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Column Thu Dec 25 2014
Into the Woods, Big Eyes, Unbroken, The Gambler, Mr. Turner & Zero Motivation
Happy holidays, everyone. Of course the big news of last week was Sony pulling the Christmas Day release of the Seth Rogen-James Franco film The Interview because of vague threats (likely from the government of North Korea) about attack on movie theaters if it opened. A few days before this happened, however, I was fortunate enough to have seen the film at a festival event in Austin, Texas (that Rogen and his co-director Evan Goldberg attended). Now it looks like the film will actually open as scheduled in a handful of smaller, independent theaters around the country, which is great news. As of this writing, I'm not sure where in Chicago or Chicagoland it's opening, but if you'd like to read my length review of The Interview, please go to Ain't It Cool News to do so.
In the mean time, there are plenty of other films opening this week for your amusement. Have a great holiday, and I'll have my "Best Of 2014" lists for you next week.
Into the Woods
The thing I'm guessing most people seeing the film version of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical Into the Woods won't know going in is just how dark things get in the second half. Now granted, the movie is still very much a PG-rated affair, but the whole brilliant point of the source material is that even fairy tales have a second act, which takes place after the "...happily ever after." Just because Cinderella and her Prince find each other doesn't mean he's mature enough to sustain a lasting, faithful relationship. Doesn't real life suck?
The other clear point of the musical is that people die, and not just the bad guys. Sometimes, very good people die. So if you parents are into making sure your offspring learn the hard realities of life early (the earlier the better, I say), perhaps Into the Woods will serve your interests. There's just as likely a chance that all of the mayhem will traumatize young children believing they're walking into a mashup of their favorite fairy tales (Cinderella, Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk), not unlike "Once Upon a Time," which is traumatic in a different way.
To give credit where credit is due, director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine and even a late-'90s TV version of Annie) does the best he can with material that was never meant to be portrayed literally. By complete coincidence, I saw a really great presentation of this musical on stage last year in Chicago, and it was especially clear to me that "the woods" isn't just meant to represent trees and woodland creatures and other forrest props. It's a place where life-changing events are made possible — both good and bad. So to see this story interpreted so literally syphons a bit of the magic and surrealism out of the story.
Although Into the Woods is very much an ensemble piece, all of the stories are more or less joined through the story of a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt), who have a curse on them that prevents her from having a child. But the witch (Meryl Streep) who placed the curse is willing to remove it for a price of several trinkets that can be found at various locations connected by, you guessed it, the woods. And so the couple sets out on their scavenger hunt, meeting the likes of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and Jack (Daniel Huttlestone), which in turn allows us to enter versions those stories as well.
We also get a fantastic performance from Chris Pine as Cinderella's handsome and vapid Prince Charming, Johnny Depp (who has tackled Sondheim previously in Sweeney Todd) as Red's predatory wolf, Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard as Cinderella's step-sisters, Christine Baranski as her step-mother, Tracy Ullman as Jack's mother, Mackenzie Mauzy as Rapunzel, and Billy Magnussen as her hair-climbing prince. The cast is actually quite a fine collection of actors and singers (even Streep, who did such a great job convincing us she was an average singer in Mamma Mia!, sounds downright angelic; what an actor!). So any shortcoming in the film is not about a particular performance.
Nor is the problem with the songs — some of Sondheim's most emotionally searing and pointed. Any concerns that the musical aspects would be toned down or cut out in this film version can be put to the side. The film is practically wall-to-wall singing, as it should be. The sadness, humor, urgency is all there, but there's a certain, unnamable spark that is missing. Unlike seeing it on stage, the film version of Into the Woods doesn't allow our imagination to play a part in the telling. For example, there's a female giant who stomps through the kingdom seeking revenge for the death of her husband, destroying everything and killing a few characters in the process. On stage, we only hear the giant's voice, but in the movie (where she is played by Frances de la Tour), we see her (or parts of her) and that kills the fun of wondering just how tall and hideous she actually is. I miss my ugly lady giant.
