Category: Reviews

Safety Not Guaranteed

“WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.”

This real-life classified ad is the setup to the indie comedy “Safety Not Guaranteed,” but the important part is, “This is not a joke.”

The three magazine journalists who decide to report on the man behind this ad aren’t necessarily joking either, but they don’t entirely believe it, and that’s where the movie gets us. Derek Connolly’s screenplay in Colin Trevorrow’s film plays with our expectations by setting up a scenario that can’t and probably shouldn’t be true, and yet one that we kind of root for. Continue reading “Safety Not Guaranteed”

The Amazing Spider-Man

What people really like about Spiderman isn’t the web slinging or the red-blue spandex or the zippy one-liners; its that beneath the mask there is a smart, witty, nerdy, likeable and relatable kid in Peter Parker.

Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire knew that for their 2002 film “Spider-Man,” and Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield seem to know it here for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which is essentially a remake of Raimi’s film. But Garfield’s Peter Parker doesn’t have the boyish charms of Maguire’s, and his mixed persona makes for a film that suffers from its other clichés and hokey gags.

I’m dating myself when I realize that “Spider-Man” is in fact 10 years old, and there are likely a new generation of 12-year-olds who will watch this version and appreciate it just fine. But everyone else may have fatigue at just how familiar this origin reboot is.

Peter Parker is left with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben (Sally Field and Martin Sheen) after his parents are forced to leave in a hurry, never to be seen again. Now as a bright high school teenager, he’s rediscovering his father’s past and tracks down an old colleague, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), who transforms into a monstrous lizard thanks to a genetic algorithm provided by Peter. It’s then Peter’s job to stop him after he’s bitten by a genetically mutated spider that gives him enhanced strength, reflexes and an ability to stick to walls.

What’s tiring is how boilerplate Peter’s backstory is. Of course he has to deal with the obnoxious bully in school, stumble through awkward conversations with the cute Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and rehash the boring pseudo-science that explains his mutation.

And while the original “Spider-Man” is no less guilty of these clichés, Director Marc Webb (“500 Days of Summer”) overdoes it. The high school drama consumes the entire first half of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” and for every visual gag, there’s an added cinematic punch line in case you forgot how to react, be it in a cheerleader’s bubble gum popping over her face or a Coldplay song cueing in to fill the gooey void.

Garfield handles all these moments with a peculiar attitude. On the streets in his costume, he’s notoriously smarmy and glib, and then at home or around his girlfriend, he shuts up into an awkward ball of angst. Garfield emanates so little chemistry with Stone that you wonder why Gwen is so drawn to him.

“The Amazing Spider-Man” also lacks a moment as instantly iconic as Spiderman kissing Mary Jane upside down in the rain, and Webb is not the visual technician that Raimi is, so a few shots from Spidey’s POV as he careens through the air look plain cartoonish.

Maybe it’s the 12-year-old me talking, but I was able to take the original “Spider-Man” somewhat seriously and still realize it was a goofy popcorn movie. It was as if Peter Parker never forgot how dopey he really is just by putting on that mask. “The Amazing Spider-Man” on the other hand is cornball all the time and thinks itself otherwise. It forgets who’s inside that spandex suit.

2.5 stars

Moonrise Kingdom

As “Moonrise Kingdom” begins, a boy is listening to a record of Benjamin Britton classical music compositions intended for children. A high-pitched, nonthreatening kid’s voice interrupts the song to explain the intricate layers of Britton’s piece, and the boy appreciates it all the more.

Wes Anderson’s seventh feature film is much like this record: an art house picture pieced together and slowly revealed to us like an elaborate opera. It has characters, themes and a silly tone that a child could embrace, and yet its presentation has complexity and maturity that may be beyond most adults. In this way, “Moonrise Kingdom” is one of the wackiest, most inventive, and most notably, the most heartfelt film Anderson ever made. Here then is a movie about growing up, independence, living above your age and loving the beauty of the more challenging and sophisticated pleasures of the world.

“Moonrise Kingdom” is the romance fairytale of Sam and Suzy (newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward), two preteens who escape their parental care to elope on a hidden cove on their small island home of New Penzance. Sam is a nerdy orphan, the most unpopular boy amongst his summer camp Khaki Scouts (by a significant margin), and yet a skilled mountaineer and adventurer. Suzy is the oldest child in a dysfunctional family, and she’s at an age where her needs cannot be met by her two unhappy parents. The couple is tracked by the lone island cop Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), Sam’s camp counselor, Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), and Suzy’s two parents, Walt and Laura Bishop (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). Continue reading “Moonrise Kingdom”

Brave

The first big selling point of “Brave” was that it was the first Pixar film to feature a female lead. The second was that it was not “Cars 2.”

But “Brave” is sadly disappointing in both of those respects. It falls short of creating an original and authoritative female character that can go in the canon of Disney Princesses, and it is so madcap and silly that it becomes exhausting.

Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald) is not the only movie princess who has been poised with the task of accepting an arranged marriage. She’s a plucky young tomboy with wild red hair and a sharp eye with her bow and arrow, and yet her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), demands that she become prim and proper such that she can select a husband from the kingdom’s three clans.

