Underachieving ensemble comedy arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow.
One of the most frequently heard gripes about American cinema the last couple of years is that adult movies – films made for grown-ups, about grown-up issues or at least matters relevant to audiences over 30 years old – are on the wane. It’s wondered if people who aren’t in college, or better yet high school, haven’t got the time to trek to a movie theatre and sit still for two hours. (Note to Hollywood: these days most of us are working too hard.) Films made for this demographic, the occasional romcom aside, don’t do as well as the superhero and vampire fluff that have become the studios’ meat and potatoes.
Certainly, marriage and parenthood are relevant, if not crucial, topics for “older” audiences, as are such ideas as romance and keeping some sense of youth and spontaneity alive once the day-to-day living takes on a limitless routine. Life goes on, like the man said, long after the thrill of living is gone. Hollywood has a proud tradition of films that confront such quiet crises: The Big Chill, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Two For The Road, The Ice Storm, and quite a few others all tackled its dangers. Notice that all of those films are dramas, however. Not one saw the lighter side of marital ennui and pre-midlife regret.
Just here to get lei'ed: the cast.
Couples Retreat could have been a smarter movie, a more mature film, and a sharper examination of the same topics if it tried harder than it does. But instead its script (co-written by stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau) too often panders to its presumed audience without ever really getting beneath the skin of the problems that lurk, like the lemon sharks of its lone suspense sequence, just beneath its surface. As with far too many major studio releases these days, the film takes pains to make sure the audience isn’t provoked into reflection, or into questioning the issues the characters only passingly mention they have. In lieu of that approach there’s too many lazy jokes, too much easy humor, too many cutesy-cute sitcommish gags about precious kids. It’s a safe film, from top to bottom and every frame between.
Uptight couple Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have hit a rough spot in their marriage, largely from their inability to have a child. Strapped for cash and desperate to make their marriage work, they approach five of their friends – two other couples and a recently-divorced male (Favreau and Kristin Davis, Vaughn and Malin Ackerman, Faizon Love) – with a group-rate package vacation to Eden, a tropical resort that doubles as therapeutic boot camp for troubled marriages. The couples agree, with Love’s hapless Shane bringing along his party-hardy 20-year old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk). Once at the resort the couples’ plans for a vacation are foiled by resort regulations that demand they engage in therapy and communication skill-building sessions.
It’s only a little predictable, maybe, that each couple is in a different phase of disintegration: Favreau and Davis’ Joey and Lucy tolerate each other only until their teen daughter leaves for college; Vaughn and Ackerman’s Dave and Ronnie are just beginning to hit the skids; Shane and Trudy barely know each other. So far, so good, except each character takes their respective problem and amplifies it to ten. Part of the problem is that with so many characters, respective characterization gets lost in the shuffle: how can the audience keep up with everyone, unless they stand out? But it’s annoying nonetheless that each character has to go loud to be heard, and everyone’s behavior inevitably becomes childish and plot-focused. There’s very little sense these people know each other, past some laborious exposition dropped into a belabored first act.
Director Peter Billingsley keeps the plot moving, and again with so many characters there’s a lot to juggle. But individual scenes suffer as a direct result, with episodes trailing off and getting whisked from the viewer’s attention before they’ve reached their dramatic or comedic payoff. The result is an uneven middle and an too-tidy resolution that relies on too much convention, at least one out-of-left-field plot contrivance, and more than a little schlock. A film about adults in marital trouble doesn’t need one gag about a child using a sales floor demo toilet. The story in which two such jokes are necessary doesn’t exist.
Sitcommish: the cast
The cast, by and large, brings exactly what you’ve come to expect from them in other performances. Bateman and Bell are charming in their sunny respectability; Vaughn and Favreau are smart-assed and cranky. Davis is Charlotte York. Ackerman is charming and pretty, and seems vastly more comfortable than she appeared in Watchmen earlier this year. Love isn’t a bad actor, but watching his sad sack performance I couldn’t help but wish, and not for the first time, that Bernie Mac was still with us. Of the other cast members, Jean Reno is amusing as the resort’s spacey therapy guru, while Peter Serafinowicz does an effective Jonathan Pryce impression as the resort’s maitre ‘d.
Ultimately, it’s hard not to imagine this film as a better choice for a January or February home video release than something worth a trip to the theatre, not matter what your age. Its quality notwithstanding, all the sun and surf lovingly displayed will no doubt offer a welcome escape now that winter is at its heaviest around the nation. You don’t have to be snowbound to enjoy Couples Retreat, but it’ll definitely help.
- Michael Kabel
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(Note: An earlier version of this review was originally published for the film’s theatrical release.)
The critically acclaimed espionage comic comes to the big screen this April.
Mixing traditional spy genre tropes with modern War On Terror cynicism, April’s The Losers adapts the Eisner-nominated Vertigo comics series into what looks – from the trailer below – like an old school shoot-em-up, the kind of film that Renny Harlin or John Woo might have made in their 1990s prime. It’s got a cast of rising stars going for it, too, as well as a script by Peter Berg (The Kingdom) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) that adapts comics author Andy Diggle’s unique narrative voice.
The setup is straightforward enough: After getting double crossed and left for dead by their CIA handler Max (Jason Patric), five members of a black-ops special forces team join forces with a mercenary against the agency and its various shadowy collaborators. As their campaign continues they uncover a web of subterfuge and conspiracy with their former boss as its center, taking each operation down as they uncover it.
