This is where I leave you

I am usually leery of ensemble movies. They tend to pile on the stars to compensate for either a weak script or ineffective directing.  This is not the case here. This a very enjoyable film and the ensemble works well as a dysfunctional family. The story is a patchwork of sub plots which are individual but rooted in the family. Above all this is a very funny movie and the laughs continue throughout the film.

The father of the family just died and his last wish is that his family sit Shiva. One son commented that their father was almost an atheist and another asked if the location of a chair was the same place they put the Christmas tree. The matriarch of this family is the ageless Jane Fonda with her inflated boobs which is a running gag in the movie. The other strong female is Tina Fay with her sharp wit and grit.

Jason Bateman is a lead character who is going through a marital crisis compounded by the death of his father. He display’s his trademark wry sense of humor and is disturbed by his mother’s overflowing breasts. A rising star to watch is Adam Driver. He gained acclaim from his role in “Girls” on HBO. He plays the ADHD insensitive clues son. He screws anything in high heels (or flats).

There are other story’s which coalesce into this enjoyable movies. Go see it. 

Sin City: A Dame to Kill for

Sin City: A Dame to Kill for

Sin City 2 crash and burned at the box office.  A Frank Miller film (author/director) is a male testosterone affair offered as film noir. Sin City 1 and 2 combined animation and live action. The animation tones down the brutal violence. Instead of a spray of blood gushing from the neck on screen it is rendered like white out. Sex is the other main ingredient of this film which always mixes well with violence. Sin City 2 had more nudity than the prior movie; female thank goodness.

Both movies had these elements, so what happened to Sin City 2? I think Sin City 1 was better written, it followed the original graphic novel. For its time it was also unique. The movies are made up of sub stories with their own dedicated caste. I think these sub stories were richer and more intriguing in the first film.  In Sin City 2 there two main sub stories, one with Joseph Gordon –Levitt and the other with Eva Green. Gordon-Levitt’s story was unsophisticated and disappointing. Eva Green’s story went on a bit too long, but it did have some interesting twists and turns but no real wow moments. For most of her story Green was nude with a well-placed shadow on her privates.

There was more brutal violence in Sin City 2, some just random. Sex was graphic and voyeuristic. Without plot context violence and sex become pornographic.

There were more notable actors in Sin City 2. The anchor stars were: Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Powers Boothe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jessica Alba. Other big name stars had cameo roles: Lady Gaga, Christopher Lloyd and Jeremy Piven, etc. Here adding a copious number of stars was more bloating than effective film craft.   The acting was so stylized it was a cliché.

Sequels are tricky. Sin City 3 is doubtful

The Orphanage

I was channel surfing Italian TV in Milan. My first hit was a typical RAI variety

  program featuring Amazonian women showing more leg than talent and some old guy with bad dye job hosting. My next hit was a news format with six intense journalists seriously discussing the history of Dragon Boat Racing (what the …..). Fortunately I found a foreign language (English among others) channel. The feature movie was “The Orphanage” which I never heard of. It was in Spanish without subtitles. What caught my attention was Guillermo Del Toro’s name. He was not the director but the producer. Del Toro is a great director and writer. His credits include Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devils Back Bone and the Hell Boy series. I decided to watch the film. It was 11pm and past my bedtime but what the hell let’s get wild.

Even without subtitles the movie was intriguing. The acting was so good you had a basic idea of what was going on. A family took over an abandoned orphanage and were living there. There was a mother a father and their beloved son Simón. Flashbacks showed the original orphanage with the orphans happy and running around in play.  Later you find out something terrible happened to the orphans. In the present Simón befriends one of the orphan ghosts. Simon has a bad fight with his mother and runs away and disappears. The rest of the movie focuses on the parent’s efforts, especially the mother’s, to find Simón.

Basically this is a ghost story. The atmosphere of the movie is more sad than gloomy. The ghosts are not the main focus rather it is the parents efforts to find their son and their crushing heart breaks. Even in disappear some parts are touching and tender. This film definitely has a Hitchcockian feel. It has consistent style but when it wants to scare you it does so effectively. In one scene the mother is pushed into the bathroom by a ghost and tumbles into the tub ripping a shower curtain as she falls; sound familiar?

