Film Review

Savages: An amusing spectacle with a boring lead actor

Guest — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:10:29 +0000

Guest (not verified) Tue, 07/10/2012 - 9:10am

Blake Lively, center, is not the strong female lead you want her to be.

Photo courtesy of Universal Studios

Under the looming threat of decapitation by a drug cartel with power and influence compared to that of Wal-Mart’s, O (Blake Lively – Gossip Girl, Green Lantern) decides to go to the mall.

This scene sums up neatly what director Oliver Stone’s (Platoon, Born on Fourth of July) new film, Savages, is about. The film seems to be a commentary on the dangers of getting mixed up in drug trafficking, a glorification of living in excess and an unconventional 21st century love story. All of this is diminished slightly by the movie’s central character, O (short for Ophelia, but she goes by O). It is hard to solely blame Lively for this. O is not only the least compelling of all the characters, but also a slap in the face to viewers anticipating a strong, female lead.

The film revolves around Lively and her two lovers, Chon (Taylor Kitsch – Battleship, John Carter) and Ben (Aaron Johnson – Kick-Ass). Kitsch and Johnson run an independent marijuana growing businesses and have achieved international fame for their exceptionally potent weed.

Johnson is peaceful, spends time helping starving kids in Africa, and Lively claims he “takes 99 percent of the violence out of the business.” (Note: a drug dealer with dreadlocks? How very non-stereotypical!).

In contrast, Kitsch is a former Navy Seal whom Lively claims takes care of “the other one percent.” (Note: An overly aggressive former soldier with a crew cut and an angry streak? How very non-stereotypical!). Lively is in a relationship with both men, which she points out is totally not weird at all.

The aforementioned drug cartel , led by Elena La Reina (Salma Hayek – Frida), seeks revenge on Ben and Chon after the duo refuses their offer to be assimilated into their drug cartel and begin growing weed for them. When threat of decapitation doesn’t work, Hayek holds Lively hostage. Naturally Ben and Chon are out to do whatever they can to get her back.

At the beginning of the movie we have Lively’s perfume ad style narration where she tells the audience that she might not be alive at the end of the movie. It’s not hard to imagine her dying though, especially since she went shopping after her lovers told her they could be killed if they don’t flee the country.

Everything from then on is a mad rush of violence, gore and sensationalism. The absurd measures the two men go are objectively ridiculous but definitely not boring. It’s easy to get lost in the fast pace of the film until you realize what they are fighting for – O. Again and again, she proves herself to be a flat character with the most uninteresting background of everyone involved.

Hayak eats up Lively in this film. Her Elena character has such great complexities – a widowed drug cartel leader who struggles to connect with her teenage daughter, despite various attempts. Hayak proves to be menacing but oddly likeable throughout the film, which is more than could be said for Lively. In the scenes the two women share together, Lively is completely lost.

The problem is that the audience has no reason to care about O. Her pseudo-philosophical narration (“I had orgasms, he had war-gasms”) comes across less as Sylvia Plath and more so a caricature of the “Annoying Facebook Girl” Internet meme. She gets what she wants and she whines. The only bitter part of her past the audience learns about is that her mother remarried and that was bad for some reason.. Lively’s character is more of a spoiled, oblivious southern California cliché than a compelling, strong, female lead.

While much of the movie glamourizes the profitable drug dealing lifestyle, Stone makes sure to highlight consequences of every action by characters in the film. If a main character kills someone for a “just cause,” there will be direct repercussions later on. This is Stone’s best achievement in the film. In a movie where all of the characters are breaking some sort of law, it’s hard to root for the “good guys” to get away with what they’re doing.

The bright colors and overexposed film technique keeps the film feeling exciting, even in scenes not involving shoot outs. The Dia de los Muertos imagery is apparent throughout the movie with the colors and various skull designs. While this works exceptionally well, Stone sometimes takes it over the edge by putting in distracting graphics that harken to Fight Club, but without the right aesthetic and taste.

