Movie Review of LINCOLN by Howard Casner

Posted: November 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 27 Comments »

The first thing I asked my friends when we left Lincoln, the new bio-pic of our Civil War president, written by Tony Kushner and directed by Steven Spielberg (together again after Munich, like Astaire and Rogers and Bogart and Bacall) is, “Why wasn’t Matthew McConaughey in the film; he’s been in every other movie this year, and every other actor in the world is in up there on the screen, so, what, he’s too good for Spielberg?”  One friend suggested he was actually cast as John Wilkes Booth, but his part got cut.  Another suggested they just couldn’t find a place for him to take off his shirt and bare his rear end.  I don’t know, but I think TMZ should look into it.

 

In the 1930’s through 1950’s, during the height of the studio system, Lincoln is what would have been called a prestige picture, something that places like Warner Bros. and Paramount would produce not to make money, but to convince the public they didn’t just make escapist fare and trash that only appealed to the lowest common denominator (while winning Academy Awards).   A prestige picture was made to earn the respect of the public and the critics (while winning Academy Awards).   They were made so that Darryl F. Zanuck could point to it and say, “See, I do know art when I see it” (while winning Academy Awards).  And if you’ve ever seen The Life of Emile Zola, Wilson, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Judgment at Nuremburg, you know what I’m talking about.  You don’t see this as much from studios anymore, quite possibly because they no longer want your respect, they just want your money.

 

I’m sorry.  I can’t say Lincoln is that good a movie.   It’s often entertaining.  The basic story is quite fascinating and an important piece of history.  The acting is first rate.  But it also has all the faults of a prestige picture, or the three S’s as I call them:  solemn, self important and self aware that it’s good for you, like, you know, castor oil.

 

Tony Kushner’s screenplay is, if truth be told, a disappointment for me and possibly even the chief culprit here.  Kushner is perhaps the greatest U.S. playwright today.  He provided a dark and exciting screenplay for Munich, but this time round the dialog often felt flat, expository and on the nose (and stagy—at one point, Abe and Mary have an over the top argument that is acted and shot in such a way that I expected the act one curtain to descend at any moment).  During the opening scene where Lincoln talks to two black soldiers and then two white soldiers, my heart sank—was it all going to be as clunky as this?

 

Well, no, not quite.  At the same time, there is also some marvelous stuff here, some true wit and fun scenes (especially when Kushner pushes for contemporary parallels like lobbyists or an hysterical scene when Tommy Lee Jones as  Thaddeus Stevens interacts with a Representative who is willing to change parties if it will save his job—sound familiar?).  And there’s a powerful scene when Lincoln, fed up with everyone telling him why they can’t get enough votes to pass Obamacare (oops, sorry, I mean the 13th Amendment), he pounds his desk in fury and tells them to stop excusing themselves, but just get the damn thing passed.  But at the same time, as the story focused more and more on finding the votes for the 13th Amendment, it also became more and more like Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776, but without the songs (and ponytails, as my friend said, to which I said, but with the same bad wigs).

 

It must also be admitted that Steven Spielberg’s direction rarely helps, but only seems to emphasize the artificiality of the proceedings, especially when he does things like have Lincoln roam a battlefield choked with dead bodies and all you think is, “how beautifully it’s all laid out”.   The story also goes a scene too long and undercuts what could have been a more haunting ending.  And the ending that is chosen doesn’t really work.  It’s understandable that Kushner and Spielberg didn’t want to go for the same old, same old, but their choice here probably wasn’t any better.

 

And, yes, in spite of everything that may be wrong here, it’s almost impossible not to get teary eyed when the amendment passes.     And it does make its goal: it has prestige coming out its whazoo.

 

And then there’s the acting.  Daniel Day-Lewis plays Honest Abe and he is quite remarkable, there can be little dispute here.  Tall, gangly and wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders (when he’s not wearing a shawl), he shuffles through the role as if he was to the White House born.  But it must be said that it’s Jones who steals the movie with some of the cleverest line readings of his career (not always easy with the somewhat stilted dialog often provided the actors here).   And other thespians like Sally Field and Joseph Gordon-Levitt more than earn their paycheck.

 

The remainder of the cast tends to hearken back to epics like The Greatest Story Ever Told, where you would go, “That’s Claude Raines, that’s Jose Ferrer, that’s Charlton Heston, that’s Shelly Winters” (well, if you’re my age, you would).  At the same time, it’s a little different here because you’re more likely going, “Hey, it’s that geek from Breaking Bad, it’s that lieutenant from Law & Order, it’s that mobster from Boardwalk Empire, it’s that British guy who hung himself in Mad Men, and who is that soldier in the opening, I know who that is, just give me a sec, OMG, that’s Lukas Haas”.    It’s easy to understand why so many known faces are in this epic.  Like the actors in The Greatest Story Ever Told, they probably thought that if they were in a movie of such religious fervor, it would insure them a place in the afterlife.   Of course, I don’t know what that portends for McConaughey, but not everybody can be one of the chosen, I suppose.