It's as if director Marshall was given the story and the songs of Into the Woods and told "Go make this" without any guidance about what made the stage musical so intriguing. I'm not saying that he should have done it exactly like it was done on Broadway — that wouldn't be particularly cinematic — but something is absolutely absent from this telling. Marshall proved with Chicago that a director can create a uniquely filmic version of stage production and make it fascinating and lovely, but Into the Woods is missing that in spades. That being said, if you aren't aware of what came before (meaning the stage production), I could see certain audiences actually enjoying this film, and even embracing its darker corners.
I'm guessing that most of you knew from the first trailer (and certainly before you read this review) whether you were going to check out Into the Woods, which opens Christmas Day, but for those of you on the fence, you may get a kick out of seeing all of these appealing actors singing up a storm and wrapping their mouths around Sondheim's twisty-wordy songs. It's a closer call for me than I'm sensing it is for some, but in the end, it felt more like an exercise in getting it done than something Marshall and company were invested in.
Big Eyes
How much you like or don's like Big Eyes will probably depend on how much you actually buy into what it's selling. I'm not talking about whether or not Walter Keane (as played to the hilt by Chrisoph Waltz) actually painted the hundreds of portraits of sad children with oversized eyes or not. I think the film (and history) proves that he didn't. But Waltz's portrayal is more like watching a ringmaster on speed than a seasoned con artist, who began his painting career selling Paris cityscapes that he also didn't actually paint. But perhaps it was a larger-than-life personality that was required to overwhelm and ultimately seduce an artist like Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), who lacked confidence in her work and allowed herself to be convinced that if people found out the captivating works were done by a woman, that no one would take them or her seriously.
Director Tim Burton and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (who worked with Burton previously on his finest film Ed Wood) make it perfectly clear that in the beginning Margaret was a more or less willing participant in the scam, and there's no getting around the fact that Walter was a master at playing the part of the sensitive artist, who feels deeply for the suffering children of the world shown in his wife's "Big Eyes" paintings, which were immensely popular in the 1950s and early '60s. But after about 40 minutes, Walter began to exhaust me. It turns out you can get bored watching someone take advantage of someone else for years on end. Who knew?
Since Margaret doesn't really get the courage to leave her husband until late in the film, so most of Big Eyes is about watching the con escalate to proportions that no one could have predicted. Walter was the first person to mass-market print and postcard reproductions of artwork and sell them to a public that couldn't afford the originals, which were being purchased by Hollywood celebrities and corporate executives for quite a hefty sum. This level of commercialization and popularization of art even pre-dates Warhol (as Walter was keen to remind people).
What Big Eyes lacks is a sense of Margaret the artist, instead of just Margaret the hapless victim, being controlled by her husband and turned into a painting factory, churning out dozens of these paintings a week to feed the growing demand. Burton almost can't help but take a comical look at these events, tossing in actors like Jason Schwartzman, Krysten Ritter, Danny Huston and Terence Stamp (as a mercilessly caddy art critic who always hated the Big Eyes paintings) for comic relief. But the truth is, Margaret's tale is an exceedingly sad one, and Burton seems unwilling or unable to admit that to himself. I wouldn't expect him to get lost in the melancholy, but at the same time his treatment of her life story borders on flippant.
The film's final act focuses on Margaret finally admitting in public that she was the artist of these waifs with enlarged eyes, and the trial that soon followed, in which she sued Walter for millions owed to her. The judge's suggestion to have both of them spend about an hour painting one of these portraits is simple, and Walter's use of time is almost too ridiculous to watch unfold, even though it happened exactly that way. Outside of Adams' understated performance as the timid Margaret (exactly the kind of performance that will go unnoticed by many Academy voters), Big Eyes is in no way exceptional as a piece of cinema, but as a document of a footnote in pop art history, it fares a bit better. It's certainly not an unwatchable work, but I can't imagine that anyone beyond Burton devotees will find it essential either. The film opens today in Chicago at the Landmark Century Center Cinemas.