The group individually follow the tried-and-true nickname/broad character stroke makeup. Their leader, Franklin Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) bears an almost irrational hatred for Max. His second-in-command, Roque (Idris Elba), harbors such intense greed he’s motivated to betray the group; Jensen (Chris Evans), the computer hacker, is a flamboyant motormouth; Pooch (Columbus Short), the pilot, is a laid back family man; Cougar (Oscar Jaenada), the sniper, is sullen and withdrawn as a result of his combat experiences. The group is joined by Aisha (Zoe Saldana), a hot-tempered professional killer with her own grudge against Max.
The film’s greatest strength, besides the escapist value of the potboiler plot, is likely its assemblage of talent, most of whom seem on the verge of career breakthroughs just as the film arrives in theatres. Morgan in particular has been circling leading man status for a while now, after appealing turns in P.S. I Love You and especially Watchmen. Saldana gave a standout performance in last year’s Star Trek, while Short made strong showings in little-seen fare including Whiteout and Armored. Of the others, The Wire’s Elba gave a lukewarm performance on The Office last season, though to be fair the part was pretty under-written and the role of Roque plays more to his strengths, anyway. Evans, meanwhile, seeems always one good performance away from officially arriving as an actor. If five years from now the cast have all risen to the A-list, and there’s no reason to suspect otherwise, the film could become an interesting trivia piece whether it’s any good or not, much like the “before they were stars’ value of such recent classics as Dazed and Confused and Heat.
The film is directed by Sylvain White, whose previous credits include Stomp the Yard and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. It’s been remarked several times already that co-writer Berg isn’t also directing, given his familiarity with high-concept, high-octane action movies.
Our irregular roundup of news, observations and events that didn’t get a full post.
January came and went pretty fast where we live, with a lot of it buried underneath bitter, immobilizing cold and snow. We didn’t get to the movies much this past month, though we saw plenty of good ones and bad ones on the various movie channels (more on that below.)
Still and all, a lot happened in movies and television alike that was worth talking about or passing on, if only briefly. The following is our semi-monthly, semi-punctual roundup of items we think are interesting but yet don’t merit a complete blog post all on their own. You, our audience, seems to like these features, so if you’ve got suggestions on how to make them better our email address is just down there on the right. Now for starters, a couple of points on Avatar…
1. We didn’t review the film, or rather we haven’t yet, because the story didn’t interest us that much and anyway the word of mouth coming from people we respect was lukewarm at best. (One of our frequent collaborators even tried, then walked out from boredom.) But the film has made more money than Jesus now, and somehow that makes evaluation seem irrelevant, even though it shouldn’t. Films such as this, and indeed most of James Cameron’s work, defy criticism anyway. Assessing them as works of cinema, or even for their longevity, is almost beside the point. They thrill, make money by the wheelbarrow full, then fade away into endless cable reruns and home video releases. That’s not art, but it’s certainly good business.
2. The entertainment media, always a giddy celebrant of the hot property of any given moment, had a lot of fun speculating which new release would knock Avatar off the top of the box office charts. Nothing managed that, but really no film could have. This January was fairly typical, with only a couple of over-pedigreed B-movies – Edge of Darkness, The Book of Eli - making exceptions to the usual assortment of studio leftovers and also-ran new releases. Smaller-scale projects like Daybreakers and The Tooth Fairy were never going to make a lot of money, under any circumstances. We imagine much of Avatar’s business, meanwhile, was either repeat viewing or otherwise disinterested people going to see what all the fuss was about.
So long, Sal: Batt
3. We were disappointed to hear that Bryan Batt, who plays the elegant, tortured Salvatore Romano on Mad Men, won’t return for the show’s fourth season. Series creator Matthew Weiner told TV Guide that the character’s departure was necessary for the show’s progress. In happier news, Aaron Staton’s contract was renewed, meaning Ken Cosgrove and his haircut will play a role in the show’s new era. January Jones will also come back as Betty Draper. A date for the season premiere has yet to be announced.
4. The web of acrimony surrounding Spider-Man 4 grew thick and taut this past month, with Sam Raimi quitting the production and Sony Pictures promising a bootstrap reboot featuring an all-new cast. From a financial standpoint, which is probably the only one the studio is considering, a reboot makes a lot of sense. Spider-Man is a story for the young, and when the new film opens in 2012 a full decade will have passed since the 2002 first film. To be honest, the Raimi cast was getting a bit old for their parts, and there’s no escaping that Spider-Man 3 was sabotagued by unchecked self-indulgence from almost everyone involved.
5. We’ve recently grown enamored of Turner Classic Movies‘ morning and daytime programming, which has become a versatile showcase for little-remembered films from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Often there’s a classic work that deserves a new appreciation, such as the recent Paul Newman-starring Somebody Up There Likes Me or the 30s melodrama Rain. Though the quality of the films slips occasionally, for classic film enthusiasts it’s cast miss DVR fodder. We’ve recorded so much good stuff we’ve recently started an anthology series of blog posts to follow it all.
Fox Movie Channel, by the way, runs a close second to the venerable TCM, though their choice of films runs more towards works of the 60s and 70s. This can include cult favorites like Mother, Jugs, and Speed and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, but FMC also tends to show the same few films over and over again. That’s sadly surprising, given the huge vault of films for which they presumably have access.