A fair warning: the gore in this movie is on par with any Quentin Tarantino movie, or even The Passion of the Christ for that matter. Squeamish audiences won’t enjoy this one – the viewers are not spared from seeing exactly what happens when someone gets shot in the leg or whipped in the face.

Lively’s bland performance aside, Savages is an amusing spectacle that tries a bit too hard at times. For a film centered on weed, this movie really could stand to chill out a bit.

All of Seattle and Washington

Ballard News Tribune

The Amazing Spider-Man: a reboot that 'sticks'

Guest — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 14:15:42 +0000

Guest (not verified) Tue, 07/03/2012 - 7:15am

Andrew Garfield swings in as the new Spider-Man

Courtesy of Sony Entertainment

A mutant-spider-bitten-teenager chasing a giant lizard-man through the sewers of New York may not sound like a synopsis for an artistic or thought provoking plot. But The Amazing Spider-Man manages to make it work, coming across more as a profile of a tortured teenage soul coming to terms with over the top responsibilities

Whereas Spider-Man 3 ended with Toby McGuire playing an “emo” Peter Parker, The Amazing Spider-Man continues with cultural relevancy with Andrew Garfield’s (The Social Network) portrayal of Parker as a misunderstood, slightly arrogant but nerdy hipster. Seattle is set to eat this movie up.

For those unfamiliar, The Amazing Spider-Man is a retelling of the Spider-Man origin story. Comic book fans will note that the original trilogy was based off of the “Ultimate Spider-Man” series while the current adaptation is based off of the original “Amazing Spider-Man” series. And yes, it does make a difference.

The most notable differences include a different love interest (this time Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone), a plot delving into Parker’s parents backstory and mechanical web shooters.

There have been two routes in recent years that successful comic book movies take. Either they embrace the campy comic-book aesthetic (The Avengers) or take a darker, more realistic approach (The Dark Knight trilogy). The Amazing Spider-Man attempts to find a middle ground between the two with surprisingly positive results.

McGuire’s portrayal of Spider-Man in the first trilogy was done pretty well, but Garfield’s interpretation surpasses McGuire. It’s much like comparing Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman to Heath Ledger’s in The Dark Knight. Both are good, but one is just superior.

Garfield is able to convince the audience that Parker is an awkward teenager. He mumbles his words, acts painfully awkward around girls, but can also be an arrogant know-it-all – especially when he puts on the Spider-Man suit.

Stone finds a steady pace with Stacey’s inquisitive and bold nature while also still portraying her as a normal teenager amidst big issues. Like, you know, a giant lizard-man. Stacey’s father, played by Denis Leary, does not have to stretch far to fit the role of the harsh and unrelenting police officer.

The villain, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) aka The Lizard, was a bold choice to start with in this reboot but also inevitable. As one of Spider-Man’s most notorious foes, his appearance was long overdue. And Ifans is excellent at portraying the highly moral scientist with a tortured past.

But a giant monster lizard running through New York will never be totally accessible to audiences (if only the producers of Godzilla 2000 knew this). While the Lizard looks decent with the CGI, his “dastardly plan” stems a bit unreasoned and confused.

Director Mark Webb (500 Days of Summer) does an excellent job at keeping the movie relevant. Spider-Man is only his second full length motion picture but his work with music video directing allows him to make some big risks with this film. The montages of Garfield discovering his powers aren’t just interesting, but allow room for genuine humor. Garfield smashing his alarm clock and accidently ripping off a woman’s shirt plays off the character’s awkwardness while keeping the film interesting.

Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of The Amazing Spider-Man is how well the exposition of the film sets it up to have heart. His relationship with his aunt and uncle (played by Sally Field and Martin Sheen, respectively) feels genuine with their playful jabs and confrontations as Parker struggles to deal with his parents’ past and his newfound powers. The pay-off of the relationship in the end of the movie is an emotional experience for the audience.