Review of movie HITCHCOCK by Howard Casner

Posted: November 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Hitchcock the movie is something one might describe as having an identity crisis (which might be appropriate considering the subject matter).  It’s a few parts mid-life crisis; a few parts artist at a cross roads; a few parts sexual obsession; a few parts middle aged love story; a few parts homage.  In the end I’m not sure whether it holds together or whether everyone is so brilliant at their jobs, that they cover up the fact that it doesn’t really hold together.  I strongly suspect the latter, but I didn’t really care.  I was too thoroughly entertained to really worry about it.  Whatever else it is, Hitchcock is a ton of fun and I’m not talking about Sir Alfred himself.

 

The basic storyline revolves around the great (in size and stature) director desperate to do something fresh and challenging after the success of the very commercial and lightweight North by Northwest.  So, naturally, when his eyes land on a novel that everyone thinks is pure trash, what can he do but read it.  And it has all the elements he is looking for: serial murders, grave robbing, incest, Oedipus complex, transvestitism, and most important of all…the chance to be the first director to show a toilet in an American film.  And thus Psycho was born.

 

The title role is played by Anthony Hopkins.  Except for the girth, he really doesn’t particularly look like the man himself.  This was apparently a conscious decision.  When he was put in the makeup, the less like Hitchcock he seemed (that’s one of the odd things about art—the more realistic it is, the less realistic it is).  But when Hopkins opens his mouth and that stentorian voice carefully enunciates his lines in lugubrious wave after lugubrious wave, all you can see is Hitch.

 

Hopkins is supported by Queen Elizabeth II as Alma Reville (or Helen Mirren as she is more commonly known).  The rest of the case is basically name that impersonation with the more memorable being James D’Arcy as a slightly more than effeminate Anthony Hopkins and Scarlett Johansson as a perky, hey, look at me, I’m Janet Leigh.  Perhaps most surprising is Jessical Biel doing a very credible job as Vera Miles.  Meanwhile, Toni Collette wears glasses and Kurtwood Smith reprises his role from That 70’s Show by playing the head of the ratings board.

 

The extremely witty script is by John J. McLaughlin.  The extremely witty direction is by Sacha Gervasi (a bit far from Anvil: The Story of Anvil, perhaps—or perhaps not).

Movie Review of SKYFALL by Howard Casner

Posted: November 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

I suppose it’s come to the point where, when talking about a new James Bond movie, one feels compelled to start with rankings.  Well, Skyfall is not as good as Casino Royale, but it’s far better than Quantum of Solace.

 

Now that that’s out of the way, whatever else Skyfall is, it’s very enjoyable and exciting, expertly acted  (with a sharp, little turn at the end by that old curmudgeon Albert Finney) and extremely well made.  You will be more than entertained.  At the same time, I also feel I should start out with a bit of deconstruction; so fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

 

Obama may have been reelected POTUS, but Skyfall is definitely in the Romney camp.  It’s a movie that pits the old white guys against women and minorities.  Yes, I’m prepared for the ridicule and accusations of taking an escapist film a bit too seriously, but there was still for me a slight, uncomfortable tang of misogyny, homophobia and racism simmering somewhere slightly below the surface.  None of it on purpose, I’m sure, but I still maintain that it’s in the air, lingering around like an afterthought of perfume.

 

Skyfall is about a crisis at MI6, which at this point is run by M, played by stalwart Judy Dench.  She is the cold, distant mother who works outside the home and considers her job more important than her children.  In fact, she’s willing to sacrifice them Medea like to achieve her goals.  As a result, one (a tres amusing Javier Bardem, in equally tres amusing blond tresses that first made me think of Donald Trump and then wonder if the carpet matched the drapes) turns out to be gay and can’t handle the situation so he does what all gay men do when their mother turns against them—go mentally unstable and vow revenge (the Norman Bates route), while her other son (Daniel Craig, as stoically handsome and damned sexy as ever), grows up straight to do what every good hetero son does when caught in the same situation, bury his emotions deep within himself until he can’t create a meaningful relationship with anyone of the female persuasion (or as he’s more commonly known, James Bond).

