip to the normal world. That’s because, who would honestly want to go there? Jordan Belfort certainly doesn’t, but that inability to show the other side of the fence may be part of “Wolf’s” problem.

Martin Scorsese’s film about a real life Wall Street broker who swindled millions from clueless investors in fraudulent stocks and led his firm into a tailspin of sex, drugs and corruption has received a notable amount of criticism; perhaps such a crook doesn’t deserve a wacky, fun biopic based on his life, the critics say.

The question goes, does “The Wolf of Wall Street” glorify the actions of Jordan Belfort? In one way, yes. Jordan’s behavior in the real world is nothing but obscene, and Scorsese gives us three hours to revel in this wild peek behind the curtain.

But in Belfort’s world, this is the norm. The sex romps, the montages and the drug trips all blend together over time, and it provides all the more jolt when in a bizarre twist, something from “fucking Benihana” brings him down.

Scorsese’s film makes “Spring Breakers” look tame in comparison. It languishes on each wild act of depravity and sensationalized moment of mayhem, immersing us in Belfort’s world and his narrative revisionism (“My Ferrari was white, not red,” he barks in narration at the open of the film) without any of the context of the people who aren’t making $49 million a year.

But one wonders what can be gained from a film that shares the same lack of nuances as its perverse characters. Even James Franco’s Alien had some layers to him, but Belfort is all haircut and a sales pitch.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” constantly borders that fine line between exploitation and poignant satire. Like Jordan’s life itself, the movie plays like a mess of outrageous set pieces connected only by their sheer energy. It grasps at the political, psychological and philosophical straws snagged by “Spring Breakers,” “The Bling Ring,” “American Hustle” and even Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” but lacks the specifically distinct aesthetic style all of those films had that would give it an extra kick. Continue reading “The Wolf of Wall Street”