We all recognize them: Charlotte (Kristen Davis), the perkily anal brunette, Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the dirty blonde sex-addict, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), the flame-haired ball-busting attorney, and Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), that blond again/brown again writer-heroine...in love? The hair colors of the neo-Fab Four, and that last question, are posed as a way of cutting straight to the quick - that is, both the glam artifice represented by the quartet's chic 'dos and that timeless romantic interrogative (He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me...) take center stage in Michael Patrick King's tart, emotionally sweeping, way too satisfying Sex and the City.
King's film, based on the show of the same name that ran on HBO for six years (well, like, duh), is at once both true to the soul of the series, and a very necesary tweak. As an inheritor to Sex's throne, the movie would have to have a few things as a prerequisite, or else though certainly it had been made, they would not come. The requirements: each of the gals had to be back, and I mean actually back, with seperate storylines and everything; the biggest of the storylines from the show had to be carried on through (e.g., Carrie and Big's, the wealthy financier played by Chris Noth, romance, always a plot staple); and each of those fortysomethings had to look good - scratch that, damn good - traipsing up and down and all around New York City. The good news is that each of the three items on the above checklist is satisfied and thus, so is the long-time fan. The even better news is that for those people out in Great Ol' America who actually, you know, like movies, Sex will satisfy you to. Part of the reason is that it sweeps up all the newbies real quick like in the opening sequence, schooling us in whats been going on with who and how according to Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha. The even bigger reason though is that King, as writer-director, has the savvy talent to expand the canvas of the girl's emotional landscapes (accordingly the narrative potential follows suit) so that most of what's put on screen is both reliably stylish and quick, but also unexpectedly meaty and unfurling (as it should be, with a running time of about 140 minutes).
It goes like this: four years after the series finale, Carrie and Big are still in love, and still living in seperate apartments (their house hunting opens the film); Miranda and Steve (David Eigenberg) are still married...in Brooklyn; Charlotte and Henry Goldenblatt (Evan Handler) are still in perfect familial bliss, even with their adopted chinese daughter; and Samantha is still in L.A. with Smith (Jason Lewis), her sexy matinee idol. From these four romantic set-ups springs a plethora of drama, the largest of it centering around Carrie's marriage to Big. And the aftermath. (Don't worry, no spoilers here!) People are cheated on, knocked up, knocked down, hired, yelled at, cried on, and so forth. It's a messy and generous heart King, as writer and director, has tapped into. But he does it (mostly) with a deft grace, always lacing his rocky terrain of love with wit. Plus, for all those times the girls are breaking down or breaking up (or really, even if they're just standing on a street corner), they look...well...like you'd expect the cast of Sex and the City to look: great, gorgeous, stunning. In Carrie's New York, Fashion is God - and I'd be a liar to say watching them worship it isn't some sort of ocular nirvana.
Still, does one come to a movie to experience, or to take notes for Fashion Week? (On second thought, knowing my audience, don't answer that.) As an experience, Sex is gratifying across the board. As a director, King stages everything according to the cosmopolitan rhythms of his show, but he also lets a little punk-soul moderninity slip through, all for the better of course. And as the four muses of his camera, the cast is as good as their clothes. (Which means if you've been paying attention, they're pretty hot stuff.) Cythia Nixon, as the flintiest of the four, has the claws of a Fury and the brittle facade of an abuse victim, both of which mesh into one high-wire, compulsively wrenching performance. Kim Cattrall, as the vixen-cougar (and oldest) of the bunch, has comic timing to spare. Kristen Davis is the cove, the sole part of the whole with minimum neurosis, and in that her work is almost soothing. And then there is Sarah Jessica Parker (or henceforth, SJP): she's not just the star - she's the soul. And as is necesitated from her to sustain such a picture as this, as an actress, she has never been finer. She's older, more lined with weary, but she's also smarter, and rarely have I seen her unique gift - she makes humor seem the very soul of enlightenment.
Now, though, I have to be a downer. Because for a movie in which so much goes right, a lot of little things go wrong. For example: when Jennifer Hudson shows up as SJP's personal assistant, her resulting presence and "character arc" feel overly delicate at best, and at worst forced. And the Samantha/Smith sequences have poignance by their collective end, but it feels like a throwaway (and is thus roughly a layer too thin). Plus, the climactic wedding veers far too deep into Big. Teary. Melodramatic. Confrontation! (I almost laughed watching it in the theater, seriously.) Really though, I quibble. The script is a thing of delightful intelligence and warmth; and it feels good as an audience to sit back for once and have a film unfold before you for hours like a fat novel or a good seven course meal. In fact, I think Sex and the City is more like a great dinner than we realize: it's got fizz to help it go down quick, an aftertaste of richness and emotional piquance, and once it settles into your gut and heart - a very warm, enjoyable glow.
Friday, June 6, 2008
No Country for Old Men: A-
There's a scene that occurs in Martin Scorsese's 2006 splatterific The Departed just as it's getting geared up: Matt Damon - wound into infinite coils of paranoia, cunning, and self-loathing - is being stalked through the dark back streets of Boston, and as the seconds tick by he jolts and slips through the darkness with ever-increasing urgency (the camera rollicking right along with him in spasms of uncertainty and dread). The nerve-jangling suspense of that chase scene is bone-deep but it lasts not even a few minutes; that same feeling thrums throughout No Country for Old Men for hours (two and some change, to be precise). Where The Departed subsisted mostly on the snappy bad-cop/good-cop/tired-cop schematics of Scorsese's filmmaking, No Country is intrinsically tied into the sort of neo-gothic-Western Cormac McCarthy has made his bread and butter (no surprise then to find the film is based on one of his books). It's lean and quiet, sprawlingly dark, and (on that rare wry occasion) just really, really, entertaining.
Such facets of quality have been served up by Joel and Ethan Coen which is ironic - or in the case of the Coen brothers: ironically ironic - because Country would have best been made by the two of them about twenty years ago, just right after their breakthough noir Blood Simple. It has a lot of stylistic similarities to Simple: sparse but beautifully expansive aesthetic; recurring episodes of fatal violence. Plus, had it been released in 1988 instead of 2007, it wouldn't have shocked audiences too long used to the ol' Coen style: smugly over-ironized black comedies. As it was, the film did indeed shock them; but after that initial gasp (of uncertainty, maybe even fear) came a few more (of delight, of fascination). And then there were the questions. How did they translate McCarthy's cauterized and searing prose into something like this (through something like the Coen Schtick)? How did they do it after so long away from their masterpiece-making roots (last seen presumably with 1996's Fargo)?
Whatever or however, I'm now a believer. The film, which opens with a Tommy Lee Jones voice-over (always a treat) and goes on to tell the story of how one Texas hunter (Josh Brolin) finds two million dollars and then must run for his life from the guy who wants it back (Javier Bardem, chilling even in his wack-a-do haircut), is so perfectly observed, so fundamentally right in its execution, one wonders whether the brothers shouldn't just go ahead and adapt the whole McCarthy library. Rising to any and all challenges is the cast, bleak and battered every one, of which Bardem and Jones, as the small-town sheriff trying also to track Brolin down, are the exceptional standouts. They wince and straight-face and even (in the case of Jones) twinkle with bare-bones wisdom at all the right moments, with all the right amounts of energy. It takes a certain sort of performer to handle the Coen's dialogue and filmmaking technique. Frances McDormand could do it; and now, apparently, so can the good ol' Texans of No Country for Old Men.
In terms of verbal translation, nothing is lost. What's more, and though I've yet to read the literary source, one imagines a little something is gained as the tale transitions to the silver screen. There is a dash of wry wit biting into the edges of the film, relieving your high adrenaline-levels when you least expect it with morbid laughter. But the laughter is the exception: usually you'll just be gripping the seat cushions. Part of this lies in the nature of the story (i.e., there is something innately dreadful about a psychopath who will just not stop) but the bigger part lies in the talents of the writer-director duo who have so subtly but delightfully re-discovered their gifts. There is not a beat missed throughout the movie, not a shot out of place, and even though the underlying mayhem that served as a catalyst for the plot is a little murky, the resutling mayhem is crystal-clear in its bruise-black insistence. Though No Country seems to start to lurch in its last twenty minutes, never does a viewer get seasick. All credit is therefore due to Joel and Ethan Coen - a pair of anarchic filmmakers who turned down their smiling tongues-in-cheek just to turn up the admiration on their fine, fine legacy.
Such facets of quality have been served up by Joel and Ethan Coen which is ironic - or in the case of the Coen brothers: ironically ironic - because Country would have best been made by the two of them about twenty years ago, just right after their breakthough noir Blood Simple. It has a lot of stylistic similarities to Simple: sparse but beautifully expansive aesthetic; recurring episodes of fatal violence. Plus, had it been released in 1988 instead of 2007, it wouldn't have shocked audiences too long used to the ol' Coen style: smugly over-ironized black comedies. As it was, the film did indeed shock them; but after that initial gasp (of uncertainty, maybe even fear) came a few more (of delight, of fascination). And then there were the questions. How did they translate McCarthy's cauterized and searing prose into something like this (through something like the Coen Schtick)? How did they do it after so long away from their masterpiece-making roots (last seen presumably with 1996's Fargo)?
Whatever or however, I'm now a believer. The film, which opens with a Tommy Lee Jones voice-over (always a treat) and goes on to tell the story of how one Texas hunter (Josh Brolin) finds two million dollars and then must run for his life from the guy who wants it back (Javier Bardem, chilling even in his wack-a-do haircut), is so perfectly observed, so fundamentally right in its execution, one wonders whether the brothers shouldn't just go ahead and adapt the whole McCarthy library. Rising to any and all challenges is the cast, bleak and battered every one, of which Bardem and Jones, as the small-town sheriff trying also to track Brolin down, are the exceptional standouts. They wince and straight-face and even (in the case of Jones) twinkle with bare-bones wisdom at all the right moments, with all the right amounts of energy. It takes a certain sort of performer to handle the Coen's dialogue and filmmaking technique. Frances McDormand could do it; and now, apparently, so can the good ol' Texans of No Country for Old Men.