6. Leave it to MTV to use the country’s Great Recession as a means of introducing yet stupider programming. Jersey Shore, a program as willfully lowbrow as probably anything ever put on television, has effectively supplanted the far more opulent The Hills as the network’s tentpole attraction. There’s a point to be made that replacing the rich brats of the The Hills with the blue-collar troglodytes of Jersey Shore only seems appropriate given America’s dire economic straits. But was either program really necessary in the first place?
Mick LaSalle, the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, tears the new show’s championing of “guido culture” into little tiny pieces on his blog.
7. We can’t help but feel, given its cast, that The Wolfman would have excited us more were it released seven or eight years ago. The embedding-proof trailer looks an awful lot like those stuffy Francis Ford Coppola-produced monster flicks of the early 90s, and while we shouldn’t hold that against this new film we’re not entirely enthused about it, either. We also can’t help but imagine the Wolfman using his fangs to try and chew as much scenery as co-star Anthony Hopkins.
8. We recently came across this picture of Baton Rouge’s defunct Cinemark Tinseltown Cinema, which got us to thinking about derelict movie theatres and the scars they leave on their communities. Movie theatres are an important part of any neighborhood, even the otherwise anonymous corporate multiplexes, and once they go under they’re very unlikely to reopen as anything else. If you’re going to the movies soon, please consider supporting a theatre you think might be suffering. You’re probably right, and they can use the business.
Having more movie theatres increases your chances of getting a wider variety of films to watch. Help out the theatres for your own sake if nothing else.
We’ll be back later this week. Thanks for reading.
Remembering the early noir work of legendary director Nicholas Ray
Though the public is probably best familiar with his seminal 1950s classics Rebel Without A Cause and King of Kings, and film historians point to his groundbreaking Bigger Than Life and Johnny Guitar, film noir aficionados know Nicholas Ray for his innovative, revelatory direction of such classics as In A Loney Place and They Live By Night, among others. Completing seven noirs between 1948 and 1952, Ray’s sensitivity to the isolation felt by the the nation’s youth, his fascination with sexual identity, and his willingness to depict violence would influence both the French New Wave (especially Jean Luc Goddard) as well as Arthur Penn, Terrence Malick, and the new generation of American filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s.
A libertine sometimes as infamous for his decadence as respected for his body of work, Ray came to filmmaking only in his mid-30s, having studied for a time as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright and working in radio and on Broadway. In 1944 he learned to direct film by following Elia Kazan through the making of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, that director’s own first feature. In time Ray would do most of his best work at Howard Hughes’ RKO Pictures, where Hughes’ influence likely protected his hedonist lifestyle from attracting unsavory publicity, directing whole films and parts of films as Hughes demanded.
The Live By Night (1948) – Ray’s début feature begins with a dizzying overhead chase sequence and doesn’t break tension for a moment throughout. Teen escaped convict Bowie (Farley Granger) and gas station attendant Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) fall in love and go on the run after Bowie participates in a bank heist gone bad; the ending (shown below) is not “happy.” Violent and shocking in its criticism of law enforcement and “the system,” its early impressionism directly influenced later works such as Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands. Robert Altman made Thieves Like Us, his own version of Edward Anderson’s source novel, in 1973.
Knock On Any Door (1949) – Humphrey Bogart stars as a successful corporate attorney compelled by guilt to defend a Skid Row youth (John Derek) charged with the murder of a police officer. The film remains notable for its complicated structure and intricate plot, even while its aggressive social commentary and heavy pacing make it seem melodramatic and pedantic by modern standards. Still, Bogart is masterful as always, and the final courtroom speech prefigures later cinema courtroom barnstorming including Compulsion, A Time To Kill, and dozens more.
A Woman’s Secret (1949) - This “women’s noir” only marginally fits inside the genre, thanks to Ray’s moody mis en scene and the complicated interpersonal dynamics between stars Maureen O’Hara and noir arch-femme fatale Gloria Grahame. The two play singers at different ends of the same career – O’Hara on her way down, Grahame on her way up - and in love with the same man (Melvyn Douglas). The plot and suspense are fairly straightforward, though all the principals give solid performances. Ray married Grahame shortly after production concluded, a miserable union for them both that began and ended in adultery.
In A Lonely Place (1950) – The marriage lasted long enough, however, for Ray to get Grahame into the role that would become her finest performance. Co-star Bogart wanted his own wife Lauren Bacall for the part of Laurel Gray, the steadying presence that promises to redeem screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart) after years of self-destructive rage. Based on Dorothy B. Hughes’ pulp novel, the story is the stuff of which Gender Studies dissertations are made: full of exploration into gender roles, emotional and sexual dominance, and Freudian symbology. Ray expresses such moody ideas through careful screen composition, stark pacing, and by finely tuning Grahame and Bogart’s chemistry.
The Racket (1951) Ray returned to the noir genre after the melodrama Born To Be Bad and the war actioner Flying Leathernecks, reteaming with those films’ Robert Ryan to remake the 1928 silent movie about a crime boss (Ryan) on a collision course with an honest police captain (Robert Mitchum). Under Hughes’ micromanagement Ray directed only part of the film, and his style never entirely meshed with co-director John Cromwell’s more straightforward aesthetic. The stars’ performances are meanwhile odd and uneven, turning what should have been a promising rematch (after the two squared off in 1947’s semi-noir Crossfire) into a routine genre exercise.
