The Way, Way Back

“The Way, Way Back” will work for many as an indie, coming-of-age crowd pleaser, but through its characters and its story, it struggles to find a voice.

There’s a scene in “The Way, Way Back” where Duncan’s mom Pam explains how she was won over by her new boyfriend Trent. “We’re all in this together,” he told her. That’s sweet, but what’s “this” and why exactly are they “in this” at all?

“The Way, Way Back” will work for many as an indie, coming-of-age crowd pleaser, but through its characters and its story, it struggles to find a voice and a purpose to build a film with real heart and depth.

Just why is Duncan (Liam James), the film’s 14-year-old protagonist, an especially mopey teenager? Hunched shoulders and head down at all times, he can barely string a few words together, let alone tell us why he’s so depressed or what he’s like. His interests seem to include REO Speedwagon and playing with sand, but that’s not much to go on.

His real bitterness stems from a dislike of his mom’s (Toni Collette) new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell). Trent has taken them both on a vacation to some undisclosed quaint beach town for apparently the whole summer, and although he’s trying to make this a family, the two don’t seem to get along.

Duncan is however drawn to the lazy, oafish, playboy owner of a waterpark named Owen (Sam Rockwell). Owen offers him a job and takes him under his wing, teaching him Midwestern urban legends and how to not-so-discreetly stare at girls in bikinis. He even gives him helpful prodding to join in a dance battle. Continue reading “The Way, Way Back”

Rapid Response: The Green Mile

I was wondering why I had waited so long to see “The Green Mile,” possibly because it has become TNT fodder, possibly because the critical through-line on it has been that it’s “The Shawshank Redemption” with magic, and possibly because it’s on that list of potentially overhyped IMDB Top 250 movies. But none of those reasons really justify how much I loved it.

Now granted, it has its flaws, but whereas “Shawshank” is a much more hopeful movie about survival and perseverance, “The Green Mile” has a wholesome spirituality that wins you over with its inherent goodness. Ultimately, its characters are flawed and even cruel and sadistic, but only one of whom do we really dislike and feel is in the wrong. Director Frank Darabont’s gift is in making a film that embraces its fantasy head-on to make for a wonderfully moving tearjerker.

I myself did not know about the film’s fantasy element, so I will not spoil it here, but it involves the miracles surrounding a massive death row inmate named John Coffey (the late Michael Clarke Duncan) and the prison’s head guard, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks). The movie approaches the giant that is Coffey with the same trepidation that a person would walk the Green Mile before being executed, so it’s a patient film that takes its time over its three hours and allows us to savor every moment. Coffey’s story is one of deep anguish, and in a way, he’s the real emotional center of the film, not Paul.

Paul’s problem involves dealing with one of his prison guard colleagues, the pestilent and cowardly Percy (Doug Hutchison), who is the mayor’s spoiled nephew and feels entitled to be an arrogant little shit. He just wants to see one of these guys cook up close, and he even wants to know what it is to torture someone in one gruesome death sequence. What I like about Percy’s character, if anything, is that as vicious and awful as he is, he reveals himself as ultimately human, pissing his pants out of terror in one scene and revealing that he’s not entirely one-dimensional. We get a sense that he doesn’t entirely deserve the cruel, ironic fate he receives in the end.

Part of me believes that because Paul and his fellow guards are no saints either. They put Percy and their most difficult inmate, Wild Bill Wharton (Sam Rockwell), through both mental and physical brutality. But these characters’ flawed depth allows Hanks to exhibit deep, everyman pain and guilt as only Hanks can. His final conversation with John puts an insurmountable amount of emotional pressure on him that I hadn’t previously imagined.

Some of the scenes, such as the flashback to John’s murder, the execution scene of Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter), and the present day tags with Paul as an old man, are a bit heavy-handed and even unnecessarily long, but I’ll remember “The Green Mile” for its more serene moments, not its twists. The use of “Cheek to Cheek” in “Top Hat” is an absolutely beautiful capper. Seeing the mouse Mr. Jingles fetch the thread spool is one of those all time great movie moments. And the rest of the movie is not short of miracles, big or small, either.