For all its strengths, the climax of the film is almost unbearably cheesy. The dialogue spirals down to awful 60s Spider-Man-type one liners, a very forced cheesy tribute to New York firefighters and cops, and a “We believe in you!” motif that is shoved down the audience’s throat.

For those who can get past the cheesier moments, The Amazing Spider-Man does what a reboot should. It allows the audience to forgive the franchise’s past sins (in this case Spider-Man 3) and actually improves upon the original. When stacked up against this summer’s other superhero blockbusters The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, Spidey might turn out to be the most accessible for audiences and one of the biggest surprises of the movie season.

If you go: Majestic Bay Theaters, 12:00 p.m., 3:20 p.m., 6:45 p.m., 9:55 p.m. — $8-10.50

All of Washington State

Ballard News Tribune

Remarkable actresses keep 'Letters to Juliet' from being forgettable

patr — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:31:06 +0000

patr Sat, 07/10/2010 - 2:31pm

At the Admiral

If you’d like to see screenwriters do some serious mental gymnastics just to get a pair of lovers to meet cute, then “Letters to Juliet” may be worth a look.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is an aspiring writer and a girl in love. But wait, her fiancé, Victor (Gael Carcia Bernal), is soon to open a restaurant forcing them to take their honeymoon trip before he’s tied up running the place and conveniently, for the purposes of our plotline, before they tie the knot.

Sophie and Victor head off to Verona, Italy, city of Romeo and Juliet and a solid choice for a romantic get away. But wait once more, Victor’s heart has been stolen by his beloved restaurant. He keeps running off to taste truffles and attend wine auctions leaving poor Sophie to wander the streets of Verona alone.

On one of her solitary walks, Sophie happens upon a courtyard that was supposedly home to the famous balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet.” She discovers a note written fifty years ago to the mythical Juliet tucked into a crevice in the wall. She also bumps into a group of women, Juliet’s Secretaries, who make it their mission to answer the many letters left at the wall every day. Sophie writes a response to the letter and a few days later the grandson of Claire (Vanessa Redgreave), woman who wrote it, barges into the office of Juliet’s Secretaries outraged that someone had gotten grandma all in a tizzy about some long lost love.

But wait yet again if you will. As Sophie, Claire and her grandson, Charlie (Christopher Egan) set off to find Claire’s lost love Lorenzo are those romantic sparks fueling the constant bickering between Sophie and the chronically irritated Charlie?
We’re going to find out, but only if we can stay awake. After constructing this Byzantine set up, the collective creative inspiration of director Gary Winick and his writers, Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan, collapses in a heap.

What should be an entertaining romp as Claire tracks down one wrong Lorenzo after another, as her young companions bring their romantic chemistry to a repressed simmer, is derailed by the most formulaic writing and directing this side of the Lifetime Channel. This is a film that relies heavily on pretty shots of the Italian countryside and perky pop tunes to keep our attention focused on the screen. If you stop the count the missed comedic opportunities in that long parade of false Lorezos you might actually be lulled into falling asleep.

What saves “Letters to Juliet” from becoming a truly forgettable experience are the two remarkable actresses at its center. Vanessa Redgrave may be the most unsettling screen presence of a generation. Her piercing blue eyes radiate an unlikely combination of serenity and hunger. When she fixes that stare on a costar, the silliest dialogue seems to have its source deep in the soul. It’s easy to believe in Claire, even at this late stage in life, as somebody’s lover.

Amanda Seyfried is no slouch as an actress. With her Angelina Jolie eyes, she commands the screen even when sharing it with Redgrave. In fact, the best chemistry in “Letters to Juliet” bubbles up between the two. Bernal and Egan as Sophie’s love interests hardly seem worth the trouble, but Seyfried wins you over to Sophie’s side and seduces you into wanting good things for her.