 

Now the old white guys want to take MI6 back.  And M can find little support.  Even the token female on the inquiry board into M’s performance is a bitch and is more unforgiving of M than the men, with M’s only support coming from a condescending old white guy (Ralph Feinnes, not given a lot to do emotionally except for one scene where he finds himself rising to the occasion of a gun battle; but hey, it’s a paycheck).  But will the OWG’s win?  That’s the real question—not whether Craig will defeat Bardem, a conflict which is only there to distract the audience from the real apocalyptic issues facing the survival of the nation.

 

Okay, now that I’ve had my fun and left all my friends rolling their eyes at me, I do reiterate that Skyfall is enjoyable and exciting.  Sam Mendes, perhaps a long ways from American Beauty here, does a very commendable job as director, keeping all the various elements together, by hook and by crook if he has to.  The film opens with a riveting chase and fight scene choreographed to within an inch of Bob Fosse’s life, followed by a title sequence that would put Saul Bass to shame.

 

After this, though it never gets boring, the story does slow a bit.  This is mainly for two reasons.  The first is that the writers, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, keep bringing up some claptrap about the real crisis at MI6 being that the intelligence agency is stuck in the past and that the old must make way for the new (these scenes always felt forced and were never that convincing, especially since one can hardly imagine a more up to date and with the times organization than the computerized MI6 presented here).

 

And this emphasis seems a bit misplaced.  Much more interesting are the psychological make ups of Bardem and Craig’s characters, each of them given a traumatic past that is suppose to have made them what they are today.  But so little time is devoted to these much more complex aspects of the story, that these through lines don’t really have the emotional resonance one wished they would have had.

 

The second reason for a slight tediousness here is that the story, at least at the beginning, feels a bit made up as it goes along.  The action sequences and look of the film tend to overpower character and clarity of plot, so that even if the set pieces are pretty neat, a little energy seeps out when one scene doesn’t clearly lead to the other.  In fact, one almost gets the idea that the writers were given a group of locations (wonderful, amazing, startling to the eye and other senses locations—a skyscraper overpowered by electronic billboards; an isolated pagoda styled casino that feels like it’s floating in air and is lit by a million candles; an abandoned building on a deserted island with an Ozymandias statue in its courtyard; Winston Churchill’s bunker sans cigars), and told to create a story around it.   One has to give them credit for doing as well as they did (though one could wish for a bit more wit) and as the story goes along and once Bardem’s fey villain is introduced, the story gets tighter and tighter and marking time is replaced by true excitement.

 

The ending is a bit of a mixed message.  The old ways of hunting rifles and primitive knives win the day over the more modern weaponry of hand grenades and choppers (both of the flying and shooting kind).   But the symbol of Britain’s past, a huge, decaying monstrosity of a mansion in the middle of nowhere (or the English countryside as it’s more commonly known), is reduced to rubble.   So out with the old and in with the…old?

 

Because the final scenes say it all.  The gay man dies; the women are removed from their places of greatest skill (an expert female marksman is reduced to being a, wait for it…secretary—but, hey, even if she can’t type, at least she has a great figure for the men to ogle over); all racial minorities have been put in their place; and a typical father figure, as reserved, white and straight as 007 himself, takes over…all as the Founding Fathers intended, if the Founding Fathers had founded England, which they didn’t, but the principle’s the same.

 

Let the eye rolling commence.

Movie Review of CLOUD ATLAS by Howard Casner

Posted: November 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Cloud Atlas the movie stars Frank Griebe and John Toll as the Cinematographers; Huge Bateup and Uli Hanisch as the Production Designers; Rebecca Alleway and Peter Walpole as the Set Designers; Kym Barett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud as the Costume Designers; and a cast of thousands when it comes to Makeup and Art Direction.  There are also some actors involved, but they’re all pretty much chopped liver by the time the credits roll.

 

The movie, for those not on twitter and facebook, contains six story lines set in six different periods of time, including the future as well as the future future.  The basic themes seem to be that we’re all connected; everything that happens is cause and effect; and that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Kansas can cause a tsunami in Japan.  Except it’s not really.

 

In fact, as the movie jumps from time period to time period and story to story (as a friend of a friend said, it’s the perfect movie for those with ADD), no one character or event in one time period has any affect on any character or event in another time period.   Or if they did, the writers (those V for Vendetta/Matrix welding Wachowski siblings, Lana and Andy, as well as Tom, Run Lola Run, Twyker, all of whom also directed) did a very good job of keeping it to themselves.   True, there are overlaps.  A book from one period, letters from another, a piece of middle brow music that people go gaga over for some unclear reason, all end up in another era.  But that’s not a connection.  That’s a coincidence.  And of the extremely forced variety.   Coincidence and connection are not the same thing, no matter how much new age mumbo jumbo you want to throw at it.  Or if it is, the filmmakers have a totally different understanding of butterflies and tsunamis that I do (which is more than quite possible).