Seven Psychopaths

“Seven Psychopaths” proves you should never judge a movie by its title. Playwright turned movie director Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges”) starts with the title and knowingly ropes you in to a movie you both did and didn’t expect it to be.

It’s a movie about movies, it’s about writers with writer’s block, it’s about how psychopathic we must be to enjoy a movie about psychopaths, and it’s one of the more twistedly clever movies of the year.

Colin Farrell as Marty is not one of the movie’s seven psychopaths, but he must be crazy to think he can get any work done on a screenplay when he’s an alcoholic writer and Irishman. All he has so far is the title, “Seven Psychopaths,” which is good enough for everyone, because a title like that should write itself. But he doesn’t know who the psychopaths are, and he doesn’t want them to be violent or the movie to be a mindless bloodbath. One of them, he thinks, could be a Buddhist.

But this isn’t good enough for Billy (Sam Rockwell), a crook who kidnaps dogs and returns them for reward money along with his partner Hans (Christopher Walken). Billy suggests one of the psychopaths could be based on a local serial killer called the Jack of Diamonds, who goes around killing members of crime syndicates. All the plots inevitably intertwine when Billy kidnaps crime boss Charlie’s (Woody Harrelson) shih tzu puppy and he comes looking for them.

The twist of “Seven Psychopaths” however is that this is the set up. The title itself is a ploy. Suddenly on the run, Marty wonders that if this were the story of his movie, what if the second half was just three guys sitting in the desert and talking? The movie calls attention to itself in the biggest way possible. It’s writing the movie as it goes, recognizing the over-stylized shootout isn’t as fun or as funny as it seems, showing the seams of its plot and acknowledging that even a sincere attempt at life lessons can be phony.

It’s not quite “Pulp Fiction” because it has its own set of rules instead of none at all. It’s not quite “Snatch” because it’s smarter than that and only uses the movie’s ideas as a template for parody. And it’s not quite “Adaptation” because at the end of the day this is still a screwball, blood-drenched mob comedy.

“Seven Psychopaths” is its own movie. It’s got layers, as it says. It’s a movie inside itself that doesn’t play out in ways you would expect, but then does on a technicality.

At its core, the film works because McDonagh’s dialogue isn’t funny just because it’s self-aware, and it doesn’t waste the talent on screen just to make a point about movies like this. Woody Harrelson is probably best, using obscenely large guns and other props like a wheelchair to always teeter on comedic and menacing and make his own legacy as an iconic and memorable movie villain.

And McDonagh isn’t just a stylistic copycat. He backs away from most of the pop culture references and focuses carefully on the proper aesthetic of the action comedy dream sequence and how he can tweak it. Take note of the maudlin score and storybook monologue during a montage telling the story of Zacharia (Tom Waits), another serial killer specializing in killing serial killers who acted with a Bonnie Parker partner in crime and fell in love.

The question is whether or not “Seven Psychopaths” earns its stripes. The movie is so self-aware that it even calls itself out on its own trap. These characters can’t necessarily be liked, the movie really can only end one way and the insights really can only be skin deep. If “Seven Psychopaths” is a movie within a movie, it seems to say how you couldn’t possibly enjoy a movie like this as you’re watching it.

3 stars

Iron Man 2

If “Entourage” were a superhero movie, it would be this one. “Iron Man 2” loves knowing that it has a cocky, self-centered character everyone loves and an actor that is not only convincing at playing it but whom everyone loves even more. It hypes up the pretty boy lifestyle to the point of being silly and on the verge of absurdity.

If everyone loved the original “Iron Man” because the Tony Stark secret identity was not a cookie cutter hero, dweeb or lone wolf, then reasonably no one should be amused by Robert Downey Jr.’s now extreme version of a cookie cutter narcissist. But maybe like many episodes of “Entourage,” it’s hard not to be amused. I found it odd how little Stark was impressed by his own ability to discover and create a brand new element in the short time frame of one montage. I wondered why he didn’t blink at the thought of drinking coffee in a diner with an eye patch wearing Samuel L. Jackson as he sat in full Iron Man uniform. I can’t say any of it was out of character, and I can’t say it was an inappropriate direction in terms of entertainment value. Continue reading “Iron Man 2”