All three princes are embarrassing dopes, so Merida defies her mother by besting the three of them at archery and then enlisting the help of a witch to change her mother’s mind about the necessity of marriage. This unfortunately, in the witch’s terms, means transforming Elinor into a bear.

Yes, a bear, and the bear gets awfully tiring when the bear starts doing things a bear cannot do, like pantomime or wear a tiara and clothes. Cartoon bears have been known to do things bears cannot do before, but less so in Pixar films. Usually when Pixar creates a maelstrom of action, they do so with the intent to provide beauty or enlightenment, as in the colorful bits in “Ratatouille” and “WALL-E” or even early on in “Brave” as Merida gallops through the forest doing target practice to the tune of an elegant song by Julie Fowlis.

Rather, much of the action in “Brave” is chaotic and clumsy, such as when a horde of Scottish soldiers chase a shadow through the halls of the castle. It goes on endlessly in the third act, as is customary of most films today for children or otherwise.

Merida is too safe and familiar to spark a revolution for women. The more interesting is Elinor, who is full of resolve and conviction as well as motherly tradition, but she doesn’t get to do much talking when she becomes the aforementioned bear. That silence on her part paves the way for more comic relief bombast from the men, who are all one-dimensional. The King in particular is so cartoonishly massive that it’s impossible to take him seriously.

Granted, “Brave” is plain gorgeous. Pixar has never rendered landscapes this beautiful before, or with as much detail. The detail and realism of Merida’s red curls alone must’ve cost a fortune in CGI development.

But just as pretty is “La Luna,” the Oscar nominated Pixar short just before “Brave,” which gives a lesson of individuality through a lovely and original story about a boy, his father and his grandfather doing an odd job on the moon. It does so without words or action and leaves a warm, gooey feeling that comes as a welcome surprise to the noisy action of “Brave.”

So I guess to use a silly analogy, as Pixar aimed their bow and arrow, they hit the close target with the safe and formulaic film that is “Brave.” They should’ve however shot for the moon.

2 1/2 stars

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

There’s something a little silly about the fact that as all hell is breaking loose just outside your window during the apocalypse, the best thing you can think to do is whisper sweet nothings into the ear of the girl you just met.

This is both the strength and the crutch of “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” essentially just a romantic comedy but with the fortune and misfortune of being set at the end of days.

An asteroid is destined to hit the Earth within weeks, and Dodge’s (Steve Carell) wife literally runs off as soon as the news breaks. He’s left depressed and aimless until he meets Penny (Keira Knightley). The two escape their home during a riot and agree to help each other get to Penny’s family in England and Dodge’s high school sweetheart. Continue reading “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World”

Your Sister’s Sister

Jack, Iris and Hannah are three lonely people spending the weekend in a remote cabin in the woods. But you wouldn’t know how lonely they are because now that they have each other, they really can’t bring themselves to shut up.

“Your Sister’s Sister” is a cozy romantic triangle drama between Jack (Mark Duplass), his best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) and her sister Hannah (Rosemarie Dewitt). Jack has been in a funk for the past year since the death of his brother, who was also once Iris’s boyfriend. She sends Jack to spend time alone in the wilderness, only for him to bump into Hannah. Hannah just broke up with her girlfriend, and with enough tequila shots, flirty compliments, and adventurous encouragements, she’s willing to forget she’s a lesbian for an evening and spend the night with Jack.

Surprise! The next morning, Iris shows up, and while Jack and Hannah try to cover up their dirty deeds, Iris confesses to her sister that she may be in love with Jack.

These are all steamy, awkward conversation topics, but they approach them with nonchalant ease. Jack makes blunt comments about Hannah’s sexy butt, Hannah rudely brings up an embarrassing story about Iris’s bush, and Iris and Jack take turns sarcastically judging each others’ choices in relationships. It’s as if they gloss over serious conversation that might get real or uncomfortable by keeping up the chatter.

It’s so bogged down under their words that the movie forgets that Jack has serious psychological problems in his life and that Hannah may actually be an unstable person. Occasionally the movie name drops Fleet Foxes or “Hotel Rwanda,” but it mostly steers clear of any conversation topic that isn’t relevant to sex.

“Your Sister’s Sister” then is an actor’s movie. It certainly isn’t a visual one, because a majority of the film is seen in extreme close ups during these back and forth conversations. It annoyingly gets us right up into their faces and problems.

But some of it works because the three are all wonderfully convincing as friends and sisters. Iris and Hannah have a mutual understanding of one another that only comes through years of sisterhood, and the quiet moment they share looking at each other under the covers in bed is the movie’s finest.

The big argument near the end gets close to psychotic, and for all the talking that came before, “Your Sister’s Sister” suddenly runs out of important things to say just when things get tense.

2 1/2 stars

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Steven Soderbergh takes the heist movie to the art house with his “Ocean’s Eleven” remake.