 

In the end, there’s only one reason to have made this movie and that is the opportunity to do a tour de force thingy by creating six difference films in six different styles (Bladerunner, Brideshead Revisited/Merchant-Ivory, a 1970’s crime drama cum social ills action movie, etc.), all using the same set of actors.  And if the filmmakers had pulled that off, what an amazing film it would have been.

 

But alas, the only section that really hits its mark is the Bladerunner type story about replicants in a futuristic New Seoul.  This story has the best acting (Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae in the leads); it hits its emotional mark of doomed lovers on the run (a 22nd Century take on They Live By Night); and the visual aspects of this section meld well and don’t overpower the human (well, replicant, but let’s not be petty) element.  For the other sections, the filmmakers can’t seem to get the styles or rhythms quite right with the story set further in the future almost impossible to follow.

 

And then there’s the acting.  The biggest names are Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon and Hallie Berry.  Sarandon isn’t given much to do.  Hallie Berry comes across well enough, especially in the 1970’s action film; all in all, her roles don’t require a great range (and there seem to be little difference in her ambitious investigative reporter and futuristic alien).  But (to paraphrase Pauline Kael in talking about Norma Shearer) oh, that Hanks.  Perhaps because he is so recognizable no matter what thickness of make up and prosthetics are slathered on, he felt the need to overplay every role to really remind people that he really isn’t who you think he is—but the further he tried to get away from himself, the closer he got.

 

The best performers come from the younger generation, like Sturgess and Bae as well as Ben Whishaw, the perpetually pouting English actor with the big hair.  They seem a bit more comfortable playing their wide range of roles (though the make up for Bae lets her down in the anti-slavery tract section).  And Hugo Weaving is a hoot in his Nurse Diesel/Ratchett turn, this time named Nurse Noakes.

 

In the end, Cloud Atlas is ambitious and often overpowering to look at.  But in execution, to be cruel and ruthlessly honest, it comes across more as the perfect choice for bad movie night where everyone can yell out comments as the scenes go by.  One suggestion: in the 1970’s film, when Hanks, coiffed in the typical top and sideburns of the day, and Berry go outside and Berry asks if it’s okay to smoke and Hanks says, I’m cool—yell out, not with that hairstyle, you’re not.

Movie Review of LAURENCE ANYWAYS by Howard Casner

Posted: November 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Near the beginning of the movie Laurence Anyways, the central character (appropriately enough called Laurence; isn’t it nice when that happens) who teaches literature, tells his students, to paraphrase, that Proust writes very long books in which almost nothing happens (which actually is very true), but that Proust’s prose covers up this fact (which actually is just as very true).  I think that something like this could also be said of Laurence Anyways, but not quite to the same success as A Remembrance of Things Past, I’m afraid.

 

Laurence Anyways is a visual stunner.  Exploding with pop colors reminiscent of the Crayola crayon mod world of the early sixties; sets crammed with hip, post modern retro furniture and props; and characters often stuffed into costumes of the over the top variety (though the Joan Crawford shoulders Laurence displays at the beginning and end may be a bit much even for being a bit much).  It’s all topped off with a camera style that jerks around in that roller coaster approach so popular now, often filming actors from behind, or blocked by something, or their faces partially cut off.  It’s like Frederico Fellinni at times (especially in a group of somewhat outrageous women who befriend Laurence), but without the badly dubbed sound.

 

The movie is directed by that French Canadian cinematic Doogie Houser, Xavier Dolan, whose first film, I Killed My mother, a somewhat autobiographical story about a boy and his mom (but quite different than Psycho, believe me), was a riveting coming of age story.  It’s only real fault was that Dolan was still in his nappies (well, a mere 18 years old) when he made it.  Talk about rubbing it in.

 

He next made Heartbeats, which was again a visual feast, but the story was a tad underwhelming.  It concerned a gay man and his bestest female friend who are both attracted to the same man, but don’t know if he’s homo or hetero.  If the plot sounds a bit familiar, that’s because the TV show Will & Grace had a similar story line.  The difference is that those two resolved the conflict in fifteen minutes.  Dolan took more than an hour and a half with a plot that never quite convinced.  Now with the addition of his new movie, I feel that, at least for me, Dolan is fast becoming more like Tim Burton, James Cameron and Terry Gilliam.   Their movies are ravishing to look at, even brilliantly directed perhaps, but a bit more than weak in the writing department.

 

I have two issues with the plot and structure of Dolan’s film.  The basic premise is that Laurence (pursed lip Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clement–Fred is female, which I assume is supposed to be ironic) are deeply in love.  Then Laurence lobs the grenade: he’s actually a woman in a man’s body.