After the movie, which ended at 1am, I looked it up on Wikipedia.  What I found out made the movie even more interesting. I am ordering the movie on Netflix with subtitles. This was a gem of a find which I highly recommend it. Maybe I will stay up past 1am more often.

A Most Wanted Man

When the movie ended I suspected it could be based on a John le Carre novel; it was. For me reading a le Carre novel is like jogging in wet cement. It is ponderous and has little forward motion.  This movie follows suite. It is a spy movie but not one shot is fired, never mind gratuitous sex. The heart of the plot is a mysterious and very dirty refugee from the East comes to Hamburg to claim an inheritance. American and German secret services seek to claim him and the money.

The movie went on for two hours but felt longer. There were more business meetings than car chases. Not to give too much away, the apex of the movie was signing a critical legal document; very un-Bondish. If this sound base, I plead guilty.

What this movie will be remembered for is not its scintillating plot but rather as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last film (far as we know). He looked terrible, overweigh (more than usual), puffy and tired. His incessant cigarette smoking was real. He played the role as the German agent Gunther in his trademark languid manner. His drawl was not quite like Capote’s, but still unhurried with a soft spoken mumble.  His skills as a great actor was evident and he fully inhabits his character, but this is not the best vehicle for his final journey

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There other fine actors in this movie. Rachel McAdams plays an idealist lawyer aiding the refugee from the East. She is very sweet and earnest. Her legal skills are sharp, and yes there are more meetings.   At one point she and the refugee tumble into each other’s arms but alas no lip lock.

William Defoe is the slimy bank president. Defoe has a wonderful demonic face which portends evil, but here his dark side is relegated to being a German bureaucrat. He played a vampire once before.

The last notable star is Robin Wright (Buttercup from “The Prince Bride” and Mrs. Frank Underwood from the “House of Card”). She plays the CIA officer liaising with the German investigation team.  There is nothing soft or warm about her; she can chill a bottle of wine by just holding it. Her performance in the film is limited but important.  Detached heatless women seem to be a natural for her, hopefully only in films.

I apologize for being so catty. With all the ballyhoo about the film I expected more or a least a pace faster than a tortoise’s.

Get On Up

For a movie with fancy choreography, there are some missteps. However, Chadwick Boseman was fabulous. To go from the stoic and reserved Jackie Robinson role to the extroverted James Brown is the ultimate definition acting range. Boseman’s embodiment of Brown was so complete his mimicked speech pattern made it difficult to understand him. His role is more than just an impression but is rather very challenging and encompasses the spectrum of Brown’s life from the back woods shack of his birth to the private jet of the Godfather of Soul. The hardest working man in show business had a very hard life and as a result was not the nicest person. James Brown constantly uses the first person to describe himself. In this a way he reaffirms his success and keeps the ghosts of his past at bay. James Brown was a force of nature and his signature showmanship defined him.

The movie benefited from other great actors. Viola Davies plays his mother and even in her brief appearance gives a touching and forceful performance. The movie would have been stronger with her character longer on screen. She is very influential in the development of Brown. Octavia Spencer played a warm comforting auntie type. She is a proxy mother, but she too is relegated to a brief appearance. Dan Aykroyd is a national treasure. He has the acting range of a pimple, but you gotta love him. Nelsan Ellis plays James Brown’s wingman, Bobbie Bryd. This is a classic love hate relationship engendering pity, arrogance and resolution. Ellis was perfect for the role.

The dancing is signature James Brown. I hope Boseman already has children, since those splits are lethal. Boseman lip syncs the songs but he does it with such bravado, sweat pours down his grimacing face. Boseman’s make up is dead on.

The movie has some problems; flash backs and asides. Flash backs are valuable if used sparingly. In this movie the flash backs give you motion sickness and are very distracting. They bounce back and forth in a non-liner manner. Asides are annoying. If the actor has to tell the audience what is going on followed with a big wink, something is lacking. If the script is written correctly the audience gets it. Another sore point is the use labels in the movie.  They looked like exit signs on a highway and were silly for a drama.