While “Letters to Juliet” wants to captivate us with the questions of whether, and with whom, Claire and Sophie find love it’s the acting that grabs your attention. The clichéd script is like an obstacle course and the real entertainment is watching these two exceptional actresses create compelling performances with virtually nothing to work with.

Directed by Gary Winick
Rated PG
** (Two stars)

Film Review

Admiral

Robinson Papers

Everybody's Fine is a journey of reconciliation

patr — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:46:41 +0000

patr Mon, 02/08/2010 - 7:46am

“Everybody’s Fine” starts out as a mediation on yard work. Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) is sprucing up his place in anticipation of a visit by his four grown children. This is a big deal to Frank. Retired and recently widowed, Frank has a lot of time on his hands and no one to share it with. But as the scene unfolds, the kids call one by one to bail on the visit. Frank is suddenly transformed into a cautionary tale of retirement’s perils: a lonely man with a tidy lawn.

Frank is also a stubborn guy and he decides that if the kids can’t come to him, he’ll hop on Amtrak and visit them.
“Everybody’s Fine” follows Frank’s journey, not just around the country, but into a long overdue understanding of what his children’s lives are really like and the unintended consequences of the way he raised them.

Director Kirk Jones gets lucky in casting Robert De Niro as Frank. De Niro has this uncanny talent for projecting a powerful personality through characters who stumble over their words. For us to believe this story, Frank has to feel like a force that shaped the lives of his children while at the same time failing to connect. Frank tramples on his conversations with his children with tightly held opinions about what is best for them. But De Niro also telegraphs the yearning behind those opinions: a love for his children that he can’t quite bring to the foreground.

As a result, the kids have grown adept at managing their dad. They weave their interactions with Frank around secrets and lies making sure dad sees only what he wants to see. When Frank shows up unannounced at their doorsteps, he’s greeted with cracks in the facades they have built for his benefit and the shards of truth rattle him.

Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale make a promising start as three of Frank’s kids (the fourth sibling has dropped out of sight and no one is willing to tell Frank what’s going on) but their characters never quite get the traction that De Niro does. The fault lies with the writing. Jones does double duty as both the director and the screenwriter. It’s a vanity he should have spared us; his writing is wispy a best.

Jones fails to realize that if we’re expected to follow along on Frank’s journey to finally connect with his children, the journey itself has to be compelling. Instead we do a lot of waiting: Waiting for a Greyhound bus to deposit Frank someplace, waiting for the vague clues his children drop to finally add up to something.
Along the way Frank does run into some very interesting character actors—Lynn Cohen (Miranda’s housekeeper, Magda, from “Sex and the City”) shows up as an obtuse old lady on the train and Melissa Leo (don’t you just cheer whenever she shows up in a film?) is a trucker who picks up Frank when he misses his bus—but they aren’t given the dialogue to create interesting characters. When you realize that the scenes aren’t going to amount to much you could almost cry because Jones has unwittingly replicated one aspect of travel: boredom.

Just when you’ve given up hope on “Everybody’s Fine,” Jones rallies for a strong finish. Frank discovers why his fourth child, David, has dropped out of sight and it pulls the rug out from under his assumptions about his family and himself as a father. His other children finally let Frank see the lives they have built for themselves—lives he would not have chosen for them, but fulfill them as adults. De Niro again drives the story with a subtle but emotional performance. He makes you feel Frank’s sorrow and joy as his expectations crumble and his family rebuilds itself on a new foundation.

“Everybody’s Fine” bookends a family’s journey towards reconciliation. It makes a promising start and ultimately finds it’s way to a rich, emotional ending. However, in the vast, empty spaces of the film’s center, you may wish that someone had provided you with a paperback book to help kill some time.

Everybody's Fine
Directed by Kirk Jones
Rated PG-13
(Two Stars)

Film Review

Admiral District

Robinson Papers

The end of the world is here again; 2012 impressive but ham handed

patr — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:37:45 +0000

patr Mon, 01/25/2010 - 4:37am

At the Admiral

The world ends, again, in the hands of Director Roland Emmerich in the disaster film 2012 now playing at the Admiral Theater.