In terms of verbal translation, nothing is lost. What's more, and though I've yet to read the literary source, one imagines a little something is gained as the tale transitions to the silver screen. There is a dash of wry wit biting into the edges of the film, relieving your high adrenaline-levels when you least expect it with morbid laughter. But the laughter is the exception: usually you'll just be gripping the seat cushions. Part of this lies in the nature of the story (i.e., there is something innately dreadful about a psychopath who will just not stop) but the bigger part lies in the talents of the writer-director duo who have so subtly but delightfully re-discovered their gifts. There is not a beat missed throughout the movie, not a shot out of place, and even though the underlying mayhem that served as a catalyst for the plot is a little murky, the resutling mayhem is crystal-clear in its bruise-black insistence. Though No Country seems to start to lurch in its last twenty minutes, never does a viewer get seasick. All credit is therefore due to Joel and Ethan Coen - a pair of anarchic filmmakers who turned down their smiling tongues-in-cheek just to turn up the admiration on their fine, fine legacy.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: B
There's a fascinating bit of symmetrical history running behind-the-scenes of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the likes of which twists lips with its light-fingered and fitting irony. And it is this: sixty years ago, C.S. Lewis was many things - scholar, converted Christian, dabbler in science-fiction - but definitely not a children's author. And then came his Narnia series. By a similar turn, writer-director Andrew Adamson was considered several things before the winter of 2005 - a visual effects supervisor of the mid-to-late '90s, an anarchic force behind the galvnizingly riotous Shrek and its slightly-less-sparkly sequel Shrek 2, and even (in a rare case) a songwriter - but he was most definitely not the sort to undertake the task of adapting Lewis' worthily treasured adventure series that was really an allegory cloaked in twinkling myth. Yet just as the public must have done in the fall of the '40s, so too must we: acquiesce to the notion that not only could one man turn the story of Christ into a cherished bedtime story, but so too could another man turn that same tale into a perfectly adequate and satisfying film.
The story goes like this: siblings Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Poppelwell), Edmund (Skander Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley) have been back in England about a year since their adventures in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when one puff on a magic horn (the air for said puff having been supplied by our titular prince, played in a pouty rustling smolder by Ben Barnes, on the run) sends them right back into the land of Narnia. Except it seems that their one year on accidental hiatus has been 1,300 to their once-kingdom. And in their absence, a substitute royal hierarchy has taken their place - aptly given a menacing label, the Telmarines - and in the absence of the children's light and generosity of spirit, a savagery and oppression has cropped up. The magical inhabitants of Narnia (the talking creatures, the dwarves) have been forced into hidden exile under threat of extinction and the heir to the Telmarine throne, Prince Caspian, has been forced to join them - under threat of murder in his sleep by that scheming and bearded uncle of his (Sergio Castellitto). It seems this time, the tyrant isn't the White Witch, but a mere mortal...and a loss of faith?
The goal seems obvious to any reader: dipose the wrongful king with the oppressed forrest critters. And, rightly, does Peter agree with that sentiment. But Lucy keeps insisting that Aslan (Liam Neeson) is hanging about, though the Narnians insist he abandoned their world when the child-kings did. So the ensuing first 100-minutes are a subtle struggle between Peter and his brother and sisters over exactly what course to take, and when, and with whom to guide them. It's all religous allegory of course, and it played better as prose. But if anything, Adamson is more skilled here than he was in Wardrobe at keeping things shuffling along. There's less quaintness about the creatures, and more clang, bang, BOOM. And the story, seemingly slight as it sometimes seems, is surprisingly robust in hindsight (robust enough, anyway, to fill more than two hours).
Adamson, for all the possibility presented him by his own talents as a gleeful satirist, restrains himself admirably by letting just a few twinges of moderninity slip through. The majority of them that do though, aren't very well pulled off (the Susan-Caspian romance is worse still: it's obvious). Except for one: it happens in the final sequence, a (spoiler!) surprise goodbye party for the Pevensie children as they solemnly trudge back to that dreary place called England. Right before they go it's (unsubtlely) let slip that of the four, only Lucy and Edmund can return. Now, I haven't read Narnia books in a while, but I'm pretty sure this little plot turn was written with more finesse by Lewis. No matter, because as all the pieces start to fall into place for the coming franchise of films a lilting Regina Spektor song fills the screen. The melody has all the quiet but scarily-appropriate 21st-century flair the director so rarely pulled off with Caspian.
Not like the movie needs much flair, anyway. It is modeled after a narrative cooked up decades in the past, after all (though as a consequence the dialogue can seem very much like it was uncomfortably plucked from the '50s). But the cast (which includes, in one breathless cameo, Tilda Swinton), of which Moseley is the brooding standout, makes it mostly work. And the overarching film has all the wonder and entertaining expediancy of any good fantasy blockbuster. Lord of the Rings it ain't, but at its best it is an abashedly stodgy family epic that pleases and moralizes in a more than solid ratio. At its worst, that ratio tips the other way and the continual battles and righteous character exchanges in Caspian lose their quaint sparkle and become a crusade.
The story goes like this: siblings Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Poppelwell), Edmund (Skander Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley) have been back in England about a year since their adventures in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when one puff on a magic horn (the air for said puff having been supplied by our titular prince, played in a pouty rustling smolder by Ben Barnes, on the run) sends them right back into the land of Narnia. Except it seems that their one year on accidental hiatus has been 1,300 to their once-kingdom. And in their absence, a substitute royal hierarchy has taken their place - aptly given a menacing label, the Telmarines - and in the absence of the children's light and generosity of spirit, a savagery and oppression has cropped up. The magical inhabitants of Narnia (the talking creatures, the dwarves) have been forced into hidden exile under threat of extinction and the heir to the Telmarine throne, Prince Caspian, has been forced to join them - under threat of murder in his sleep by that scheming and bearded uncle of his (Sergio Castellitto). It seems this time, the tyrant isn't the White Witch, but a mere mortal...and a loss of faith?
The goal seems obvious to any reader: dipose the wrongful king with the oppressed forrest critters. And, rightly, does Peter agree with that sentiment. But Lucy keeps insisting that Aslan (Liam Neeson) is hanging about, though the Narnians insist he abandoned their world when the child-kings did. So the ensuing first 100-minutes are a subtle struggle between Peter and his brother and sisters over exactly what course to take, and when, and with whom to guide them. It's all religous allegory of course, and it played better as prose. But if anything, Adamson is more skilled here than he was in Wardrobe at keeping things shuffling along. There's less quaintness about the creatures, and more clang, bang, BOOM. And the story, seemingly slight as it sometimes seems, is surprisingly robust in hindsight (robust enough, anyway, to fill more than two hours).
Adamson, for all the possibility presented him by his own talents as a gleeful satirist, restrains himself admirably by letting just a few twinges of moderninity slip through. The majority of them that do though, aren't very well pulled off (the Susan-Caspian romance is worse still: it's obvious). Except for one: it happens in the final sequence, a (spoiler!) surprise goodbye party for the Pevensie children as they solemnly trudge back to that dreary place called England. Right before they go it's (unsubtlely) let slip that of the four, only Lucy and Edmund can return. Now, I haven't read Narnia books in a while, but I'm pretty sure this little plot turn was written with more finesse by Lewis. No matter, because as all the pieces start to fall into place for the coming franchise of films a lilting Regina Spektor song fills the screen. The melody has all the quiet but scarily-appropriate 21st-century flair the director so rarely pulled off with Caspian.
Not like the movie needs much flair, anyway. It is modeled after a narrative cooked up decades in the past, after all (though as a consequence the dialogue can seem very much like it was uncomfortably plucked from the '50s). But the cast (which includes, in one breathless cameo, Tilda Swinton), of which Moseley is the brooding standout, makes it mostly work. And the overarching film has all the wonder and entertaining expediancy of any good fantasy blockbuster. Lord of the Rings it ain't, but at its best it is an abashedly stodgy family epic that pleases and moralizes in a more than solid ratio. At its worst, that ratio tips the other way and the continual battles and righteous character exchanges in Caspian lose their quaint sparkle and become a crusade.
King Dork: B+
Minor Spoiler Alert: King Dork ends with the line, "Saying nothing." It's in reference to one of the more fascinating (and by fascinating, in author Frank Portman's world, it is of course meant odd, clever, mildly sinister, stoned, and suburban) of the book's characters: the hero's, Tom Henderson, best - and only - friend, Sam Hellerman. The final line is mentioned for the sake of irony; because for the majority of Dork, pretty much everything is said - everything, for the sake of Portman's debut novel, subbing in for complex conspiracy theories, pointed satirical versions of modern high school social hierarchies, day-to-day accounts of survival at the bottom of said hierarchies, and endless riffs on pop culture. (Or more specifically: rock and roll, young adult fiction dating back to the 60s, and counter-culture movies - Rosemary's Baby, Caririe - from around those years as well.) Basically, in the world of our eponymous hero, a lot happens, is discovered, is learned, isn't learned, is egregiously assumed, or flees town. Or some combination thereof.
But all that stuff happens later on. In the beginning, really there isn't much to the world Tom Henderson (aka King Dork, Chi-Mo, Henderson-fag, or, most oddly, Sheepie) inhabits. It's just him, Sam Hellerman, Hillmont High School, and their pretty-much-imaginary band (which, in one of the novel's most intelligent gags, changes names every few chapters or so - from "Tennis with Guitars" to "Ray Bradbury's Love Camel" to "Easter Monday" and so on). In retrospect, what comes to be the fluffiest layer to a pretty engaging treat is captured with the usual tropes; and Henderson himself is a sharply cynical, witty young-ancient protagonist. But after more than 100 pages, it all gets tiresome. Scratch that, after about eighteen pages, it begins to wear thin. There is no particular, solitary, fault. Really it's just that, lacking the angsty heft of something like Special Topics in Calamity Physics, all the verbal wunderkid-tricks and clever satire comes to seem a little aimless, angry.
And then Tom finds his dad's old copy of Catcher in the Rye, and everything starts to change. It should be mentioned that Tom despises (at least for the majority of the novel) Rye. He hate hate hate hate hates it. And the idea that such a flagrant object of his contempt can come to hold so many secrets and fodder for, as he would call it, "a pretty flimsy," if not wholly unimportant, "character arc," is a running theme throughout the book: that things aren't always what they seem, but what they truly are isn't all that different from the illusion you originally held. King Dork holds to this notion pretty steadfastly as well. The reader starts out with the idea this is another overpraised, angrily articulate and intermittently entertaining high school melodrama-athon. But then the reader reads about some cryptic scribbled notes in the margins of the Rye Tom discovered - notes written by his dad, who died mysteriously eight years ago, when he was a child - and their perceptions start to shift. Not entirely, granted, but what once seemed to be aimlessly aggressive, even wearying, becomes a mostly rich endeavor about the life of an entirely too smart, entirely too stunted, hero-mensch.