 

At this point, the focus of the story gets more and more wobbly as it can’t seem to settle on what it wants to be about.  Is it driven by the difficulties a person in Laurence’s situation goes through and the conflicts that come up in his life because of it, as more than half of the story seems to be?  Or is it driven by the plotline of a man and a woman deeply in love, but due to circumstances somewhat beyond their control, will always be some sort of metaphorical ships in the night and never end up together as the finale and the rest of the film suggests?

 

Because of this uncertainty, the movie feels like it’s constantly bouncing back and forth between these two ideas until it seriously flounders for energy in the second half.   At that point, to be honest, I was just waiting for it to be over.

 

Connected to this is that when it comes to the idea of whether love will conquer all and whether these two people will manage to work past their differences and create a life with each other, there is no suspense.  Their love is doomed.  Dooooooooomed.  And for a very obvious and simple reason: Fred cannot make herself into a lesbian.  Laurence can make himself into a woman because that’s what he’s always been.  He’s not changing, he’s becoming his true self.  But Fred can’t will herself to be attracted to someone of the same sex.  It just doesn’t work that way no matter how many tantrums Laurence throws in order to get Fred to.

 

But there is perhaps an even more serious issue that overshadows those aforementioned.  Have you ever been in a coffee shop or restaurant and there’s a couple near by who are just a little too loud, a little too boisterous?  They think they’re the most interesting people in the world whereas you, and everybody else in the place, would just wish they’d shut up?  That’s what Laurence and Fred are like to me.  In fact, when Laurence said he was going to become a woman, all I could think was, well, it’s a better choice than the drama queen you are now.

 

So not only is the relationship of these two somewhat immature people doomed from the start, I found I didn’t like them or find them interesting enough to want them to end up together.  In the end, the only actor who really makes her mark is Nathalie Baye, the wonderful French actress who plays Laurence’s long suffering mother.  Her quite approach to interpreting her character is a welcome relief from all the self-centered chaos Laurence brings with him.

Movie Review of THE HUNT by Howard Casner

Posted: November 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 1,889 Comments »

I can’t really say that The Hunt, the new Danish movie about a man accused of pedophilia that was not that country’s foreign language film entry in the Oscar race (that went to A Royal Affair), is particularly ambitious.  It doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre of films about child molesting except perhaps make you realize how really sad it is that enough movies have been made about the subject that we can actually give it its own genre and that we can actually now say that a film brings nothing new to the topic that myriads of other films haven’t already.

 

At the same time, it definitely gets the job done and is never boring.  There are also some jarringly effective scenes of violence (a son defending his father; a confrontation at a grocery store; a painful interaction at Christmas Eve mass—we may think that Europe is fully secularized, but the more one sees movies and TV shows from over there, the more one realizes how important religion still is).   And an unnerving, in a way, conclusion that dramatizes how easily one can forget all the atrocities that a group of people have rendered unto you; the ending seems to suggest that time heals everything (well, for almost everybody) and that one can become friends again quite easily with people who have betrayed you as if nothing had ever happened (is that a happy ending or an unhappy one, I’m not quite sure).

 

But the movie also has one other thing going for it.  The lead is played by Mads Mikkelson, the alliterative leading man who is fast becoming an international star (he was La Chiffre in Casino Royale and also stars in A Royal Affair—you’d think he’d learn to share, by now).  I  don’t know what it is about him.  He’s not traditionally handsome.  His cheekbones are impossibly high and he has a perpetual look of Garboisc sadness with eyes that always seem to be watering in that Katherine Hepburn post Summertime way.  But still, he’s attractive and intriguing.  He’s Humphrey Bogart with lighter hair.   He’s also talented, which never hurts.

 

In The Hunt he plays Lucas, a kindergarten teacher.  His best friend’s daughter, also one of his students, makes a sexually suggestive comment about him in a fit of pique.  The accusation isn’t true. It’s a little unclear that she fully understands what she said.  But it’s too late.  Even when she tries to take it back, no one will let her.  And Lucas’ life quickly gets sucked into a dark hole.  And Mikkelson makes the most of the role winning the best actor award at Cannes.

 

The movie was written by Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm with Vinterberg also directing. Vinterberg first burst onto the international scene with his explosive Dogma film Festen (The Celebration), a triumph that may turn out to be one of the most important films of the 1990’s due to Vinterberg’s groundbreaking use of digital filmmaking that is today being integrated into almost every area of the industry.    His movies continued exploring the darker side of Danish life.  In 2010, he and Lindholm also collaborated on the movie Submarino (no, it has nothing to do Marvel DC comics), a stark study of two brothers psychologically damaged and estranged over an incident that happened when they were little and who now reunite for their mother’s funeral.  I don’t know what it is about Scandinavian film.  Denmark is supposed to be the happiest country on earth, but you’d never know it from the movies they make.