On Dangerous Ground (1952) – The fourth Ray-Ryan collaboration produced some of the actor’s best work, playing a live wire police detective sent from the city into the hinterlands as much to avoid a brutality inquiry as to solve a murder. While pursuing a suspect with assistance from the victim’s father (Ward Bond), Ray’s detective falls for the suspect’s blind sister (Ida Lupino), a relationship that threatens his precarious self-respect while simultaneously tempting him with a cleaner way of life. Working from an adapted script by A.I. Bezzerides, Ray takes the noir out of the city and into the countryside, finding just as much isolation and paranoia in the wide open spaces as the tight corners of the city, and just as much human capacity for violence and cruelty. Bernard Herrmann’s tripwire-taut musical score brings everything together.
Macao (1952) – Sometimes considered a road company Casablanca, this adventure in the titular Far Eastern port stars Mitchum as an ex-G.I. and Jane Russell as a nightclub singer falling in love while while falling over each other in a seedy casino. Grahame appears as the moll of a local crime boss, while William Bendix also co-stars as an undercover cop. The sexual equilibrium between the leads harkends back to Ray’s earlier work, but the framing of the exotic port of call never really gets below the setting’s surface. Still, fans of the stars will find it entertaining nonetheless.
Ray filmed Rebel Without A Cause in 1955, but innuendo surrounding an illicit romance between he and 16-year-old star Natalie Wood, along with increased substance abuse, took its toll on his reputation. After collapsing on the set of 1963’s 55 Days in Peking, he went more than a decade without a directing credit, eventually settling down to a teaching position at Binghampton University. That career too was rocked with controversy, when footage from the student film We Can’t Go Home Again displayed Ray smoking marijuana with his students. His last film effort, 1979’s experimental Lightning Over Water, was completed with assistance from long time fan Wim Wenders. Ray died of lung cancer that same year.
Our new monthly feature offers bullet reviews of five films we watched while staying up too late.
Have you ever stayed up too late to finish watching a movie, or pulled an all-nighter because something good was coming on in the wee hours of the morning? We do that all the time, even now that we’ve got a DVR to record the films for playback whenever we want. Actually, now especially because we’ve got a DVR and can catch up on our film viewing when no one else is around.
Every month or so we’ll review a bunch of films we saw while avoiding sleep. Some of them deserve their own full-length post, and time willing they’ll get it. Others can slip by with only a few words for summary. Not for nothing, but the name of this new feature is a homage to the great USA network series of the 1980s, which always made skipping bedtimes more fun.
Leave Her To Heaven (1945) Sometimes called “the Technicolor film noir,” this excellent suspenser directed by John M. Stahl (Imitation of Life) showcases Gene Tierney as a homicidally jealous wife who’ll kill anyone that gets between her and her author husband (Cornell Wilde). Among her many victims is the author’s polio-afflicted brother, in a scene that’s as chilling for its glacial calm as any half-dozen modern horror flicks combined (about 2:45 into the clip below.)
The role earned Tierney an Academy Award nomination and became 20th Century Fox’s biggest hit of the decade. Its influence on later films including Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction, and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle is unmistakable and immediately apparent.
The Harder They Fall (1956) – Probably best known as Humphrey Bogart’s last screen appearance, director Mark Robson’s (Peyton Place) boxing drama was based on a novel by Bud Schulberg (On The Waterfront) as well as the scandals surrounding the career of real-life heavyweight Primo Carnera. A visibly ailing Bogart plays Eddie Willis, a down and out sportswriter hired by mobster Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) to promote an argentine contender. The towering Argentine Toro Moreno (Mike Lang) can’t hit, can’t take a punch, and possesses an almost childlike intelligence, yet since all his fights are fixed by Benko’s cronies his fame and public adoration grow.
Bogart spent much of his last decade in film making “socially conscious” films like this, Knock On Any Door, and Sabrina, and while his performance and the boxing scenes are all accomplished, the ending almost ruins everything by trailing off into a vague, unsatisfying resolution. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining to see real-life boxers like Max Baer (Russell Crowe’s nemesis in Cinderella Man) and Jersey Joe Walcott ably fill important roles.
A Face In The Crowd (1957) – Schulberg also wrote the script to this excoriation of the advertising and television industries, reteaming with On The Waterfront director Elia Kazan to tell the story of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), an Arkansas vagabond who rises to national ideologue status after getting discovered in jail by a well-meaning reporter (Patricia Neal.) Rhodes, like so many modern-day pundits, mixes “down home” folksy sincerity with his politics, syrup-coating the agendas of the advertisers and politicians standing behind him.
Until his hubris catches up with him, precipitating a downfall that Kazan stages as an almost Shakespearean descent from power. Kazan and Schulberg’s understanding of marketing and television’s use of imagery to appeal to audiences – simultaneously stimulating and soothing, sexy and doting - remain to this day acidly barbed in their accuracy.
The Last Detail (1973) – Two Navy career men (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) escort a convicted thief (Randy Quaid) from Virginia to the Naval prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Given a week and a full per diem budget to carry the errand out, the two resolve instead to show the naïve, kleptomaniac convict a good time before his eight year sentence begins. Director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude) and screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown) frame the black comedy as a parable about living within authoritative systems and the toll that it takes on the individual, with the knowledge of their duties and obligations always hanging over the trio’s heads.