Portman, for his part, is a marvel: he charts the tortures and travails of his too-insane-to-be-real high schol with consistency, unvailing the darker flairs of his murkier conspiracy with near-perfect timing, Plus his character voices, the majority of which are almost always filtered through Tom's bitter sentimentality, are spot-on. What Dork lacks in early motivation (reader-directed, anyway) it makes up for in the end with sharp humor and a jagged compassion that is at once hard-won and winningly gooey. What happened, or didn't, to Tom's dad may be ultimately of little importance. But the journey he starts on because of it means the world, both for what it sincerely reveals about a teenager's life (e.g., that step-parents can be annoying and likable in the same moment; that assistant principles are usually in league with Satan; that twelve-year old little sisters usually only show physical affection when they cry) and for what cliches it overlooks.
But all that stuff happens later on. In the beginning, really there isn't much to the world Tom Henderson (aka King Dork, Chi-Mo, Henderson-fag, or, most oddly, Sheepie) inhabits. It's just him, Sam Hellerman, Hillmont High School, and their pretty-much-imaginary band (which, in one of the novel's most intelligent gags, changes names every few chapters or so - from "Tennis with Guitars" to "Ray Bradbury's Love Camel" to "Easter Monday" and so on). In retrospect, what comes to be the fluffiest layer to a pretty engaging treat is captured with the usual tropes; and Henderson himself is a sharply cynical, witty young-ancient protagonist. But after more than 100 pages, it all gets tiresome. Scratch that, after about eighteen pages, it begins to wear thin. There is no particular, solitary, fault. Really it's just that, lacking the angsty heft of something like Special Topics in Calamity Physics, all the verbal wunderkid-tricks and clever satire comes to seem a little aimless, angry.
And then Tom finds his dad's old copy of Catcher in the Rye, and everything starts to change. It should be mentioned that Tom despises (at least for the majority of the novel) Rye. He hate hate hate hate hates it. And the idea that such a flagrant object of his contempt can come to hold so many secrets and fodder for, as he would call it, "a pretty flimsy," if not wholly unimportant, "character arc," is a running theme throughout the book: that things aren't always what they seem, but what they truly are isn't all that different from the illusion you originally held. King Dork holds to this notion pretty steadfastly as well. The reader starts out with the idea this is another overpraised, angrily articulate and intermittently entertaining high school melodrama-athon. But then the reader reads about some cryptic scribbled notes in the margins of the Rye Tom discovered - notes written by his dad, who died mysteriously eight years ago, when he was a child - and their perceptions start to shift. Not entirely, granted, but what once seemed to be aimlessly aggressive, even wearying, becomes a mostly rich endeavor about the life of an entirely too smart, entirely too stunted, hero-mensch.
Portman, for his part, is a marvel: he charts the tortures and travails of his too-insane-to-be-real high schol with consistency, unvailing the darker flairs of his murkier conspiracy with near-perfect timing, Plus his character voices, the majority of which are almost always filtered through Tom's bitter sentimentality, are spot-on. What Dork lacks in early motivation (reader-directed, anyway) it makes up for in the end with sharp humor and a jagged compassion that is at once hard-won and winningly gooey. What happened, or didn't, to Tom's dad may be ultimately of little importance. But the journey he starts on because of it means the world, both for what it sincerely reveals about a teenager's life (e.g., that step-parents can be annoying and likable in the same moment; that assistant principles are usually in league with Satan; that twelve-year old little sisters usually only show physical affection when they cry) and for what cliches it overlooks.
Chicago: A
O.J. Simpson. Now that's a name to raise voices and blood pressures. But it also raises memories - about his infamous trial more than ten years ago, about Johnny Cochran's infamous methods (or antics, depending on which side of the fence you sit on). And for those of us who were more musically-inclined, another memory raised is also of the 1995 Broadway revival of Bob Fosse's Chicago - a quainter, more appealing delight twenty years after the debut of his cynical original staging that transcended the stage and captivated auidences everywhere. Its dissection of the "celebrity criminal" was never so apt, and its numbers never so scorchingly now.
Ok, I stretch (a little).
But still, the revival was an event of sorts. And eight years after it, director Rob Marhsall's film version is no exception. There is no longer any one case to dominate the zeigeist, and make even more relevant the tone of the Kander & Ebb musical, but somehow our now inundated, fractured, media-obsessed consciousness is in even more need of addressing - in even more need of a good dressing down in a fancy dress and a snazzy tune. Accordingly: the story of Roxie Hart's (Renée Zellweger, giving the performance of her career) trial after she kills her lover, and the various charlatans and assorted characters she encounters on "Murderess Row" at the Cook County Jail. Foremost among them are Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones, also hot), a former vaudevillain herself, "Mama" Morton (Queen Latifah), who is both the warden and shadiest person in the prison, and Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), the most in-demand criminal lawyer in Illinois.
Chicago is a satire, and a very smart one at that; and it can occasionally veer into poignance and drama. But first and always it is a musical (and one originally concieved, choreographed, co-written, and directed by Bob Fosse), and to that end there are more than a handful of numbers. I'm told that on stage, the songs were vaudeville acts that propulsed the plot, but on the screen Rob Marshall's angle is to have them presented as fantastic products of Roxie's day-dreaming side (narrated by the silken tones of Taye Diggs, of course). However they go down, the end result is the same. That is to say: no matter where or when the show-opening "All That Jazz," or "Funny Honey" or "Nowadays" or "Roxie" or "When You're Good to Mama" were being belted, they'd still be fantastic.
It is a remarkably adroit screenplay by Bill Condon - who would later put his many talents to good use fashioning a film version of Dreamgirls - that strips the actual spoken dialogue down to its most fundamental and miraculous necesities. And it is a remarkable job by Marshall for reinterpreting Fosse's famously dense dance steps for a modern age hungering for retro-whatever. (Kudos to him as well for bathing each scene in a seperate neon, therefore constantly demanding our attention.) And above both of them lord the cast (which also includes John C. Reilly as Roxie's hapless hubby, Amos) who tear and claw through their roles with such vicious, deliriously entertaining pastiche the audience can only sit back and gape. Remember O.J. Simpson both before and after viewing Chicago. Do it beforehand to check your own mindset before strapping in for a glitzy, unabashedly and acridly glamorous musical. Do it after to re-assess the acute accuracy of a movie based on a musical based on a play based on events nearly 100 years old. There is a prophetic power to what drives Marshall's film: a coy, lean, and greedy pulse that mocks itself and taunts the audience for loving it. Whatever. You don't need to puzzle through Chicago, you merely need to laugh at it and then laugh at yourself for doing so.
Ok, I stretch (a little).
But still, the revival was an event of sorts. And eight years after it, director Rob Marhsall's film version is no exception. There is no longer any one case to dominate the zeigeist, and make even more relevant the tone of the Kander & Ebb musical, but somehow our now inundated, fractured, media-obsessed consciousness is in even more need of addressing - in even more need of a good dressing down in a fancy dress and a snazzy tune. Accordingly: the story of Roxie Hart's (Renée Zellweger, giving the performance of her career) trial after she kills her lover, and the various charlatans and assorted characters she encounters on "Murderess Row" at the Cook County Jail. Foremost among them are Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones, also hot), a former vaudevillain herself, "Mama" Morton (Queen Latifah), who is both the warden and shadiest person in the prison, and Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), the most in-demand criminal lawyer in Illinois.
Chicago is a satire, and a very smart one at that; and it can occasionally veer into poignance and drama. But first and always it is a musical (and one originally concieved, choreographed, co-written, and directed by Bob Fosse), and to that end there are more than a handful of numbers. I'm told that on stage, the songs were vaudeville acts that propulsed the plot, but on the screen Rob Marshall's angle is to have them presented as fantastic products of Roxie's day-dreaming side (narrated by the silken tones of Taye Diggs, of course). However they go down, the end result is the same. That is to say: no matter where or when the show-opening "All That Jazz," or "Funny Honey" or "Nowadays" or "Roxie" or "When You're Good to Mama" were being belted, they'd still be fantastic.
It is a remarkably adroit screenplay by Bill Condon - who would later put his many talents to good use fashioning a film version of Dreamgirls - that strips the actual spoken dialogue down to its most fundamental and miraculous necesities. And it is a remarkable job by Marshall for reinterpreting Fosse's famously dense dance steps for a modern age hungering for retro-whatever. (Kudos to him as well for bathing each scene in a seperate neon, therefore constantly demanding our attention.) And above both of them lord the cast (which also includes John C. Reilly as Roxie's hapless hubby, Amos) who tear and claw through their roles with such vicious, deliriously entertaining pastiche the audience can only sit back and gape. Remember O.J. Simpson both before and after viewing Chicago. Do it beforehand to check your own mindset before strapping in for a glitzy, unabashedly and acridly glamorous musical. Do it after to re-assess the acute accuracy of a movie based on a musical based on a play based on events nearly 100 years old. There is a prophetic power to what drives Marshall's film: a coy, lean, and greedy pulse that mocks itself and taunts the audience for loving it. Whatever. You don't need to puzzle through Chicago, you merely need to laugh at it and then laugh at yourself for doing so.
L.A. Confidential: A
In Los Angeles, in the 50s, there was in fact a magazine named Confidential. It specialized in breathless exposes of crime, and drugs, and sex...all with beautiful, photo-friendly, victims of course. It was the periodical of its day, but it also suffered a fate now no tabloid would ever allow itself to be ensnared it: the lawsuit. And as quickly as Confidential came around, so it left. But its influence is markedly apparent on many things, not the least of which is Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential, and not the least because its look and feel promise a seething underworld caper, and then deliver in full.
Phsyically the magazine shows up in the movie as Hush-Hush, the rag published by Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) - a sleazy and snobby man in the vein of most DeVito characters who delivers the opening monologue of the film in a tone of acrid capriciousness - but spiritually, the tone of that real-life pre-tabloid hovers over and inspires Hanson's picture; it induces us, teases us, into the gray area between all great This-or-Thats: morality, ethical behavior, image, reality, romance - to L.A. Confidential it might all just come with a disclaimer: "Subject to Change." Yet in the exploration of that moral and emotional twilight that the period dwelt in, the director (and his co-screenwriter, Brian Helgeland) teases out not just a great film noir, but also a compelling character study with attractive noir underpinings. At most times, in fact, they intermingle, fighting over thematic prominence on the screen. This is a film dedicated to the period atmosphere, but not to the actual period: we as the audience are treated to all the neccessary 50s trappings (the Jazz, the cars) without being condescended to them.