Unbroken
If you could give a prize or credit to a film with the best intentions this holiday season, the Angelina Jolie-directed Unbroken would win all the love and trophies. Hell, I'm sure a lot of people (critics and otherwise) will applaud the noble effort done by Jolie and her team in bringing the unfathomable story of Olympian and World War II hero Louis Zamperini to the big screen. With a screenplay by no less than Joel and Ethan Coen (who reworked earlier drafts by Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson), based on the best-selling book of the same name by Laura Hillenbrand and lensed by the great Roger Deakins (11 nominations, still no Oscar), Unbroken is such a sweeping, inspiring tale that you almost feel bad picking apart its fairly massive flaws, chief among them being that everything feels manufactured and choreographed, down to the placement of dirt and blood on people's faces and clothes.
Unbroken opens with its strongest sequence, involving Zamperini (up-and-comer Jack O'Connell, last seen in this year's Starred Up) and his fellow bombardiers bombing a Japanese target. The retaliatory defenses that meet them are appropriately threatening, their plane feels like it's made of spare parts held together by rubber bands, and an emergency landing made with no brakes feels, well, downright death defying. It's a tremendous scene in which we also meet other members of his team, including Phil (Domhnall Gleeson from Calvary and Frank) and Mac (Finn Wittrock, currently the primary source of menace on "American Horror Story: Freak Show"), who will also accompany Zamperini on a far more fateful mission.
The film jumps back and forth between Zamperini's next mission — a rescue mission of a downed plane — and his school boy days as a troubling-making Italian immigrant kid, which transitioned into him joining the track team with his brother's encouragement. Years of training and excelling led him to the Berlin Olympics (complete with Hitler and many a flying Nazi banner). The re-creation of the 1936 Olympics is quite spectacular, and it serves in sharp contrast to the rescue mission, during which the plane essentially fell apart in mid-air and crashed in the ocean with only the above three crew surviving, beginning a 47-day ordeal alone on the ocean. With almost no food and water, surrounded by sharks, and coping with a burning sun and often rough seas, these three men somehow managed to stay alive (well, two of them did) until a Japanese war boat picked them up. Again, this sequence is remarkably realized by Jolie, and after watching it, you'll need a stiff drink of water.
But once the proceedings move to the Japanese prison camp (where we are introduced to prisoner barracks commander Fitzgerald (Garrett Hedlund), the film starts to feel familiar and staged. Ultimately, Unbroken becomes a battle of wills between the clearly psychologically resourceful Zamperini (who makes a promise to God on the raft that he will dedicated himself to Him should he survive) and the prison camp commander Mutsushiro "The Bird" Watanabe, played by Japanese musician Miyavi (real name: Takamasa Ishihara), who struts around the camp like a sadistic peacock with a bamboo cane he uses quite liberally on poor Louie to break any lingering pride he may have about his Olympic accomplishments. And it's during these scenes that I began to lose interest. For one thing, they are exceedingly repetitive, and I struggled to see the point in showing us Zamperini whipped and beaten over and over again. We don't need additional proof that he was horribly abused; I don't think he was lying about that portion of his life.
The sad fact of Unbroken is that the portions of the film where Zamperini has an adversary he can see and touch (although he wouldn't dream of looking The Bird in the eye or laying a finger on him) are the least impressive or inspirational. When his enemy is a faceless one on the ground shooting up at his plane or nature itself, then you've got a bit of power and lift in the proceedings. But so much of the film takes place during Louie's captivity, it ends up feeling like a dozen other POW-type films made before. What's particularly sad is that despite the fact that the Coen Brothers penned this version of the script, you'll really have to strain to spot any trace of their clever brand of writing in the film. Watching starving men talk endlessly in detail about the food that they miss has been done to death; maybe it's true to life, but it feels like the most tired cliché.