This movie is imperfect. Boseman’s chameleon performance of James Brown deserves at least an Oscar nomination. All round there are wonderful acting gems, but sometimes the settings are not quite good. Go see it, but bring Dramamine.

Lucy

In “Lucy”, Scarlett Johansson’s mental capacity is expanded far beyond human limits. This plot line is nothing new to Sci Fi movies. Usually the person with the jacked up brain can levitate, stop bullets in midair, suspend time and look through people’s clothing (whoops, that’s my wish). In Lucy, Luc Besson, the director and writer, brought a fresh interpretation to this genre. Besson has directed some excellent Sci Fi and action movies such as the “Fifth Element”, “District 13”and “Nikita”. Lucy is fast paced and has a multiple plot points. There is much going on in the movie: time travel, drugs, Chinese triads, dinosaurs, scientists, the French and a sprinkling of Italians. However, this mish mash work together.

Johansson is an unwilling drug mule who after a beating is contaminated by the drugs she is carrying. This triggers her transformation to a super human. Johansson is an established dramatic actress, but of late she is also a sexy action star (The Black Widow in the Avengers). She is credible handling a gun and shows no compulsion committing mass killings. As super Lucy she walks around in a semi daze and is mechanical in delivering her lines. This is all part of her transformation. The film actually shows percentage clips indicating her mental growth (2%, 10%, 20% etc…).These sign posts are meant to heighten our expectations, but are more funny than effective.

The other leading actor is Morgan Freeman as the distinguished university professor specializing in the human brain. For the most part Freeman is the narrator explaining the power of the brain and the possibilities of expanding those limits (humans use 1% and dolphins use 2%, yeah but we have legs). When he interacts with Lucy it is with amazement as to what she can do. By the time they meet she is beyond his neurological knowledge.

The rest of the cast is multinational. The Chinese triades own the drugs and to get them back they unleash a torrent of violence. The drug lord did not speak English so he always needed an interpreter, even by phone. Seeing new international actors in familiar roles makes the movie interesting. The French cops were the good guys, but they spoke English with a Pepe Le Pew accent.  The Italians cops did not speak English but they looked really cool in their Bottega leather jackets.

Some parts of the movie were prone to excess. To give a sense of what hyper Lucy was experiencing there was a flood of images from dinosaurs to cells splitting rapidly. The terrestrial scenes looked like National Geographic on speed. As Lucy reaches higher levels of brain capacity her human form becomes unrecognizable.

I may go see it again, but where did I leave my wallet?

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

This was a very good movie. However the acting, the human acting, was not a significant contribution to the film. It was not bad, but not memorable. Even Gary Oldman, who had marquee billing, did not do much for his role. The quality elements of the movie are the script, the direction, the special effects and the CG.

The story is rich with different levels. The themes are universal and go beyond just sci-fi. There is the father/son story; alpha ape dilemma; humans versus apes’ dynamic. Survival of the fittest is the goal, but who is the fittest? Essentially the story is about prejudice and tolerance (or intolerance).

This movie is the second installment of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”. Caesar is still the alpha male leading his troop who live well in an arboreal condo, al fresco. The human population has been decimated by a simian flu, concocted in human labs. The apes are ascending and the humans putting back the pieces of their broken world. This sets the tension of the movie and makes it watchable. Do not assume who wins.

The special effects are incredible. They mastered the graphic challenges of fur, skin and the occasional tear drop, but the real achievement is how the apes interact with the human actors; their timing is seamless. With the range of emotion’s Caesar displays his acting is on par with the human actors, sans the ego. I would not be surprised if this film is nominated for an Oscar for special effects.

The movie is not all kumbaya, there are some serious battles. The CG battles are massive and impressive. It is very disconcerting to see a gorilla riding a horse.

I think a sequel has a good bet, given this film’s box office. Anyway, monkeys do work for peanuts.