The nature of such entertainment - what allows the watcher to relish the details as yet another contemporary/period twist - springs directly from the work being done. L.A. Confidential is based on a novel by James Ellroy (whose work inspired 2006's far more lackluster The Black Dahlia), an author whose work came decades after the literary noir renaissance yet still managed to live up to Chandler and the like. His secret, and its a secret that transposes itself easily over the film as well, is in his sardonic tribute and deconstruction of the pulpy noir. Ellroy can look back and see Los Angeles for the monolith of corruption it was, but also find an inner well of self-deprecation. (This was the City of Angels at a time when such celestial beings were probably off vacationing in Seattle.)
As a filmmaker, Curtis Hanson uses that as his starting point - indeed, its mark is all over the opening sequence - only to then build on and flesh out that idea. He and Helgeland condense the original's famously thick plot without once losing sight of their main characters. In telling the story of how three cops - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Bud White (Russell Crowe), and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) - become embroiled in a series of mob hits and random massacres that never seem to add up, L.A. Confidential never loses its audience in turn to each turn of the characters, as they guide themselves along the poorly-lit and twisty corridor of The Plot. Each man starts out as a corrupt lout, or a careerist prick, or some combination of the two. But by film's end, as in all good film noirs, there is a measure of appropriate redemption. And during film's journey, as in all good film noirs, there is more than an appropriate measure of wit, sex, sleaze, and bullets flying into skulls.
As the man who would later direct the flirty, flinty, chick flick In Her Shoes, the half-baked Lucky You, and the up-from-the-streets rab fable (that made a movie star out of Eminem) 8 Mile, Hanson shows a striking aptitude for bending steamy period convention to his talented hand. In my mind, the best example of this isn't in his translation of the story (it still occasionally loses a viewer or two along the way) but in the character he's created as the femme fatale: Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), a high-class prostitute with an eerie resemblence to Veronica Lake. Lynn, as both a woman and a character, is remarkable in that she alone sees her motivations for what they are throughout the film; and Basinger, both as a woman and an actress, is remarkable for what she does with that weary belief in herself: she twists each word of her dialogue into a sexy come-on that echoes years of ache - and as she finishes speaking, her lips perpetually turn-up at the ends in some mockery of ironic foreplay. Its a delightful, finely-wrought performance. And she stands at the forefront of the cast, who does great work themselves. Together, they keep the narrative gears in motion, and the deeply entertaining film they're acting in, well, deeply entertaining. L.A. Confidential is almost tonally flawless (though, as much as it gave me a guilty thrill, the whole "Bud White & Ed Exley: Best Friends Forever!" ending gave me some pause), and, at 138-minutes, extraordinarily satisfying. It demands your full attention while watching, so as not to miss one solitary rich detail, but it then rewards that attention double throughout.
Phsyically the magazine shows up in the movie as Hush-Hush, the rag published by Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) - a sleazy and snobby man in the vein of most DeVito characters who delivers the opening monologue of the film in a tone of acrid capriciousness - but spiritually, the tone of that real-life pre-tabloid hovers over and inspires Hanson's picture; it induces us, teases us, into the gray area between all great This-or-Thats: morality, ethical behavior, image, reality, romance - to L.A. Confidential it might all just come with a disclaimer: "Subject to Change." Yet in the exploration of that moral and emotional twilight that the period dwelt in, the director (and his co-screenwriter, Brian Helgeland) teases out not just a great film noir, but also a compelling character study with attractive noir underpinings. At most times, in fact, they intermingle, fighting over thematic prominence on the screen. This is a film dedicated to the period atmosphere, but not to the actual period: we as the audience are treated to all the neccessary 50s trappings (the Jazz, the cars) without being condescended to them.
The nature of such entertainment - what allows the watcher to relish the details as yet another contemporary/period twist - springs directly from the work being done. L.A. Confidential is based on a novel by James Ellroy (whose work inspired 2006's far more lackluster The Black Dahlia), an author whose work came decades after the literary noir renaissance yet still managed to live up to Chandler and the like. His secret, and its a secret that transposes itself easily over the film as well, is in his sardonic tribute and deconstruction of the pulpy noir. Ellroy can look back and see Los Angeles for the monolith of corruption it was, but also find an inner well of self-deprecation. (This was the City of Angels at a time when such celestial beings were probably off vacationing in Seattle.)
As a filmmaker, Curtis Hanson uses that as his starting point - indeed, its mark is all over the opening sequence - only to then build on and flesh out that idea. He and Helgeland condense the original's famously thick plot without once losing sight of their main characters. In telling the story of how three cops - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Bud White (Russell Crowe), and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) - become embroiled in a series of mob hits and random massacres that never seem to add up, L.A. Confidential never loses its audience in turn to each turn of the characters, as they guide themselves along the poorly-lit and twisty corridor of The Plot. Each man starts out as a corrupt lout, or a careerist prick, or some combination of the two. But by film's end, as in all good film noirs, there is a measure of appropriate redemption. And during film's journey, as in all good film noirs, there is more than an appropriate measure of wit, sex, sleaze, and bullets flying into skulls.
As the man who would later direct the flirty, flinty, chick flick In Her Shoes, the half-baked Lucky You, and the up-from-the-streets rab fable (that made a movie star out of Eminem) 8 Mile, Hanson shows a striking aptitude for bending steamy period convention to his talented hand. In my mind, the best example of this isn't in his translation of the story (it still occasionally loses a viewer or two along the way) but in the character he's created as the femme fatale: Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), a high-class prostitute with an eerie resemblence to Veronica Lake. Lynn, as both a woman and a character, is remarkable in that she alone sees her motivations for what they are throughout the film; and Basinger, both as a woman and an actress, is remarkable for what she does with that weary belief in herself: she twists each word of her dialogue into a sexy come-on that echoes years of ache - and as she finishes speaking, her lips perpetually turn-up at the ends in some mockery of ironic foreplay. Its a delightful, finely-wrought performance. And she stands at the forefront of the cast, who does great work themselves. Together, they keep the narrative gears in motion, and the deeply entertaining film they're acting in, well, deeply entertaining. L.A. Confidential is almost tonally flawless (though, as much as it gave me a guilty thrill, the whole "Bud White & Ed Exley: Best Friends Forever!" ending gave me some pause), and, at 138-minutes, extraordinarily satisfying. It demands your full attention while watching, so as not to miss one solitary rich detail, but it then rewards that attention double throughout.
Rent: A-
It was panned by critics; and it was a tepid box office hit, at best. Yet when Rent came out in 2005, brought from the stage to the screen by director Chris Columbus and with a script by The Perks of Being a Wallflower's Stephen Chbosky, I fell in love. Hard. I melted at the cascading melody of "Seasons of Love." I leapt at the brassy defiance of "Take Me Or Leave Me." And "La Vie Boheme"? There are not words. Yet, three years later - with the DVD and soundtrack collection on endless roatation in both my head, stereo, and television - I'd never seen the original. I adored Jonathan Larson's music, and was in ever increasing rapt fixation with Columbus' film, but I had yet to sit myself down in a theatre seat and experience Rent: The Musical.
No longer. Last night, a mere four rows from the stage, I watched the original, the two hour-ish rock opera, in all its big, messy, brilliant glory. And as much as I was floored by my first experience with "Another Day," or "Out Tonight," I was equally astounded here - albeit in a curiously different manner.
As a film, Rent turned musical expression into a form of musical protest: each duet was really a layered, soaring argument of the sexes, the heart, and the mind - with the cast alternately fighting each other, The System, themselves. It leapt from the opening aria of the aforementioned "Love," straight into the gritty urban protest of "Rent," and then on to the sexy on-again/off-again dating/break-up duets of "Light My Candle" and "Tango: Maureen," and then finally ending the first act with another protest - "Over the Moon" - only to end right back where it started, with "Seasons of Love."
As a musical production, however, Rent is nowhere near as sophisticated, as (odd as it seems) cohesively linear. Its a rock opera, and it ably takes up that genre's tendency for complex compositions to another level. And as an energetic production, I doubt it has an equal. But an irritating side-note of these two attributes is that for the majority of the first act, and some of the second, the individual numbers get a little lost in the chaos. To wit, of all the major numbers in the first hour and a half, only "Tango: Maureen," "Over the Moon," and "One Song Glory" really pop. Everything else (like, sadly, "Out Tonight," or "Rent") merely registers as more great, almost generic, music in a night filled with the stuff.
Yet take heart. Because the nearly goofy vibe that permeates this production, orchaestrated undoubtably by director Michael Greif, gives way to the tragedy and poignancy that resonates through Rent's second act, and more of those songs connect (most notably "Goodbye Love"). Columbus did a wise re-structuring in his film version, and the music that he did cut away shows up as dialogue in Chbosky's script. (This is a clever move, and it can work, but in turning the "Voice Mail" numbers into spoken word, something inevitably is lost...namely, Alexi Darling.) It is such that, there is more individual connection on screen than on stage. But why then did I come away feeling that the original opera is better than the film musical? The answer lies in a crucial performance currency that Rent possesses in spades (ironic, considering the characters are so poor, plagued by the titular bill): that is, a rambling and propulsive zest.
For example, a chunk of the show's score is in about a dozen group or chorus numbers ("Christmas Bells," "We're Okay") that lack much narrative-driven purpose. But they work anyway. In fact, and as previously hinted, some of them work very well indeed ("Voice Mail 1-5"). Why? Because the night's cast, including two Idol alums (Anwar Robinson as Tom Collins and Heinz Winckler as Roger), is so utterly dedicated to the power of their work. They make the unruly sprawl of their fictionalized lives a joyeous entertainment. More than that, Rent does improve over its film adaptation. Most notably, the documentarian conceit that Mark (Jed Resnick) represents actually works on the stage, his character frequently breaking the fourth wall as a meta-narrator.
Listening as I am now to the film soundtrack, its easy to acquiesce to the idea that the movie is a cleaner and more powerful version. Yet such a notion denies those who think it the opportunity to indulge in the opera; and doing that would be a crucially tragic mistake. Because as Rent: The Musical closes, its principal characters all gathered for the closing "Finale," not only have they enraptured the audience, they've filled them with happiness. With ecstasy.
No longer. Last night, a mere four rows from the stage, I watched the original, the two hour-ish rock opera, in all its big, messy, brilliant glory. And as much as I was floored by my first experience with "Another Day," or "Out Tonight," I was equally astounded here - albeit in a curiously different manner.
As a film, Rent turned musical expression into a form of musical protest: each duet was really a layered, soaring argument of the sexes, the heart, and the mind - with the cast alternately fighting each other, The System, themselves. It leapt from the opening aria of the aforementioned "Love," straight into the gritty urban protest of "Rent," and then on to the sexy on-again/off-again dating/break-up duets of "Light My Candle" and "Tango: Maureen," and then finally ending the first act with another protest - "Over the Moon" - only to end right back where it started, with "Seasons of Love."