 

“Ocean’s Eleven” was when Steven Soderbergh took the art house to the mainstream. It wasn’t Oscar bait like “Traffic” and “Erin Brokovich,” and it wasn’t gritty and experimental like “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” It was just pure Hollywood fun in the biggest way possible, which is probably the reason why most critics were unkind to it. To see such a gigantic studio picture with no lofty ambitions come from an otherwise serious director was like a concert pianist pounding out a little honky-tonk, as Roger Ebert put it in his 2001 review.

But to see how much it gets right, how different it feels and how unique it looks at every moment in comparison to similar Hollywood capers like it is to realize that “Ocean’s Eleven” is a great film after all, and a fun one. Continue reading “Ocean’s Eleven (2001)”

Prometheus

For all of its green computer readouts and drab, ‘70s styling, Ridley Scott’s “Alien” has aged remarkably well. It’s still an absolutely riveting classic because Scott creates such an encompassing feeling of dread in every moment. The movie’s shadows make us afraid not for what we can see but all that we can’t, and even more so for what we can hear.

It’s possible that a horror movie hasn’t been made since that’s quite as good, not because today’s directors are incapable of it but because the kids crave a new kind of queasy spectacle these days.

That’s why my anticipation for “Prometheus” was as high as any movie still to come out this year. To combine the special effects wizardry of the 21st Century with the atmospheric slow burn of one of the greatest horror movies all time would be a marvelous achievement.

To capture that mystique, Scott would have to be ambitious. “Prometheus” then is more than a closed-door horror movie where the characters are picked off one by one. It has lofty aspirations about the questions of life and existence with a glossy sci-fi finish. It’s a breathtaking epic that on a technical level leaves “Alien” in the dust.

And yet in its attempt to get bigger, it actually got smaller. Continue reading “Prometheus”

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Tilda Swinton said in an interview with Roger Ebert that just about every mother at one point has a twisted nightmare that her child will turn out badly. The child will do something horrible someday, and the fear is that she may be responsible.

Does this sound like a horror story? It kind of is, but “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is more than an art house retread of “The Omen.” It’s a psychological examination of a woman whose life has been changed by motherhood and is now alone with her twisted thoughts. Continue reading “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

The White Ribbon

Rebellion can be as large as a barn being set on fire or as small as a toddler pushing a bowl off a dinner table. Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” views rebellion at its conception in a small, rural town in Germany just before the dawn of World War I. His film is a dark parable for how evil can be the precursor to an even greater evil. Sometimes, it’s just human nature.

The slow ripple effects of silent unrest begin to simmer when a doctor (Rainer Bock) riding his horse topples over an unseen wire. It looks to be an accident, and there are no suspects, but this wire did not get there on its own. Nothing this serious or mysterious has ever happened here before, and everyone begins to ask questions. The doctor’s son is the first to learn the blunt truths of life. He asks his sister what “dead” is, and she can’t bring herself to lie that she, his father and he will eventually die. She also confesses their mother didn’t just go on a long trip. When he pushes that bowl off the table, such an act never meant so much.

This is not the only incident. A mother falls through a decrepit roof while on the job, and the family believes that the Baron who runs the town is responsible. One of the sons retaliates by vandalizing the Baron’s (Ulrich Tukur) private harvest of crops, but there’s even more suspicion when the Baron’s son turns up tortured.

This is a patriarchal society, as was common in the early 1910s, and it’s a society of quiet, bleak obedience to elders and to the Lord. Thus everyone is on edge when the town is stricken with equally quiet mysteries.

To keep everyone in line, one father and the town’s Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) ties a white ribbon on his children’s sleeve to remind them to stay pure and good. His guilt and mistrust of his children is worse than any abusive father. There’s one devastating scene in which he punishes his children by paddling them with a cane. It’s not enough that the child’s siblings must watch, but the boy must bring his father his tool of destruction. The moment takes place behind a closed door to us because we must know how confined and repressed this society is.

Many critics have said “The White Ribbon” is a film about the start of fascism, but Haneke is content with the truth that the small acts of rebellion and assertions to authority are the start of something. The Whodunnit is not as intriguing as the slow burn to something bigger.

That’s because Haneke’s film is wonderfully atmospheric It’s been converted to black and white from color film stock, and the effect is starkly monochrome. There is no color in this antiquated society. No one shoots a funeral the way Haneke does here, with the camera as distant and centered as can be to the mourners, and it’s just one of the many stunning landscapes Haneke creates with his camera.

And yet for all its subdued pacing, “The White Ribbon” is a film of immense gravity. The Doctor’s blunt disgust with his mistress is as heartless a thing to say to a woman as anything I’ve ever heard. The Pastor’s constructed judgments about his son’s masturbation is as surprising and tough to hear as any other parental scolding. The standards of this town are grave, and the performances by Bock and Klaussner equal the film’s severity.

“The White Ribbon” won the Palme D’Or at Cannes back in 2009, and now Haneke has done it again with his follow-up film “Amour.” It beat some powerhouse films including “Inglourious Basterds,” “Fish Tank,” A Prophet” and “Gomorrah.” It likely resounded with the Cannes crowd because it connects on a primal level. It’s a dark film with a scary truth, and it’s mesmerizing to watch.