 

As effective as The Hunt is, it also feels a bit like Vinterberg is marking time.  As was said, he doesn’t really bring anything new to the subject and thus the movie ends up being more of a first rate vehicle to show off Mikkelson’s talents.   If you want to see a really devastating film about a man falsely accused of molesting children, see Guilty, the true story of a man and his wife arrested for being part of a child slave ring.  Lucas’s ordeal was spring break in Cancun in comparison to the hero of Guilty. But until then, The Hunt will more than do.

Movie Review of KON-TIKI by Howard Casner

Posted: November 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | 320 Comments »

Kon-Tiki, the new fictionalized version of Thor Heyerdahl’s legendary jaunt across the Pacific, is a stunningly beautiful movie to watch (cinematography by Geir Hartly Andreassen), and not just the astonishing shots of Heyerdahl’s raft at sea that feel straight out of a National Geographic special.  In the early scenes of Heyerdahl alone and overwhelmed by New York City, Andreassen films the place as a series of Edward Hopper paintings, a somewhat stylized view of the lonely Big Apple of the time.

 

But when it comes to the rest of the movie, well, it’s somewhat more of a mixed bag.  The dialog, especially at the beginning, is at times clunky and expository, and the characters are sufficient unto the story, but not to much else.  Pal Sverre Vlaheim Hagen, who plays Heyerdahl, is appropriately blond and Nordic and does what he does with the role.  To its credit, the screenplay, by Petter Skavlan (with Allan Scott as script consultant), does do something interesting here by suggesting quite often that Heyerdahl is more interested in glory and fame than in making an important anthropological discovery.   It not just makes him less sympathetic, but downright selfish and self-centered, which is an intriguing approach to take for a national hero.  And in the end, Heyerdahl does get his glory.  But he also gets a Dear John letter.  You don’t feel sorry for him.  You can’t.  He built his raft, as they say, and he had to sail on it.

 

But then there’s that second act.  That’s always the difficulty in movies like this in which the outcome is known (spoiler alert, they make it).  How do you create suspense in a movie that is inherently suspenseless?   But here the story gets a lot of help from the directors, Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, as well as the writers.  Wisely playing down character arcs and personal conflicts and interactions (which, with rare exceptions, usually stop movies like this dead), the directors and writers instead startle us with breathtaking scenes of a shark attack; a hauntingly graceful whale shark; iridescent fish; and a pod of whales leisurely swimming by, all of it topped off by that standard of standards, a terrifying storm.  Whatever else it is, Kon-Tiki is an entertaining adventure story that will probably not disappoint.

 

However, there is one question I’ve always wondered about when it comes to Kon-Tiki.  The premise is that years ago, natives of Peru sailed their way to Polynesia.  Heyerdahl proved it could be done.  But as far as I can tell, he’s never answered “why” they did it.   Columbus was searching for India, but what in the world were the Peruvians thinking?

 

Note: Kon-Tiki is the Norwegian entry in the foreign language film category at the 2013 Oscars

Movie Review of QUARTET by Howard Casner

Posted: November 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

One of the things I couldn’t stop thinking about while watching Dustin Hoffman’s (yeah, verily I say unto thee, that Dustin Hoffman) directorial debut Quartet, is that in England, when actors get older, they’re given showcases like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet, or are made head of MI6, but in the U.S., the women either retire or go to TV and the men are stuck with vehicles like The Bucket List and Little Fockers (I’m not sure which is worse, but I guess I’d rather be working than not).

 

Quartet is a depressingly uplifting feel good movie about a group of senior citizens who reside at a home (well, actually a magnificent mansion) for musicians and singers (especially, but not exclusively, of the classical variety).  The premise of the film, if one wants to even call it that, is that the home is having serious financial difficulties, and if they don’t raise enough money at an annual benefit, they may have to close.

 

The screenwriter here, Ronald Harwood, whose written some interesting scripts in the past (The Pianist, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and some not so interesting ones (Australia), has fashioned a trifle of a film here (he wrote it as a vehicle for Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney, who both received Oscar noms for Harwood’s The Dresser, but Finney become ill and Billy Connolly took over his part).  There’s nothing much to the plot.  It’s almost insulting in a way.  Age old conflicts that are spoken of in terms of life and death are resolved in a matter of minutes.  And the central premise of the film, that of the home closing, never seriously drives the story and almost feels like an afterthought.  In fact, when the benefit is held, it’s sold out, but with such a small audience, no one will ever be able to convince me that the box office sales (even at Covent Garden prices, as Michael Gambon’s Elizabeth Taylor-caftan wearing drama queen director of the show claims they can charge) would remotely cover the electric bill for one month, let alone keep the whole place going for a year.