As a musical production, however, Rent is nowhere near as sophisticated, as (odd as it seems) cohesively linear. Its a rock opera, and it ably takes up that genre's tendency for complex compositions to another level. And as an energetic production, I doubt it has an equal. But an irritating side-note of these two attributes is that for the majority of the first act, and some of the second, the individual numbers get a little lost in the chaos. To wit, of all the major numbers in the first hour and a half, only "Tango: Maureen," "Over the Moon," and "One Song Glory" really pop. Everything else (like, sadly, "Out Tonight," or "Rent") merely registers as more great, almost generic, music in a night filled with the stuff.
Yet take heart. Because the nearly goofy vibe that permeates this production, orchaestrated undoubtably by director Michael Greif, gives way to the tragedy and poignancy that resonates through Rent's second act, and more of those songs connect (most notably "Goodbye Love"). Columbus did a wise re-structuring in his film version, and the music that he did cut away shows up as dialogue in Chbosky's script. (This is a clever move, and it can work, but in turning the "Voice Mail" numbers into spoken word, something inevitably is lost...namely, Alexi Darling.) It is such that, there is more individual connection on screen than on stage. But why then did I come away feeling that the original opera is better than the film musical? The answer lies in a crucial performance currency that Rent possesses in spades (ironic, considering the characters are so poor, plagued by the titular bill): that is, a rambling and propulsive zest.
For example, a chunk of the show's score is in about a dozen group or chorus numbers ("Christmas Bells," "We're Okay") that lack much narrative-driven purpose. But they work anyway. In fact, and as previously hinted, some of them work very well indeed ("Voice Mail 1-5"). Why? Because the night's cast, including two Idol alums (Anwar Robinson as Tom Collins and Heinz Winckler as Roger), is so utterly dedicated to the power of their work. They make the unruly sprawl of their fictionalized lives a joyeous entertainment. More than that, Rent does improve over its film adaptation. Most notably, the documentarian conceit that Mark (Jed Resnick) represents actually works on the stage, his character frequently breaking the fourth wall as a meta-narrator.
Listening as I am now to the film soundtrack, its easy to acquiesce to the idea that the movie is a cleaner and more powerful version. Yet such a notion denies those who think it the opportunity to indulge in the opera; and doing that would be a crucially tragic mistake. Because as Rent: The Musical closes, its principal characters all gathered for the closing "Finale," not only have they enraptured the audience, they've filled them with happiness. With ecstasy.
Vanity Fair: C+
Late in William Makepeace Thackeray's 19-century satirical epic Vanity Fair, after Rebecca "Becky" Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) has re-emerged once more into the societal fabric of upper-middle class Europe, she charms her way out of poverty and into the graces of her former friend (and suddenly weatlthy widow) Amelia (Romola Garai) with a hilariously articulate "history" of all her past wrongs and set-backs. The intended joke from Thackeray is a layered, complex one: in some sense, we balk at the ludicrousness of her schemes of self-justifications; on another we are to laughably sneer at the hypocrisy of Amelia's heartfelt embrace of her wayward friend the moment she finds Becky has undergone any sort of "struggle"; and on another, we are to chide ourselves for wanting in some small way to see this cunning, avaricious woman succeed. Yet nowhere was it intended for Becky Sharp's madly overripe, desperate personal histories to be taken for truth, or for any prospective audience to retrospectively label Ms. Sharp, through the lens of all her "heartaches," an empowered feminist, or worse, heroine. But that is exactly what happens in the modern, Mira Nair-directed and Julian Fellowes-written, screen version of Vanity Fair.
It is a massive mistake for such a task to be undertaken, the results of which will be expounded on below, but foremost among the follies is that the original version of Becky Sharp is a fascinating, compulsively likeable character. Vanity Fair is famously subtitled "The Novel Without a Hero," and while some claim Amelia as the exception to such a rule, very few could be tricked in finding traditional Victorian merits of heroic behavior with Becky Sharp. In her very quest to be a lady, a figure of society, she should be applauded, especially as she so connives in public for the very same things her more dainty compatriots scheme for in private. In her reckoning, "I must be my own mama," and set up not only a profitable marriage, with money to spare, but a niche in the best halls of London all her own. In the novel, what then ensues is 800 pages of her quest for just these things, and her presence on the pages is a beneficial, two-sided, thing: on one hand she is our entrance into the glamorous balls and soirees and scandals of London society (since presumably both she and the reader are outsiders), and on the other she is the perfect satiric subject - heedless and intelligent, cold and "warm," perpetually searching for something she occasionally posesses (only to throw it away looking for something better). She is a complex, fiery, indelible creation. At the time of the novel's publishing, there were none who were her equal.
As a film's hero, however, she has obvious cinematic progenitors. Her DNA can be traced all the way back through Elle Woods, a previous Witherspoon creation who was far more suited to her own movie, and up to Scarlet O' Hara. As an O' Hara-descendant though Becky is a disgrace, as is the film for dampening her fun (and our's at watching her) in pursuit of a period-piece with feminist underpinings. The following applies mostly to our "heroine," but also to the film itself: where Ms. O' Hara sought after her heart's desires in measure with her material needs, Rebecca Sharp merely seeks her true love until she doesn't; she is a (supposedly) winning, relatable, plucky governess-turned-soldier's wife who quite spontaneously begins scheming after a man she barely knows, as well as his place in society. The grinding gears of the plot are heard most loudly here, no thanks to Fellowes watered-down adaptation, but at least the audience will thank the change of pace. Watching another minute of Witherspoon parading about, tossing out her one-liners like some British Veronica Mars, as she valiantly tries to make ends meet in a man's world would have been intolerable. And so is the final result of the picture.
William Makepeace Thackery wrote a rambunctious, sprawling attack on Napoleonic British society that was by turns pointedly witty, sentimental, and pointedly witty about its own sentimentality. Mira Nair directed a sprawling saga about finding your place in the world with The Namesake. And Julian Fellowes created a breathlessly arch, sardonic British period-mystery with Gosford Park. So what is keeping the latter two from adapting a sprawling, witty, saga from the former's novel? I'm not quite sure what stopped them, but I imagine whatever compelled them to continue headlong with their production - a movie that oafishly attempts to meld modern feminism with Thackeray's tale - must have been very witless and dull indeed.
"I had thought her a mere social climber, but I see now she is a mountaineer," quips Amelia's mother, Mrs. Sedley (Deborah Findlay) regarding her daughter's on-again off-again friend. It is one of the few delightful bon mots worthy of the original that Fellowes thinks up, but it serves the watcher in hindsight only to remind them what a dull mountaineer Nair and Witherspoon have concocted. For the most part they have a great cast surrounding them (Rome's James Purefoy is pretty winning as Rawdon Crawley, a gambler both entranced and then redeemed through his marriage with Becky), but in watering down and re-imagining the original literary property, they serve not only to confuse and anger those looking to see tribute being payed, but also to confound any audience new to Fair's world; I mean, if Becky Sharp was really such an empowered and sensible woman, what on Earth would she want to do with a world like that?
It is a massive mistake for such a task to be undertaken, the results of which will be expounded on below, but foremost among the follies is that the original version of Becky Sharp is a fascinating, compulsively likeable character. Vanity Fair is famously subtitled "The Novel Without a Hero," and while some claim Amelia as the exception to such a rule, very few could be tricked in finding traditional Victorian merits of heroic behavior with Becky Sharp. In her very quest to be a lady, a figure of society, she should be applauded, especially as she so connives in public for the very same things her more dainty compatriots scheme for in private. In her reckoning, "I must be my own mama," and set up not only a profitable marriage, with money to spare, but a niche in the best halls of London all her own. In the novel, what then ensues is 800 pages of her quest for just these things, and her presence on the pages is a beneficial, two-sided, thing: on one hand she is our entrance into the glamorous balls and soirees and scandals of London society (since presumably both she and the reader are outsiders), and on the other she is the perfect satiric subject - heedless and intelligent, cold and "warm," perpetually searching for something she occasionally posesses (only to throw it away looking for something better). She is a complex, fiery, indelible creation. At the time of the novel's publishing, there were none who were her equal.
As a film's hero, however, she has obvious cinematic progenitors. Her DNA can be traced all the way back through Elle Woods, a previous Witherspoon creation who was far more suited to her own movie, and up to Scarlet O' Hara. As an O' Hara-descendant though Becky is a disgrace, as is the film for dampening her fun (and our's at watching her) in pursuit of a period-piece with feminist underpinings. The following applies mostly to our "heroine," but also to the film itself: where Ms. O' Hara sought after her heart's desires in measure with her material needs, Rebecca Sharp merely seeks her true love until she doesn't; she is a (supposedly) winning, relatable, plucky governess-turned-soldier's wife who quite spontaneously begins scheming after a man she barely knows, as well as his place in society. The grinding gears of the plot are heard most loudly here, no thanks to Fellowes watered-down adaptation, but at least the audience will thank the change of pace. Watching another minute of Witherspoon parading about, tossing out her one-liners like some British Veronica Mars, as she valiantly tries to make ends meet in a man's world would have been intolerable. And so is the final result of the picture.
William Makepeace Thackery wrote a rambunctious, sprawling attack on Napoleonic British society that was by turns pointedly witty, sentimental, and pointedly witty about its own sentimentality. Mira Nair directed a sprawling saga about finding your place in the world with The Namesake. And Julian Fellowes created a breathlessly arch, sardonic British period-mystery with Gosford Park. So what is keeping the latter two from adapting a sprawling, witty, saga from the former's novel? I'm not quite sure what stopped them, but I imagine whatever compelled them to continue headlong with their production - a movie that oafishly attempts to meld modern feminism with Thackeray's tale - must have been very witless and dull indeed.
"I had thought her a mere social climber, but I see now she is a mountaineer," quips Amelia's mother, Mrs. Sedley (Deborah Findlay) regarding her daughter's on-again off-again friend. It is one of the few delightful bon mots worthy of the original that Fellowes thinks up, but it serves the watcher in hindsight only to remind them what a dull mountaineer Nair and Witherspoon have concocted. For the most part they have a great cast surrounding them (Rome's James Purefoy is pretty winning as Rawdon Crawley, a gambler both entranced and then redeemed through his marriage with Becky), but in watering down and re-imagining the original literary property, they serve not only to confuse and anger those looking to see tribute being payed, but also to confound any audience new to Fair's world; I mean, if Becky Sharp was really such an empowered and sensible woman, what on Earth would she want to do with a world like that?