“2012” is director Roland Emmerich’s third try at destroying the world (fourth if you count “Godzilla’s” romp across Manhattan) and he’s getting better with practice.

The film takes its title from the date the ancient Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world. It turns out—thanks to prodigious solar flares and the rain of neutrinos they send zapping through the earth’s molten core—the Mayans have made a pretty good guess.

Cut to a group of sweaty scientists huddled around geothermal measurement instruments deep in an abandoned copper mine in India. They have just discovered that those neutrinos are heating up the earth’s core to the point where planet’s crust has come unglued and continents are going to start bobbing around and crumbling like soup crackers in chowder. This is bad news for civilization as we know it, but Christmas came early for Emmerich and his animation team.

Emmerich has an appetite for the apocalyptic like no other director around today and he has raised it to an art form. His grand panoramas of obliterating landscapes aren’t set pieces but jazz riffs. He likes to zip along with the flow of destruction tracking an RV racing down a road in Yellowstone National Park while bits of a volcanic eruption use it for target practice or a small plane weaving through a canyon of skyscrapers as they topple into one another.

It’s heady stuff and Emmerich juices each scene with unexpected flourishes. It’s not just molten rocks pelting our hapless little Winnebago but occasionally an entire fragment of landscape—complete with trees and underbrush—lands with a whump creating a brand new hillock.

It’s obvious that Emmerich is having a lot of fun and he keeps finding excuses to pull us into another race against destruction while the Himalayas are drowned in tidal waves and Hawaii is flambéed like cherries jubilee. Like most thrill-ride directors he flirts with overstaying his welcome and has to figure out reasons for us to care.

It’s in the caring department that Emmerich’s exhuberant directing style feels asthmatic and begins to wheeze a bit. When it comes to building a plot around his free-form animation sequences, Emmerich is surprisingly formulaic. “2012” follows the same plot construction as “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow”: A scientist discovers the secret to earth’s impending destruction and sets off to convince the powers that be to take action. Meanwhile, a family finds itself in peril and the bulk of the film follows their journey towards salvation.

Emmerich doesn’t direct people as well as he directs volcanoes and he relies heavily on the inherent likeability of his actors. With “2012” he’s made some very fortunate casting choices. John Cusack and Amanda Peet star as a separated couple that end up racing with their kids, Liam James and Morgan Lily, from L.A. to Yellowstone to Las Vegas and on to China always a step ahead of the ever widening geologic abyss. None of the actors are working very hard but they make for such a sweet family that by the time the movie gets going you really would rather they not be squished like bugs. Cusack makes the best of whatever humor can be gleaned from the weak dialogue and there are plenty of times during the 158 minutes of running time that you’re grateful for his efforts. There is a very small scene where he freeloads the last beer off a conspiracy theorist played by Woody Harrelson that is a gem of understated humor in what is otherwise a gravel pit of ham-handed sentimentality.

Woody Harrelson has a lot of fun has the film’s resident weirdo while Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, and Oliver Platt do respectable work with the pile of clichés that pass for a script.

There are two reasons to see this film. First, with the coming of “Avatar,” “2012” could well represent the last example of a generation of computer animation that will be swept away by a huge leap in technological firepower—the last buffalo standing alone on the prairie, so to speak.

Secondly, if you know any eight-year-old boy (or were once one yourself) who liked to take that cute little toy sailboat the grandparents bought him down to the pond and throw big rocks at it, take him to this movie. He’ll love you for it.