Some fans consider Nicholson’s turn as Billy “Badass” Buddusky his finest performance, a claim that’s not completely without merit. Quaid is excellent as the young, doomed thief, giving the character equal parts naïvety and resignation. Also appearing, very early in their careers, are Michael Moriarty, Gildna Radner, Nancy Allen, and Carol Kane (as “Young Whore”) in various minor roles.
Amazing Grace And Chuck (1987) – Montana little league pitcher Chuck Murdock (Joshua Zuehlke) refuses to play baseball as a protest against the United States’ and Soviet Unions’ nuclear arsenals. When Boston Celtics star Amazing Grace Smith (basketball hall of famer Alex English) reads about his protest, he quits the NBA to join him. In time, other athletes join their cause, despite the warnings of Chuck’s fighter pilot father (William L. Petersen), the U.S. president (Gregory Peck), and Smith’s business manager (Jamie Lee Curtis). After Smith is killed, Chuck leads the world’s children in a silent protest for disarmament.
British director Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco) made his American début with this sweet, well-meaning feature, and the film manages by and large to contain its hokier elements. One of its major strengths lies in its characterizations, which are all surprising but no less believable: each one is complex and multi-faceted, and no character is there just to occupy a stock designated place in the plot. Of the two stars, imdb.com lists no other roles for Zuehlke, and English is now an assistant coach with the Toronto Raptors.
Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker star in a grim, probable sci-fi thriller.
Mixing cutting edge medical research with a heaping dose of present-day corporate cynicism, April’s Repo Men posits a world in which you can buy artificial replacement organs on credit. If you can’t pay, the ruthless Union simply sends repossession agents to track you down and remove the organs by whatever means necessary, including on-the-spot surgery and organ removal.
Directed by Miguel Spaochnik (his feature debut) and based on Eric Garcia’s novel Repossession Mambo, the script by Garcia and Garrett Lerner imagines the widespread use of artiforgs: expensive, mass produced mechanical organs that outperform their natural counterparts in almost every way. Remy (Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker) are the Union’s top enforcers, lifelong friends now under the ruthless employ of Union executive Frank (Liev Shreiber.) When a botched repossession causes Remy to need a new heart, of course his associates give him the top-of-the-line artiforg model. But the new heart brings a…. well, a change of heart, and he’s unable to summon the detachment needed to do his job. This causes him to fall behind in his payments, necessitating a flight from Frank, Jake, and the Union’s other agents.
The cast probably ought to be doing higher-brow work, but we’re not complaining. Law seems in fine leading man form in the trailer, and a solid turn here could help him further build the comeback begun with Sherlock Holmes after years of pretentious drivel like Cold Mountain and All The King’s Men. Once upon a time, in fact, he was the go-to guy for thought-provoking science fiction, with winning performances in Gattaca, A.I., and eXistenZ. For their parts Whitaker and Shreiber are always fun to watch, even when sort-of slumming in expensive B-movie fare such as this. The international cast also includes Dutch actress Carice van Houten (Black Book) as Remy’s current wife and Brazilian actress Alice Braga (Crossing Over) as his former spouse.
The concept, seemingly equal parts Philip K. Dick and Logan’s Run, feels creepily plausible, at least compared with recent sci-fi fare including Surrogates and Daybreakers. Long-delayed and the survivor of a lengthy production and numerous cast changes, the story nevertheless bears strong resemblance to last year’s Repo! The Genetic Opera, which went nowhere upon release but has since become a minor cult favorite. Expect at least a flare of comparisons when this film hits. Finally, its early release date gives it a wide berth on the action/sci-fi schedule, making it a likely warm up for later high-tech based summer releases including Iron Man 2 and Predators.
Robert Downey Jr.’s irresistable charm carries the venerable sleuth into a new era.
Early in Guy Ritchie’s thrilling Sherlock Holmes, there’s a moment when the film slows to a crawl and we get inside the great detective’s (Downey) head. As he hides in a darkened recess, Holmes plans how he’ll attack the strongman stalking him, plotting out the ensuing attack with ruthless, clinical precision. When the attack happens, replaying in normal time, it’s no less visceral or exciting for us to watch, even if it’s a foregone conclusion for him.
The moment more or less sums up Holmes’s byzantine psyche. He’s already figured everything out, and the act of living is just a process of going through the motions. Ably if sometimes wearily assisted by his confidant Dr. Holmes (Jude Law), his day-to-day existence is largely a war of attrition with boredom. Lucky for the film it has Downey in the lead, in a performance that solidifies the total comeback begun in 2007’s Zodiac (another, darker kind of mystery altogether) and continued through the Iron Man franchise. Downey makes this film, saving its rollicking pace and grimy texture from occasional doldrums while giving its iconic main character a human face and heart.
The knotty, fast-paced plot has Holmes and Watson pursuing the occultist killer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), first ensuring his capture and then attempting to deduce the means with which he seemingly rises from the dead and conducts a new reign of terror on Victorian London. At times aiding and other times hindering their investigation are Holmes’ fiancé Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly), who feels no appreciation for Holmes’ eccentricities; and Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a grifter and the only woman for whom Holmes has ever shown romantic interest.