The Ruins: B
The slasher film, wherein a group of impossibly good-looking and impossibly young actors and actressess are systematically slaughtered by a ruthless serial killer for a Reason (i.e. You accidently killed my relative! You're my food supply! You look good when you scream!), is pretty laughable in the modern age of Hollywood cinema. Other sub-genres of horror have either done systemic slaughtering better (The Descent) or with far more jumpy-fright-humor (Hostel); yet "the slasher film" persists. Why? In 2006, a novel by Scott Smith came out that declared asking such a question null-in-void. In fact, The Ruins made such a game of cat-and-mouse an extraordinarily chilling, artful affair; the incisive psychodrama of his previous novel A Simple Plan, coupling nicely with a goretastic horror fable (the moral lesson being watch where you vacation) pulled straight from Little Shop of Horrors. On the page, as a 21st-century "slasher film" (one where the killer isn't so much angry as green...and leafy), The Ruins was a triumph. But how would it far on screen, where audiences are treated every month to another bold and disquieting torture-porno-slasher-horror-gore-phantasia? Honestly? Pretty well, if a trifle obvious and restrained.
The story: Amy (Jena Malone) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) are two best friends vacationing in Cancun with their respective boyfriends, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore) when the group decides to go with their new German friend Mathias (Joe Anderson) to a Mayan ruin to track down Mathias' brother Henrich. Once there, they discover some things not entirely to their liking (read: fatal), and must attempt to survive not only the sentient vines thirsting for their blood, but also their own poisonous and volatile group dynamic. The additions to the story - as additions must inevitably be made to anything, living or inanimate, that flies to L.A. - are curious, if forgivable. One: a creepy, 30-second prologue that lets the former-reader in on the plights of Henrich and his archeologist girlfriend. Two: a subtly re-vamped quintet, with character-specific personalities and plights tweaked and swapped in an attempt to maximize auidence interest. (Though, surely, having Eric still fall victim to the vines represents no obvious deficiency over having Stacy be the riddled sad-sack?) And three: a compacted plot structure with a radically different ending.
Of all of these changes, only two of the three fall flat - and only sparingly. The first is the second, which poses a problem only insofar that it deadens the cutting edge of Smith's (who wrote the script himself) observation, once so scalding on the page. There, cocooned with the group amidst hundreds of pages, the trvialities and spats nestled in any relationship became fascinating chemicals which we as readers got to see boil and explode into an ever-deadlier cocktail. As a film, there is hardly enough time to treat this point with enough longevity and respect, and so Smith shortens and quickens the most necesary parts of his investigation into group-survival into a useful, if somewhat muddled, creep-out. (To wit, no matter who was originally the victim, seeing Stacy stand on sun-blasted rock as she flays herself alive is a startlingly powerful image.) And the second is the third, which irks me only because it softens and brightens the delightfully sour original ending for a final sequence that isn't necesarily romanticized (it isn't as though they all survive), so much as it is improbable according to the book's original schematics.
But that's the thing: director Carter Smith and writer Scott B. Smith tweak the literary property just barely here and there, creating alternately discord and terror. As a director, Carter Smith adheres well to the genres tropes of gore and suspenseful scores (that leap and tear at you in all the right places); and Scott Smith retains enough of the terror of his novel to make this a successful slasher-film-update, but where has all the bleakness gone? Especially after noticing what powerful performances Malone, Ramsey, Ashmore, and Tucker give, it's difficult not to have wanted more of the pages' trademark high-brow dread heaped upon them, if only to see what delightful ways they squirm beneath it. Still, The Ruins is no clunker, not exactly. It has more vitality than most Watch-the-Teens-Die! films, if only because it retains maybe half of the book's psychoanalytical bent, and more pedigree and talent than one expects. Anyone who has read the book will be scared and dissapointed in (mostly) equal measure. Anyone else will just be scared.
The story: Amy (Jena Malone) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) are two best friends vacationing in Cancun with their respective boyfriends, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore) when the group decides to go with their new German friend Mathias (Joe Anderson) to a Mayan ruin to track down Mathias' brother Henrich. Once there, they discover some things not entirely to their liking (read: fatal), and must attempt to survive not only the sentient vines thirsting for their blood, but also their own poisonous and volatile group dynamic. The additions to the story - as additions must inevitably be made to anything, living or inanimate, that flies to L.A. - are curious, if forgivable. One: a creepy, 30-second prologue that lets the former-reader in on the plights of Henrich and his archeologist girlfriend. Two: a subtly re-vamped quintet, with character-specific personalities and plights tweaked and swapped in an attempt to maximize auidence interest. (Though, surely, having Eric still fall victim to the vines represents no obvious deficiency over having Stacy be the riddled sad-sack?) And three: a compacted plot structure with a radically different ending.
Of all of these changes, only two of the three fall flat - and only sparingly. The first is the second, which poses a problem only insofar that it deadens the cutting edge of Smith's (who wrote the script himself) observation, once so scalding on the page. There, cocooned with the group amidst hundreds of pages, the trvialities and spats nestled in any relationship became fascinating chemicals which we as readers got to see boil and explode into an ever-deadlier cocktail. As a film, there is hardly enough time to treat this point with enough longevity and respect, and so Smith shortens and quickens the most necesary parts of his investigation into group-survival into a useful, if somewhat muddled, creep-out. (To wit, no matter who was originally the victim, seeing Stacy stand on sun-blasted rock as she flays herself alive is a startlingly powerful image.) And the second is the third, which irks me only because it softens and brightens the delightfully sour original ending for a final sequence that isn't necesarily romanticized (it isn't as though they all survive), so much as it is improbable according to the book's original schematics.
But that's the thing: director Carter Smith and writer Scott B. Smith tweak the literary property just barely here and there, creating alternately discord and terror. As a director, Carter Smith adheres well to the genres tropes of gore and suspenseful scores (that leap and tear at you in all the right places); and Scott Smith retains enough of the terror of his novel to make this a successful slasher-film-update, but where has all the bleakness gone? Especially after noticing what powerful performances Malone, Ramsey, Ashmore, and Tucker give, it's difficult not to have wanted more of the pages' trademark high-brow dread heaped upon them, if only to see what delightful ways they squirm beneath it. Still, The Ruins is no clunker, not exactly. It has more vitality than most Watch-the-Teens-Die! films, if only because it retains maybe half of the book's psychoanalytical bent, and more pedigree and talent than one expects. Anyone who has read the book will be scared and dissapointed in (mostly) equal measure. Anyone else will just be scared.
Horton Hears a Who: A-
In Horton Hears a Who, the story is simple. Horton (Jim Carrey) is an elephant in the Jungle of Nool. One day, as he's heading out for a morning swim, a small speck floats by (how the speck came to be there opens the film, in a gorgeously animated sequence), and Horton, well, hears a Who calling for help on the speck. Actually, he hears a small squeak, but it's enough for him - a compassionate, imaginative creature - to realize there must be a whole city on that tiny mote and that they need to be saved. Thus, 87 minutes must follow as we watch the elephant struggle to bring the speck (placed securely on a purple dandelion flower-thing) to a safe place atop a faraway mountain. There are only a few small problems, and they reside with the Sour Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) and her posse of oddly surbanite-esque close-minded followers, who believe that believing in a speck with life is tantamount to anarachy, and so plot to thwart Horton at every turn.
The moral's benign. Because, obviously, Horton succeeds in saving Who-ville (A town which would later pop up in an earlier live-action adaptation of a Dr. Suess classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with far less pizazz.) But the fact that he does so, and proves to the entire jungle that "a person's a person, no matter how small," powers this animated gem, giving it a healthy dose of winning schmaltz to go with its ADD-influenced, self-effacing, sly wit. But just who are the engines powering the characteristics that so power Horton to success? Why the cast and crew, of course! Directors Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino seem, on paper, far more capable of making a good movie than writers Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul; after all, the former pair have either had a hand in great Pixar films (Finding Nemo) or comedy masterpieces (Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail), while the latter couple has to their name the screenplay to Bubble Boy. Eww. But no matter the reason, however odd it sounds, the quartet blend seamlessly, working in equal measure to create a fizzy spring treat.
The characters are crazy. When you get right down to it, stripping away the pretty-awesome, reverentially-Suess-y animation, you've got a hellzapoppin comedy starring Steve Carrell, as the Who-ville mayor, and Jim Carrey. The evidence to this is there staring you in the face the entire running-time: the patented-Carrey mannerisms (e.g. vocal impersonations, crazy physical ticks even a personified elephant would rarely want to attempt), the wacky second-bananas (Katie, voice intermittently by Joey King, is a whole spectacle by herself), the screwball plot. And as such a comedy, Horton would have succeeded just fine. But as an animated film (courtesy of animation house Blue Sky, the group behind the Ice Age flicks), it's even better. Why? Perhaps because the characters are so crazy, and their voice actors take their tics and personalities so sincerely over-the-top, hitting every punchline. Or maybe it's the script, which pops and crackles with a modern sensibility about reviving a beloved-classic to any audience, age or gender. Or maybe it's a mixture of both being tossed into one frame and slathered with gorgeous CGI.
The result? Divine. It sounds cliche, and inevitably you'll realize it is, but seeing Horton Hears a Who, you'll laugh, you'll be moved, and you'll wonder how on earth a studio that isn't Pixar could make a flick that's wholly animated wholly not-suck. It isn't on the same level of Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, in terms of cohesive storytelling vision (because, let's face it, the structure here is slender no matter how you beef it up with subplots). But Horton has a charming sense of its own self-deprecation (used most hilariously in service of spoofing its own multi-media format), several punchlines any comedy would die to have, and two or three (or four) performances from two or three (or four) great actors that elevate a moral fable into a great romp, and a perfect heir to the Suess throne. Now when can we expect their take on Oh, the Places You'll Go!?
The moral's benign. Because, obviously, Horton succeeds in saving Who-ville (A town which would later pop up in an earlier live-action adaptation of a Dr. Suess classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with far less pizazz.) But the fact that he does so, and proves to the entire jungle that "a person's a person, no matter how small," powers this animated gem, giving it a healthy dose of winning schmaltz to go with its ADD-influenced, self-effacing, sly wit. But just who are the engines powering the characteristics that so power Horton to success? Why the cast and crew, of course! Directors Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino seem, on paper, far more capable of making a good movie than writers Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul; after all, the former pair have either had a hand in great Pixar films (Finding Nemo) or comedy masterpieces (Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail), while the latter couple has to their name the screenplay to Bubble Boy. Eww. But no matter the reason, however odd it sounds, the quartet blend seamlessly, working in equal measure to create a fizzy spring treat.