You can view a trailer of “2012” on the web at:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3253077017/

Directed by Roland Emmerich
Rated PG-13
(Two stars)

Film Review

Admiral Junction

Robinson Papers

Where the Wild Things Are

patr — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:14:47 +0000

patr Thu, 12/31/2009 - 5:14pm

You have to give points to Spike Jonze for even trying. Bringing Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” to the silver screen is a task fraught with peril. For starters, “Where the Wild Things Are” isn’t just a good book or even a classic it is an epiphany, the distillation of an essential ingredient of being a boy.

Sendak found that primal enthusiasm for chaos and when he did, he did something very smart. He didn’t analyze it, he didn’t judge it, he simply celebrated it for what it was: the reason why sand castles get smashed, why clean carpets are traversed with muddy footprints and why the poor family dog deserves extra treats at Christmas.

Maurice Sendak defined for NFL linebackers everywhere what the term “inner child” is really all about and I’m reasonably sure that when Hannibal led his elephants over the Alps he whispered under his breath, “Let the wild rumpus start!”
But Jonze is, if anything, a fearless director and in translating “Where the Wild Things Are” into a live action film he starts out with some good choices.

The appropriately named Max Records is perfect as Max, the incorrigible hero of Sendak’s book. In the book, Max is a creature of admirable self-possession who upends the tranquility of his household by charging around in his wolf costume and earns himself a trip to his bedroom without supper. Once he’s locked away, Max’s room is magically transformed into a forest and young Max heads out on a sailboat in search of adventure. What he finds is an island full of monsters—creatures with appetites as unconstrained as his own and with the terrible teeth and terrible claws required to satisfy them. The charm of Sendak’s book is that to Max they are soul mates. In short order he subdues them, is crowned their king, and leads them on a wild rumpus of prodigious proportions.

Whatever his other acting talents, the character of Max requires a feral boyishness and young Mr. Records delivers. One can only imagine studio executives demanding a better-known child actor on the order of a modern-day Macaulay Culkin (who had no rumpus in him). Jonze dodged a bullet on this one.

The character of Max is helped by the costume designers who came up with an inspired wolf suit that is both true to the book and still works in live action. The film’s most evocative scenes capture Max silhouetted against the horizon cavorting in his costume. For the briefest moment you are transported into the book.

Jonze also gets help from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop who created the costumes for Max’s monster friends. The costumes are handsomely done and allow for more intimate interaction between Max and the monsters than computer graphics could have achieved.

Where Jonze gets no help from Sendak is that the original book is very, very short, a fact that ultimately derails his efforts. Film adaptations seem to work best when the original source material has some bulk to it. Screenwriters need corners to tuck an extra scene or two into or, better yet, some fat to trim while creating their cinematic vision. But “Where the Wild Things Are” has no fat to play with. It is pre-distilled down to an essential artistic statement.

Jonze pumps in all sorts of backstory to plump a three-hundred-word children’s story into a hundred-minute film. In the process he squeezes the joy—and Sendak—right out of the film. Jonze’s Max is an unhappy kid whose single mother (Catherine Keener) has just found a romantic interest and whose sister (Pepita Emmerichs) has abandoned him for the adolescent delights of boys and cars. Max heads off for the island of the wild things not as an adventure but an escape from an unhappy home.

But, it only gets worse. The monsters Max falls in with aren’t manifestations of his primal boyish enthusiasms; they are bundles of primal middle-age angst. They have relationship issues. They have less of a need to pull trees out by the roots than they have a need to talk things out (one of them is named Ira for gosh sakes!). While Jonze’s vision is very creative it has more than its share of dreariness. This is a film that feels like it was written for family therapists not for outlaw eight-year-olds.

Jonze has a point. Life is complicated and full of conflicts, even for kids. But what Sendak saw and Jonze didn’t is that for all the complexity each of us deals with in our lives, every once in a while we have the good fortune to touch some primal chord—some amoral joy of our very being—and that is what “Where the Wild Things Are” is all about.

You can view a trailer of “Where the Wild Things Are” on the web at:
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3225158169/

Directed by Spike Jonze
Rated PG
(Two stars)