The search expands to involve the British parliament, Scotland Yard, a secret cabal of sorcerers, British foreign policy, and the ancient riddle of the Sphinx. Screenwriters Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg pile details upon clues upon meaningful gestures, building a haystack of details for Holmes to sift through. The script doesn’t expect the audience to keep up, either, as the frequent flashbacks and explanations provided by Holmes and Watson stopgap context and explanation at regular intervals. The doubling back is sometimes welcome: though Ritchie’s trademark dexterity in staging action sequences is here as good as it’s ever been, the film drags sometimes moving all its characters into place or providing depth to some of the supporting characters. Blackwood in particular is practically a cypher, full of foreboding that seldom solidifies into tangible menace.
Yet the place where the characters move remains fascinating in its vivacity. The London of 1891 is an endless warren of primitive, steam-spewing machinery and clustered rooms, a far cry from the quaint cobblestone and stodgy myopia of innumerable BBC and PBS specials. The city seems a mechanical place, full of its own rumbling energy, entirely believable as the capital of the 19th Century, hell-bent-for-industry world. The surroundings are so vibrant they often seem to swallow the characters, reducing their importance to ants in a gritty hill, as Ritchie draws on its size and shadows to give the story texture and suspense.
Of the supporting cast, Law is sympathetic as the harried Watson, highlighting the stalwart sidekick’s conflicting urges towards the stability of a real home life and the adventure Holmes offers. McAdams, who at times seems to aggressively shun stardom, makes Adler confident and sexy without playing to the camera. She’s one of the few mainstream American actresses around right now who can act without looking like she’s acting, and she does well in a part that’s a favorite among Holmes devotees. Ritchie is smart enough to stay out of his cast’s way, letting them ricochet dialogue off one another while keeping the momentum going forward. His direction and choice of scene isn’t perfect – the dog gets too many jokes, the scene with a nude Downey shackled to a headboard comes off asinine – but the overall effect remains bracingly immersive.
It’s tempting to see Downey bending the Holmes character into a variation of the persona started with Zodiac ’s Paul Avery and continued through Iron Man’s Tony Stark: the malcontent invariably cursed to be the smartest guy in the room. The similarities across all three performances are numerous, but given the actor’s effortless charisma and ability to communicate a range of emotions with simple gestures (Holmes never seems comfortable sitting down) his strengths play, as they did before, to the character. Diehard purists of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories might take offense at this Holmes’ physicality, but there’s no denying the energy it represents.
Those purists will be either delighted or further annoyed that the already-planned sequel will feature Holmes’s arch nemesis Professor Moriarty. The arch-villain circles this film, too, shading the story’s edges with mysterious evil. Guessing his identity will also serve as a litmus test to distinguish those familiar with Doyle’s cast of characters and those who aren’t: his first appearance makes a suprising revelation that calls for only a little elementary deduction.
One of last year’s best releases arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray today.
One of 2009’s best films and among the best sci-fi cinema of recent years, first time writer-director Duncan Jones’ near-future drama Moon is intelligent, well-crafted, and restrained, thanks to a perfect (if derivative in a well-intentioned way) production design and great performances from stars Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey. A small-scale film that articulates its simple ideas while managing some new twists to familiar tropes, it’s must-see viewing for anyone interested in realistic space exploration cinema, as well as anybody who enjoys an old-fashioned corkscrew plot.
Rockwell (Confessions of A Dangerous Mind) plays Sam Bell, the sole human occupant of the Sarang mining facility on the dark side of the moon. The station uses huge robotic crawlers to mine for helium-3, a rare isotope powerful enough to solve the world’s energy needs. After three years on the station Bell is weary, melancholy, and eager to return to the wife and daughter waiting for him on Earth, and kept company only by taped messages from home and by GERTY (voiced by Spacey), the station’s artificial intelligence .
Two weeks before his homecoming, Bell goes out to investigate a malfunction on one of the crawlers, leading to a collision that knocks him unconscious. When “Sam” wakes up in the station’s infirmary, he feels confused and alienated but also paranoid. Returning to the crash site, he finds himself – an exact copy of himself – still in the wreckage. Bringing the “other” Sam Bell back to the station, the two men try to discern what’s happened and whether either of them is actually genuine, a clone, or something more insidious.
The film’s story gets an energizing boost from Tony Noble’s production design, which while borrowing liberally from 1960s and 70s genre classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and Alien provides enough scruffy detail to take those classic images a step further along a realistic timeline. Sarang looks and “feels” shopworn, with dirt and scuff marks seemingly everywhere, and hints of mildew and other signs of long use always in its cracks and crevices. Yet the familiarity also grounds the film, from a viewer’s perspective, as part of a larger continuity of science fiction film not really in evidence since the early 1980’s realist heyday of Outland, Blade Runner, and 2010: the sense of outer space and whatever fragile habitats mankind eventually builds there as lived-in environments subject to the wear and tear typical of Earth. So much sci-fi casts the future as either antiseptically barren or completely dystopic, with little or no gradation between. In striking a middle ground, the sets give both Bell’s character and the story important depth and texture.