The characters are crazy. When you get right down to it, stripping away the pretty-awesome, reverentially-Suess-y animation, you've got a hellzapoppin comedy starring Steve Carrell, as the Who-ville mayor, and Jim Carrey. The evidence to this is there staring you in the face the entire running-time: the patented-Carrey mannerisms (e.g. vocal impersonations, crazy physical ticks even a personified elephant would rarely want to attempt), the wacky second-bananas (Katie, voice intermittently by Joey King, is a whole spectacle by herself), the screwball plot. And as such a comedy, Horton would have succeeded just fine. But as an animated film (courtesy of animation house Blue Sky, the group behind the Ice Age flicks), it's even better. Why? Perhaps because the characters are so crazy, and their voice actors take their tics and personalities so sincerely over-the-top, hitting every punchline. Or maybe it's the script, which pops and crackles with a modern sensibility about reviving a beloved-classic to any audience, age or gender. Or maybe it's a mixture of both being tossed into one frame and slathered with gorgeous CGI.
The result? Divine. It sounds cliche, and inevitably you'll realize it is, but seeing Horton Hears a Who, you'll laugh, you'll be moved, and you'll wonder how on earth a studio that isn't Pixar could make a flick that's wholly animated wholly not-suck. It isn't on the same level of Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, in terms of cohesive storytelling vision (because, let's face it, the structure here is slender no matter how you beef it up with subplots). But Horton has a charming sense of its own self-deprecation (used most hilariously in service of spoofing its own multi-media format), several punchlines any comedy would die to have, and two or three (or four) performances from two or three (or four) great actors that elevate a moral fable into a great romp, and a perfect heir to the Suess throne. Now when can we expect their take on Oh, the Places You'll Go!?
Firefly: The Complete Series: A-
Buffy wasn't yet all there. And Angel certainly had a long way to go. Firefly: The Complete Series, however, was a fully-formed beauty almost from the word "Go." It's surprising, when one looks back, to realize that Joss Whedon's sci-fi/western action-drama is nearly perfect - especially when that same viewer also realizes that his other two television shows (the aforementioned Buffy and Angel, one a horror-film twist, the other a noir-tribute) took many more episodes before they became great. But all Firefly needed was one nearly-mediocre two-hour pilot to set itself up, and then it shot off into the stars, blasting away all expectation. All of the expected Whedon tropes are here - narratives that quirk ironically half-way through; layered episode titles; a rich, talented ensemble cast; an over-arching plot that questions the moral structure of human beings; and dialogue that bounces, zings, zaps, and screwballs sincerely through all manner of wit and heartache - but they're all far more polished at the starting gate, and the result is an immensely entertaining, sadly short-lived, space opera.
The strongest aspect of the show, as with all Mutant Enemy productions, remains the writing. And the strongest aspect of that aspect is the dialogue. It lumbers about in "Serenity," the two-hour pilot, and "Heart of Gold," the penultimate episode, is nearly as bad, but from "The Train Job," up through and past "Gold," Whedon & Co.'s words are madly, shockingly, gleefully intelligent; they practically rub their smarts and sass in your face. More so, when a step back is taken for a sad or touching moment, it actually rings true. There must be a slight change to be noted there, because even in Angel, sentiment was a clumsy thing. Perhaps it is but a mere symptom of the ease creator Whedon has with his third, and as of yet last, show. He doesn't spend nearly any time reiterating themes or character flaws, but rather lets the inventive, oddly rich, creation at his fingertips spread and soar.
And this is what the audience finds: in the 26th-century, humans inhabit a completely new star system, spread out over hundreds of moons, with a pair of "core worlds" at the center. It's very much the Old West, outsized over thousands of light years. Another twist: the political and socioeconomic structure of the worlds is dominated by the Alliance, a massive government complex controlled by the last two superpowers: China and the United States (accordingly, every character is fluent in Mandarin and English, and their conversations flow between the two, to fizzy effect). Sounds pretty tame, if a little 1984, right? One problem: some years ago, the Alliance felt itself sufficiently strong enough to reign in and "re-civilize" the outlying moons. However, the outlying moons felt their independence was too precious to be given up so easily - thus, a civil war: the Browncoats versus the Alliance. The Alliance won, and now, some years later, we are introduced to Captian Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a cynical ex-Browncoat, and his crew - among them, a doctor (Sean Maher) and his fugitive sister (Summer Glau) - as they rove the various worlds looking for work as smugglers aboard their ship Serenity (class: Firefly).
The various jobs they accrue make-up episode-by-episode story, but at its heart Firefly is an exploration of the crewmembers, and the life they have had to make for themselves admist a contradictory society, wherein one-half is civilized, and the other is very "futuristic Wyatt Earp." Episodes like "Ariel," in which Serenity's crew has to break-in to a hospital on a core world, and "The Message," weave the various big-picture narrative elements together with ease and mastery. And "The Train Job," "Shindig," "Trash," and "Safe," are perfectly insular, and perfectly satisfying. Above all of them sits "Objects in Space," the series finale written-and-directed by Joss Whedon, which is, odd as it sounds, most easily summed up as an existential exploration of the crew as they attempt to fend off a psychic, psychotic, bounty hunter (Richard Brooks). What makes "Objects" so brilliant, perhaps one of the best episodes for television Whedon has ever written, is how the expected - witty conversations, thrilling heroics - is suplemented by the completely new.
And what makes Firefly so brilliant, at least for the majority of the time, is how each of these different strengths are united and tied together into one supreme package. Both Buffy and Angel would go on to be better shows, but for what it was, when it was, for the time period it was aired, Firefly was an epic character study; a funny, funky, cool action-adventure; and a drama with a studied and truthful atmosphere. If I knew how to say "This is yet another achievement on Mutant Enemy's Crown of Awesome" in Mandarin, after watching all fourteen of these episodes, I probably would.
The strongest aspect of the show, as with all Mutant Enemy productions, remains the writing. And the strongest aspect of that aspect is the dialogue. It lumbers about in "Serenity," the two-hour pilot, and "Heart of Gold," the penultimate episode, is nearly as bad, but from "The Train Job," up through and past "Gold," Whedon & Co.'s words are madly, shockingly, gleefully intelligent; they practically rub their smarts and sass in your face. More so, when a step back is taken for a sad or touching moment, it actually rings true. There must be a slight change to be noted there, because even in Angel, sentiment was a clumsy thing. Perhaps it is but a mere symptom of the ease creator Whedon has with his third, and as of yet last, show. He doesn't spend nearly any time reiterating themes or character flaws, but rather lets the inventive, oddly rich, creation at his fingertips spread and soar.
And this is what the audience finds: in the 26th-century, humans inhabit a completely new star system, spread out over hundreds of moons, with a pair of "core worlds" at the center. It's very much the Old West, outsized over thousands of light years. Another twist: the political and socioeconomic structure of the worlds is dominated by the Alliance, a massive government complex controlled by the last two superpowers: China and the United States (accordingly, every character is fluent in Mandarin and English, and their conversations flow between the two, to fizzy effect). Sounds pretty tame, if a little 1984, right? One problem: some years ago, the Alliance felt itself sufficiently strong enough to reign in and "re-civilize" the outlying moons. However, the outlying moons felt their independence was too precious to be given up so easily - thus, a civil war: the Browncoats versus the Alliance. The Alliance won, and now, some years later, we are introduced to Captian Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a cynical ex-Browncoat, and his crew - among them, a doctor (Sean Maher) and his fugitive sister (Summer Glau) - as they rove the various worlds looking for work as smugglers aboard their ship Serenity (class: Firefly).
The various jobs they accrue make-up episode-by-episode story, but at its heart Firefly is an exploration of the crewmembers, and the life they have had to make for themselves admist a contradictory society, wherein one-half is civilized, and the other is very "futuristic Wyatt Earp." Episodes like "Ariel," in which Serenity's crew has to break-in to a hospital on a core world, and "The Message," weave the various big-picture narrative elements together with ease and mastery. And "The Train Job," "Shindig," "Trash," and "Safe," are perfectly insular, and perfectly satisfying. Above all of them sits "Objects in Space," the series finale written-and-directed by Joss Whedon, which is, odd as it sounds, most easily summed up as an existential exploration of the crew as they attempt to fend off a psychic, psychotic, bounty hunter (Richard Brooks). What makes "Objects" so brilliant, perhaps one of the best episodes for television Whedon has ever written, is how the expected - witty conversations, thrilling heroics - is suplemented by the completely new.
And what makes Firefly so brilliant, at least for the majority of the time, is how each of these different strengths are united and tied together into one supreme package. Both Buffy and Angel would go on to be better shows, but for what it was, when it was, for the time period it was aired, Firefly was an epic character study; a funny, funky, cool action-adventure; and a drama with a studied and truthful atmosphere. If I knew how to say "This is yet another achievement on Mutant Enemy's Crown of Awesome" in Mandarin, after watching all fourteen of these episodes, I probably would.
Leatherheads: B-
I like George Clooney. The ever-present smirk (that never comes across like he bought it in the same place W. bought his); the salt-and-pepper hair he's had since he was twenty; the affability of his countenance - all of it. Physically, Mr. Clooney is a wonder. Oh, and career-wise he is too...I guess. I mean, on one hand you've got Michael Clayton and the Ocean's films to his credit as a visceral hero, too cool or moral to come out on bottom. But then on your other hand you've got Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck that are, while not bad movies, a little like high-value cough syrup: they both taste awful, no matter the sky-high nutritional value after the fact. As an actor, I'll assume he's given more to the first two films than the second pair, reports to the contrary. Yet as a director, his sensibilities (excluding Confession of a Dangerous Mind, but I'll chalk that up to whiz-kind writer Charlie Kaufman) have always been toward the staunchly nostalgic and politically active fare. So what is the end result for Leatherheads, a too-long comedy about the "When I was a kid..." days of pro-football? It mixes Fun, Relatable Actor Clooney with Pining, Retrospective Director Clooney, and not always in equal measure. Well, I somewhat happily report, the film works just enough to be an entertainment, if still not enough to be occasionally not a bore.