 

But if Quartet is a soufflé, light and airy, that comes dangerously close to falling, it never does.  The movie may be a trifle, but the acting isn’t.  This is a wonderful collection of old (both literally and figuratively) pros like the aforementioned Gambon, as well as Maggie Smith, the diva (okay, type casting); Tom Courtenay (the stoic); and Connelly (the satyr).  All are expert, but most delightful has to be Pauline Collins, as the hysterical and heartbreaking ditzy life force who is starting to demonstrate the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and steals every scene she’s in.

 

Hoffman uses all his experience as an actor to grand effect.  He knows better than to get in anybody’s way and that his chief responsibility is to make sure the actors get to do what they do best—act.   Based on the resulting film, it was a very wise choice.

PART II: Movie Reviews of Berberian Sound Studios, Our Children and Barbara by Howard Casner

Posted: November 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 176 Comments »

In the wonderful gangster film A Prophet, Niels Arestrup and Tahir Rahim played ersatz father and son.  In the Belgium film Our Children, the two are together again to play…ersatz father and son.  All right.  It may not have the same ring to it of Hepburn and Tracy, but the two are wonderful together and perhaps the main reason to see this domestic drama that, like Berberian…, starts out very intriguingly, but soon enough stops going anywhere and stagnates about half way through.

 

The movie is really more about Murielle (played by Emilie Dequenne, the wonderful actress of The Girl on the Train and Rosetta), who marries Mounir (Rahim).  Mounir is Moroccan and was adopted by Andre (Arestrup) after Andre married Mounir’s older sister so she could get her papers.  However, Mounir is not marrying Murielle for citizenship; he truly does love her.

 

But this is where things start taking an odd turn as it slowly becomes clear that, also like Berberian…,  something is off here.  First, Mounir asks Andre to come on their honeymoon.  At the wedding, Mounir’s younger brother suggests something’s going on between Mounir and Andre.  Murielle and Mounir live in Andre’s spacious apartment/doctor’s office and Andre pays all the bills while Mounir works as his receptionist.  When Murielle suggests that she and Mounir move to Morocco where the standard of living is cheaper, Andre says that if Mounir does, he will never have anything to do with him again.

 

But what exactly is going on behind all this in your face subtext?  One keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never does.  So was there something really going on or are the writers (Thomas Bidegain, Joachim Lafosse, and Mattieu Reynaert) and the director (Lafosse again) just misleading us for some reason?  Well, Lafosse only knows and he ain’t telling.  And Murielle does the same thing, or actually doesn’t do the same thing, as Gilderoy in Berberian…: she never asks.  She never asks what most people would ask somewhere along the way: just why is Andre so generous and paying for everything and just what is he getting out of this odd situation?

 

As the story goes on and Murielle has four children, she becomes increasingly stressed out and depressed.  And then she does the unthinkable.  But why?  I really couldn’t tell you except that she was depressed, but I’m sorry, I just didn’t buy it.  And though I did empathize with Murielle and her situation, it’s almost impossible to pull off a Medea.  But at least Media had a clear and understandable motive—revenge.  Murielle reasons seem a bit too vague and confusing.  So, for me, it doesn’t really have the emotional impact the movie is aiming for.

 

Though I think Arestrop and Rahim give the best performances, it’s Dequenne who won at Cannes (in the Un Certain Regard section).  And maybe they’re right in a way.  Murielle’s character made no real sense to me and I felt there was no character for her to play, but in spite of this, she does succeed in giving a first rate performance—from my perspective a triumph of talent over substance.

 

Finally, Barbara is Christian (Yella and Jerichow) Petzold’s new directorial effort.  It stars his usual leading lady, Nina Hoss, both of whom are becoming two of Germany’s most exciting emerging talents.

 

The story takes place in 1980 East Germany, still under Communist rule.  Barbara is a doctor who has just been released from prison for some unspecified crime against the state.  She is sent to a small town where she is to perform her duties at a local hospital while being heavily watched by the authorities.  At the same time, she is planning to escape the country with the help of her West German lover, that is until her plans are complicated by her becoming emotionally involved in some local issues at her place of employment (don’t you hate when that happens?).