Jones, who wrote the story, keeps the film moving forward, using Rockwell’s relaxed screen presence and precise conveyance of emotion to keep the tension building. An exception to this comes about a third of the way through, when an important story development is accomplished largely thanks to some judicious editing. Some viewers might feel cheated, or feel that the film was anyway trying to cheat them a bit. Nathan Parker’s screenplay isn’t overly talky or given to monologues and spoken exposition (no doubt a tempting pitfall, given the film’s man-alone conceit), though it allows Rockwell and Spacey room to flesh out their characters in ways that distinguish them from the influences listed above. Spacey is a natural fit to play an electronic presence immediately reminiscent of the HAL 9000, though the script and his performance take GERTY’s personality in unexpected directions.
But the film rises and falls with Rockwell, who in essentially playing the same person at different points of their life is able to build two very different characters out of one role. It’s an important, but subtly given, plot device that Bell had a violent temper before arriving at Sarang. Rockwell makes one of the Sams impulsive and brash, while his doppelgänger, from a later point in time, is serene and lonesome. You never doubt you’re watching the same person, or the same actor, even as the two go very separate emotional directions. As good as he is, Spacey’s GERTY is somewhat underused, arriving at times seemingly only to nudge the plot in the right direction. His ostensible warmth and compassion for Bell’s welfare could have used a bit more explanation, too.
But at any event science fiction is at its best when it’s topical, and relevant. Since the film’s theatrical release last summer NASA has made several important steps towards lunar colonization, putting the United States again and at long last on the path towards the future presented with the story’s simple scale and subtly realized scope. An actual return to the moon is a long time coming, and it’s sometimes hard to remember that films like this one once carried the standard towards that lofty goal. Now here comes Duncan Jones to remind us. With its few flaws and earnest ambition, Moon is a sight worth seeing.
- Michael Kabel
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(Note: An earlier version of this review was originally published for the film’s theatrical release.)
George Clooney and an ace supporting cast shine in Jason Reitman’s almost flawless third film.
2009 was no one’s idea of a banner year either for the American work force of for cinema, so it’s a little ironic and all the more bittersweet that one of its best films, Up In The Air, arrived in theatres just as the year ground to a chilly halt. The third screen effort from director and co-writer Jason Reitman, it’s a hard film not to love, full of charming and relaxed performances from veteran and emerging talent, easily identifiable situations and – and! – that rarest of Hollywood spectacles: a refusal to treat its audience as if we’re irretrievably stupid. Consequently, if the film never quite works out all the ideas it puts forward you may not entirely mind.
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a “termination facilitator” who’s all too happy to jet around the country laying off downsized employees on behalf of their chicken-hearted bosses. It’s dirty work but he doesn’t mind, because the lifestyle of easy, superficial comforts provided by business hotels and frequent flyer amenities allow him freedom from emotional involvement and baggage. He even has a sideline gig as a motivational speaker, giving talks in hotel conference rooms about how to free your “backpack” from what’s weighing you down.
Bingham’s life of happy superficial solitude goes sideways in three directions at once: he begins a casual, no-strings-attached affair with fellow road warrior Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), one based on sex and mutual company. At work, he finds his way of life threatened by upstart new employee Nathalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a recent college grad who’s sold their boss (Jason Bateman) on converting the layoff business towards video conferencing – effectively getting fired over the Internet. Back home, the sister “he barely knows” is getting married, compelling his return to a family that almost doesn’t register on his emotional radar.
Bingham copes by taking Keener with him on the road, to show her the benefits of the personal touch when firing lifelong employees. The clash between Bingham the pragmatic, ageing Gen X’er and Keener’s self-confident, vaguely hipsterish youth gives much of the film its dramatic weight but also its humor. When Keener’s fiancé dumps her via text message, her emotional meltdown in a sunny hotel lobby puts the generational contrast into hilarious, if wrenching detail, as Bingham and Goran try to gently persuade her to get used to disappointment in life. It’s a wonderful scene, perfectly played all around and devastating in its accuracy. If you don’t wince and nod at least once watching it, you probably haven’t turned 35 yet.
Only in the last third, when the time comes to both ratchet up the dramatic tension and resolve some of its ideas, do Reitman and the film start to lose their footing. For as little about herself as she puts forth, Goran still isn’t quite what she seems, while Keener may be made of sterner stuff than Bingham first appreciates. Still, neither entirely emerges as characters as fully rounded as Bingham, flaws owing more to the script and screentime than the actors’ performances. The ending and dénouement, where everything rotates back to more or less where it was in the beginning, both works and doesn’t. It works in that giving Bingham or anyone else a pat ending would insult the rest of us with shaky livelihoods. It doesn’t because the ambivalence makes the rest of the film struggle for coherence. You expect the story to lead somewhere, and it does, but exactly where is implied best by the film’s title.
Having said that, the performances alone are worth the price of admission. As suggested in other reviews, Clooney is probably the only actor around who could make us care about a complacently careless jerk like Bingham, giving him anxiety and depth that roil under the glib stuffed suit exterior. The palpable chemistry between he and Farmiga builds on its own warmth and the characters’ mutual fascination, an odd contrast to the impersonal luxury surrounding them. Kenrdick is confident in her part without being showy, making her tyro character sympathetic while not pitiable or – potentially much worse – cute. Reitman also wisely casts veteran collaborators Bateman and J.K. Simmons in key parts, while also using real people to describe their firing experiences.