There is yet another trend in the work of George Clooney that applies here; and that is the apparent regression in his work time-wise. Consider: Confessions was a 70s period-thriller, while Good Night was a 50s newsroom drama, and now Leatherheads: a 20s-set screwball-romance-action-drama-comedy about how Rules ruined the Game. I wonder what his next film will be? A bio-pic of Woodrow Wilson, with Ben Kingsley or Anthony Stewart Head appropriately squinty as the man himself, and a script by Aaron Sorkin? Regardless of the actual time period of the film, the Clooney Twinkle still shines through to a modern audience for the majority of the movie, his comedic mugging (which is nothing like the quicksilver timing he used in Ocean's Eleven, mind you) in full genial effect. And the plot itself - all about Dodge Connelly's (George Clooney) fading Duluth Bulldogs, and how they recruit star college player Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) who is being chased by a cynical reporter, Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger ) - can rumble and ramble for scenes on end quite agreeably. And then the plot has to go somewhere, and stuff starts shifting unagreeably. One has only Clooney's perceived ill-skill with the rhythms of comedy to blame for the crankily-shifting gears of his picture.
Take, for example, Leatherheads' most prominent feature in a cinematic landscape now frequently home to the Summer Blockbuster: rat-a-tat, his-and-hers dialogue. Take, for an example of this example, the brief exchange:
Lexie: I'll live-
Dodge: Alone!
Now imagine their split-second verbal baton passes are accompanied by a (mostly pleasing and) cheeky score of Randy Newman's composing, and that Clooney's camera practically zings! between his stars and you have the atmosphere of Heads...when it works. When it doesn't, I'm afraid very little of writers Duncan Brantley & Rick Reilly's dialogue is screwball so much as it is obvious, annoying, and loud. Add in a pinch of needless romantic intrigue - i.e. Lexie has to cozy up to Carter to find the truth beneath his "too-perfect" war record, while she's simultaneously falling for Dodge - and a final football game that's like a mixture of the climax of Any Given Sunday and the water-wheel scene from Dead Man's Chest (that is, endless, and barely engaging/entertaining), and you've got the movie, pretty much in full.
Do I begrudge George Clooney for continuing to take on projects most of his contemporary hyphenated Hollywood stars would shy away from? I'll admit, it's difficult, especially as he keeps making them function in some partiality on screen. But the more I consider Leatherheads, whose structure and comedy are saved only by the grace of its stars, the more the sinking notion begins to dawn on me: perhaps the Clooney Twinkle is fading a little, dilipidated as it is from being trotted out so much to shows like these. Accordingly, a plea: stop screwing around, Mr. Director/Star-of-the-Universe, and get back to the roles that make us love you so; you, know: the ones where you're either drop-dead cool or drop-dead dramatic. Not stuff like this, where your talents and pretty mug are hermetically-sealed in a two-hour time-capsule of naeive nostalgia and hit-or-miss laughs.
There is yet another trend in the work of George Clooney that applies here; and that is the apparent regression in his work time-wise. Consider: Confessions was a 70s period-thriller, while Good Night was a 50s newsroom drama, and now Leatherheads: a 20s-set screwball-romance-action-drama-comedy about how Rules ruined the Game. I wonder what his next film will be? A bio-pic of Woodrow Wilson, with Ben Kingsley or Anthony Stewart Head appropriately squinty as the man himself, and a script by Aaron Sorkin? Regardless of the actual time period of the film, the Clooney Twinkle still shines through to a modern audience for the majority of the movie, his comedic mugging (which is nothing like the quicksilver timing he used in Ocean's Eleven, mind you) in full genial effect. And the plot itself - all about Dodge Connelly's (George Clooney) fading Duluth Bulldogs, and how they recruit star college player Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) who is being chased by a cynical reporter, Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger ) - can rumble and ramble for scenes on end quite agreeably. And then the plot has to go somewhere, and stuff starts shifting unagreeably. One has only Clooney's perceived ill-skill with the rhythms of comedy to blame for the crankily-shifting gears of his picture.
Take, for example, Leatherheads' most prominent feature in a cinematic landscape now frequently home to the Summer Blockbuster: rat-a-tat, his-and-hers dialogue. Take, for an example of this example, the brief exchange:
Lexie: I'll live-
Dodge: Alone!
Now imagine their split-second verbal baton passes are accompanied by a (mostly pleasing and) cheeky score of Randy Newman's composing, and that Clooney's camera practically zings! between his stars and you have the atmosphere of Heads...when it works. When it doesn't, I'm afraid very little of writers Duncan Brantley & Rick Reilly's dialogue is screwball so much as it is obvious, annoying, and loud. Add in a pinch of needless romantic intrigue - i.e. Lexie has to cozy up to Carter to find the truth beneath his "too-perfect" war record, while she's simultaneously falling for Dodge - and a final football game that's like a mixture of the climax of Any Given Sunday and the water-wheel scene from Dead Man's Chest (that is, endless, and barely engaging/entertaining), and you've got the movie, pretty much in full.
Do I begrudge George Clooney for continuing to take on projects most of his contemporary hyphenated Hollywood stars would shy away from? I'll admit, it's difficult, especially as he keeps making them function in some partiality on screen. But the more I consider Leatherheads, whose structure and comedy are saved only by the grace of its stars, the more the sinking notion begins to dawn on me: perhaps the Clooney Twinkle is fading a little, dilipidated as it is from being trotted out so much to shows like these. Accordingly, a plea: stop screwing around, Mr. Director/Star-of-the-Universe, and get back to the roles that make us love you so; you, know: the ones where you're either drop-dead cool or drop-dead dramatic. Not stuff like this, where your talents and pretty mug are hermetically-sealed in a two-hour time-capsule of naeive nostalgia and hit-or-miss laughs.
August Rush: C-
Music in a visual medium is a tricky thing; it can be over-used or underwhelming: a club to browbeat audiences or a barely noticed whisper in the background. Yet, it should never be seen as an ineffable, stifling presence. It should lilt and flow, or stirke and tear asunder, or soothe and placate, or sadden and wrench. It should not, I repeat should not, be a key plot piece in an endlessly trite, long-winded exploration of music in the service of Been There, Done That. Director Kirsten Sheridan and writers Nick Castle & James V. Hart pillage through great masters of their respective forms like Charles Dickens (for the occasional Oliver Twist twist) for a fairy tale that is short on fairy - that is, wondrous, emotional connection - and long on tale - that is, snail-paced discourse and voice-over that rarely even comes together within itself.
August Rush has a fascinating beginning, and it almost tricks you into believing the magical, improbable, conceit at its heart will win out in yours. This is not to be the case. Sheridan fills the screen with music and soft lighting, an attempt to transform the everyday into the same realm of music and existence that Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore, sucked dry and plastered into a stick-figure role) must live in. The opening scene, in which Evan "conducts" the winds through a field of grass, does nearly that. And then the story starts, and stuff starts falling flat. First there is a one-night stand between Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Lyla (Keri Russell), that ends in tears and angst...and a baby, given up for secret adoption by Lyla's father (William Sadler, way more wamrly paternal in Roswell). And then there is the aftermath, in which we the audience are asked to believe that such a sweet night as the one shared by the Irish lad and his lassie could warrant such goopy melodrama as this. I'm not buying it, and neither should you.
Or, if you feel for some strange reason so compelled, Rush makes that an up-hill battle. Performances bend and transmogrify before your very eyes (Highmore himself is the perfect, irritating example, and Robin Williams, as a modern-day Fagin, falls not far behind) into sickening caricature, and the narrative keeps turning tricks that are both wildly sentimental and not even vaguely related to reality. (Are we really to believe that Evan, stage-name "August Rush," beat out all the other child prodigies to suddenly be enrolled in Juliard? Oh right, the movie doesn't mention them.) What's more, the tone is endlessly condescending: a cousin to the cloying self-help nonsense of The Martian Child. In both cases a hard-knock lad with possibly extraordinary abilities teaches the surrounding adults the merits of just letting him do his own thing - regardless of mental, emotional, or physical well-being. Bah!
But I digress. Kirsten Sheridan is the daughter of Jim Sheridan, a director famed for his up-from-the-streets sensibilities turned masterful storytelling. In the latter's case, the quirks and kinks of the human condition are not fodder for a treachly flame, but a rarity and testament all their own. In the former's mind, surely it is the opposite: cute kids must become Cute Kids, all must be resolved happily (if suddenly), and common sense must inevitably be strangled by its loopy second-cousin Hysterial Sentiment. There is heart here, admittedly, but also a subtle brand of cynicism that balks at the modern notion of social etiquette, etc. "No," August Rush screams, "do not mock or hate our cute and cuddly little man. Rather, adore him for his triumph and compassion." Well if this is what his compassion looks like, displayed in a leaky fable like this, then no thank you.
August Rush has a fascinating beginning, and it almost tricks you into believing the magical, improbable, conceit at its heart will win out in yours. This is not to be the case. Sheridan fills the screen with music and soft lighting, an attempt to transform the everyday into the same realm of music and existence that Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore, sucked dry and plastered into a stick-figure role) must live in. The opening scene, in which Evan "conducts" the winds through a field of grass, does nearly that. And then the story starts, and stuff starts falling flat. First there is a one-night stand between Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Lyla (Keri Russell), that ends in tears and angst...and a baby, given up for secret adoption by Lyla's father (William Sadler, way more wamrly paternal in Roswell). And then there is the aftermath, in which we the audience are asked to believe that such a sweet night as the one shared by the Irish lad and his lassie could warrant such goopy melodrama as this. I'm not buying it, and neither should you.
Or, if you feel for some strange reason so compelled, Rush makes that an up-hill battle. Performances bend and transmogrify before your very eyes (Highmore himself is the perfect, irritating example, and Robin Williams, as a modern-day Fagin, falls not far behind) into sickening caricature, and the narrative keeps turning tricks that are both wildly sentimental and not even vaguely related to reality. (Are we really to believe that Evan, stage-name "August Rush," beat out all the other child prodigies to suddenly be enrolled in Juliard? Oh right, the movie doesn't mention them.) What's more, the tone is endlessly condescending: a cousin to the cloying self-help nonsense of The Martian Child. In both cases a hard-knock lad with possibly extraordinary abilities teaches the surrounding adults the merits of just letting him do his own thing - regardless of mental, emotional, or physical well-being. Bah!
But I digress. Kirsten Sheridan is the daughter of Jim Sheridan, a director famed for his up-from-the-streets sensibilities turned masterful storytelling. In the latter's case, the quirks and kinks of the human condition are not fodder for a treachly flame, but a rarity and testament all their own. In the former's mind, surely it is the opposite: cute kids must become Cute Kids, all must be resolved happily (if suddenly), and common sense must inevitably be strangled by its loopy second-cousin Hysterial Sentiment. There is heart here, admittedly, but also a subtle brand of cynicism that balks at the modern notion of social etiquette, etc. "No," August Rush screams, "do not mock or hate our cute and cuddly little man. Rather, adore him for his triumph and compassion." Well if this is what his compassion looks like, displayed in a leaky fable like this, then no thank you.
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