 

Barbara is quite effective in the first half.  There is a wonderful feel of time and place, the very atmosphere tinged with a feeling of despair and sadness best symbolized by her riding a bike past a lonely cross in the middle of nowhere while the strong wind bellows around her; even when she’s in open country and can see for miles, she’s still afraid that somehow, some way, someone is watching her.  The details of everyday life in East Germany are convincingly dramatized (having to be careful what you say and where you say it because you don’t know who will report you and who won’t).  And there are deeply moving scenes of a young pregnant woman being forced into a work camp (called a death camp by Barbara) and the unclear diagnosis of young man who has tried to commit suicide.

 

Foss is excellent in the title roll, a character who has to be very careful about sharing her emotions.  As an actress, she has some of the same qualities of Greta Garbo, a haunting beauty who was also very reserved in her emotions so that when she laughed, as Barbara does occasionally, it lights up the scene.  But the writers, Harun Farocki and Petzold, do her a bit of a disservice.  As the movie goes on, it tends to lose its way mainly because Barabara is given two competing motivations for her actions, while also not given enough time or the structure to develop either one for their maximum emotional impact.  Instead, the closer one gets to the end, the more muddled everything becomes until the plot loses all forward momentum and the ending feels a bit too anticlimactic.

PART I: Movie Reviews of Berberian Sound Studio, Our Children and Barbara by Howard Casner

Posted: November 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments »

I recently saw three movies, Berberian Sound Studio, Our Children and Barbara, that all had the same issue:  they all started out very compellingly (or had a strong first act as we say in screenwriting patois), but the closer they got to the end, the more they spiraled out of control or simply stopped working.

 

Berberian Sound Studio is a giallo type film about the making of a giallo type film.  It revolves around Gilderoy, a British sound engineer, hired by an Italian producer of questionable taste and morals, to help finish the post production of his latest opus.   Gilderoy is played by Toby Jones and he’s excellent here, playing his victim role as if he were sweating timidity.   His character knows something’s wrong, but is too much of a milquetoast to think the problem lies anywhere but within himself.  In the end, the sheer will of his performance holds the movie together far longer than the writer/director Peter Strickland manages to.

 

Strickland, on his part, starts out on solid ground when the unsteady Gilderoy arrives at the studio to be met by people who switch from good cop to bad cop on a schizophrenic’s notice.  There’s something off here and Strickland is expert at creating a creepy and unpleasant atmosphere where everything makes sense while making no sense whatsoever.   He sets up Gilderoy as a stranger in a strange land and exploits the hell out of it.  And it’s not long before all the ingredients are there for something really horrifying to happen.  But then…almost nothing happens as the movie seems to stop…going…anywhere.

 

The most interesting aspect of the film is actually that movie within the movie, some monstrosity about witches and witchcraft reminiscent of Maria Bava, but which the producer waxes philosophically about and considers a masterpiece on the level of Citizen Kane.  But ironically, what makes this part of the story work so well is that this movie is never shown.  We’re given a great title sequence worthy of Saul Bass, but after that, everything we know about the film is derived by short summaries of scenes here and there; some dialog provided by the actors dubbing the lines; and the ridiculously sickening sounds of women on screen being mercilessly tortured and killed.  It’s both revolting and extremely funny.

 

There’s also something somewhat mesmerizing about the way that sounds are produced via methods that have no bearing on their real life counterpart.  Knives thrust into cantaloupes are people being stabbed Psycho like; a blender is a chainsaw; stems pulled from onions is hair being pulled out; a watermelon being destroyed with the grace of a Gallagher routine are bodies being beaten to pulp (the remains are then eaten afterwards by some of the characters while other bits of food are thrown stew like into a cauldron).  Perhaps most delightful, though, are the two foley artists donning women’s high heels for footsteps and Gilderoy’s boss upset because an actress not only can’t scream convincingly, she also can’t scream in Italian.

 

But this is also where the problems begin.  After awhile, that’s all the movie is, one dubbing session after another, until the whole film starts becoming redundantly…redundant, as if it were a sound engineer who had written the screenplay, thinking that nothing could possibly ever be anywhere near as interesting as what he does for a living.  Every once in awhile, every long once in awhile, every very long once in awhile, something happens, kinda, sorta.  At one point, an actress suggests that Gilderoy think about why, of all people, he was hired for the job.  And if Gilderoy had, then the plot might have gone somewhere.  Instead, Gilderoy’s character becomes more and more timid until he loses all interest and empathy.

 

One person described the movie as a David Lynch like ride.  And he had a point.  In the last third of the film, the movie just spirals out of control as it does in Lynch’s Inland Empire, until nothing makes sense, but in such a way that, as with Inland Empire, one can’t tell if the filmmaker did it on purpose or just didn’t know what to do.

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