The film is winning awards left, right, and center, as it deserves. If it’s not a perfect film, it’s one that comes closer than probably any other released in this forgettable year, itself chock-a-block full of forgettable films. Smart and mature, as melancholy as a jobless Monday morning, don’t be surprised if it’s considered a minor classic in the years to come.
Remembering 2010, the gritty follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Wars and The Godfather films notwithstanding, the sequels to the great films of the 1960s and 70s were rarely as successful as their antecedents. Whether because audience expectations grew too high, because the pressure of mounting a follow-up worthy of the original proved too great, or (most probably) a combination of the two, second offerings seldom experienced the reception or the staying power enjoyed by their “parent” film. Movies like The Two Jakes, The French Connection II, the myriad Rocky sequels and no doubt many others have become, in a way, stepchildren to the stature their parents possess; they’re not quite embarrassments, but they’re not quite equals, either.
Given the reverence bestowed upon its parent, 2010 could easily have become a much worse film, if only by virtue of a giant choke on the part of its cast and writer-director Peter Hyams (Capricorn One, Outland). Instead, it’s a more sober, clear-eyed look at the near-future space exploration set forth by Arthur C. Clarke’s series of novels, trading the balls-out psychedelic audacity of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for Reagan-era Cold War skittishness. It’s as much a film of its time – 1984, ironically – as 2001 was a work of its own day, and if it doesn’t succeed as the continuance of Kubrick’s vision, that’s only because it wasn’t trying.
The story, at least, picks up where the events of 2001 left off. Nine years after bearing the blame for the disastrous Discovery One space mission to Jupiter, project director Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) has withdrawn into academia and obscurity. Yet both the Soviet Union and the United States are preparing missions to find the vanished spacecraft, even as political tension between the two superpowers gradually mounts towards nuclear conflict. Nevertheless, the Soviets invite Floyd on their mission, to help manipulate the ghost ship’s computers, and since the Soviets have a faster mission timetable Floyd agrees. Also along for the ride are Dr. Walter Curnow, the ship’s designer (John Lithgow) and Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), the creator of its infamous HAL 9000 artificial intelligence.
Floyd and the others make an uneasy peace with the Soviet crew, who are charged with investigating the alien monolith circling Jupiter, determining why the earlier mission failed, and how David Bowman (Keir Dullea), the mission commander, disappeared. Tensions between Floyd and the Soviet captain (Helen Mirren) build as relations between their nations grow dramatically worse. Meanwhile Bowman’s spirit has begun appearing to his loved ones on Earth, wishing them good-bye and warning that “something wonderful” is about to take place. That something relates to hundreds of monoliths, their goal to create life on the Jovian moon of Europa, and a climax that alters the structure of the solar system.
Hyams’ script is simultaneously character- and technology driven, rather than reliant on spectacle – though the spectacles presented are enthralling all the same. If Kubrick wanted to see eye-to-eye with the cosmic scope of Clarke’s vision, Hyams is more comfortable inspecting it from ground level, and his approach is correspondingly gritty. The Soviets’ Alexei Leonov vessel bears more resemblance in design and aesthetics to the Nostromo of Ridley Scott’s Alien than the austere symmetry of the Discovery One: conditions are cramped, readout lights and monitors cast everything in a forbidding glow, sterility and mechanical precision abound. Both Russian and American crews, Floyd and Curnow especially, seem weary and a little pissed at the state of the Earth and their fates: they expected something grander, just like we do now. Scheider, always an actor who understood the value of reserve, plays Floyd as a man willing to travel millions of miles to escape his own regret. Mirren is excellent as well, as a soldier turned explorer who still understands loyalty and obedience more than wonder and curiosity.
Such grounding works towards the film’s overarching attention to veracity: from the thrilling space walk sequence to the terrifying consequences of celestial mechanics, the film never once feels unrealistic or fanciful. Watching it twenty-six years later, there’s a sense that whatever interplanetary missions we eventually undertake will look an awful lot like this, at least on a day-to-day level. Such a realization feels both daunting and exciting. The world didn’t move in the direction the film predicted, and space travel in particular has been short on achieving its promise. Still, the honesty throughout redeems the ending (if just barely) from the cosmic hokum of too much modern sci-fi, helping us believe something wonderful might and still actually happen. That’s no little accomplishment, for a sequel or any other kind of movie.
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One of the most frequently heard gripes about American cinema the last couple of years is that adult movies – films made for grown-ups, about grown-up issues or at least matters relevant to audiences over 30 years old – are on the wane. It’s wondered if people who aren’t in college, or better yet high school, haven’t got the time to trek to a movie theatre and sit still for two hours. (Note to Hollywood: these days most of us are working too hard.) Films made for this demographic, the occasional romcom aside, don’t do as well as the superhero and vampire fluff that have become the studios’ meat and potatoes.
Uptight couple Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have hit a rough spot in their marriage, largely from their inability to have a child. Strapped for cash and desperate to make their marriage work, they approach five of their friends – two other couples and a recently-divorced male (Favreau and Kristin Davis, Vaughn and Malin Ackerman, Faizon Love) – with a group-rate package vacation to Eden, a tropical resort that doubles as therapeutic boot camp for troubled marriages. The couples agree, with Love’s hapless Shane bringing along his party-hardy 20-year old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk). Once at the resort the couples’ plans for a vacation are foiled by resort regulations that demand they engage in therapy and communication skill-building sessions.
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Posted by Screaming Blue Reviews 