The acting is very good, sometimes great; Deakins' cinematography is appropriate gorgeous (although I don't think this is his Oscar year — not for this); and Jolie's direction has improved vastly since her last effort, In the Land of Blood and Honey. I should also mention that the subtle use of special effects is quite good as well, especially in the bombing and aerial fight sequences and the Olympics re-creation. In fact, Unbroken is a easily watchable affair. The trouble is that a story like Zamperini's deserves to be better than average. There's nothing remotely triumphant about his survival. And while I certainly wouldn't encourage Jolie to pack her film full of hot air just to prop up her hero, you want to be stirred by certain moments at the end of his story (perhaps the saddest thing about the film is that Zamperini died earlier this year). The film isn't a colossal disappointment, but the potential was there for something so much more interesting and moving.
The Gambler
Most remakes have a very simple, not particularly noble goal: to play off the name recognition of a popular/somewhat popular title or franchise in the hopes of making money. The people that make these films often don't care if you revisit the original film; in fact, it's probably to their advantage of you don't, because then you'd realize how sub-bar the new version is. I'm certainly not one of those people whose knee-jerk reaction to a remake/reboot is to go negative and assume it will be terrible. But a great deal of the time, that is exactly the case.
That being said, I'm guessing the makers of The Gambler (a remake of the 1974 film starring James Caan, from a autobiographical James Toback screenplay, directed by Karel Reisz) would like nothing more than for audience members to see their version of this story and be inspired to check out the little-seen, 40-year-old masterpiece. This time around, the Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed, also a remake of sorts) and director Rupert Wyatt (the fantastic reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Escapist) have teamed up with Mark Walhberg playing the gambling-addicted English professor Jim Bennett, who gambles with every aspect of his life — from family relations to his job to romantic entanglements.
In one of the few pure acting outings of his career that doesn't involve action gunplay, Wahlberg plays Bennett as a layered and troubled individual who usually knows what he needs to do to get out of a tight situation with people he owes money to, but that doesn't always mean he's going to do said thing. At various points during the film, Bennett owes money to three different, all dangerous men, any one of which will kill him and everyone in his bloodline just to make a point. Still, it's great to watch Bennett walk into a gambling den (the film is set in Los Angeles, but not one that is familiar to most) with a little money in his pocket and the slick confidence of a man who can't lose. And during the course of the next few hours, we simply watch that light in his eyes and spring in his step get chipped away until he becomes just another desperate man, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. It's a remarkable transformation, and Wahlberg sells the shit out of it.
But believe it or not, The Gambler isn't strictly a film about a man with a gambling addiction. We also see Bennett several times in his classroom, where he seems to spend more time convincing his students that unless they are exceptional than there's really no reason to think about writing as a career. The student he sees the greatest potential is Amy (Brie Larson, in her first major role since last year's Short Term 12), a wallflower of a presence in the classroom, but also an observer of people and their behavior, and she is understandably drawn to Bennett and his self-destructive ways. The two are set up for a potential romance, but the film doesn't hinge on whether they end up together, and it's all the better for it.
Far more interesting is watching Bennett work the system of loan sharks and gambling parlors. He owes too much money for any right-minded shark to give him more money, but he somehow manages to keep digging himself deeper. He's also smart enough to know that they can't really kill him for the same reason — they can't afford to lose all of that money. Michael K. Williams is good as Neville Baraka, one of the loan sharks Bennett tries to give the slip almost from the word go. They have a fantastically complicated relationship that is made up of equal parts respect and contempt. And I dare you take your eyes off of John Goodman's Frank; he's the charming devil that you do not borrow money from. Of course, Bennett does just that. But Frank has also played father figure to Bennett for years, and gives him some sound advice before taking a piece of his friend's soul.
Speaking of givers of money, I wish there had been more with Bennett and his spiteful — with good reason — mother (Jessica Lange), a rich woman who knows that helping her son out with cash is a ticket to actually making things worse for him and between them. Their too-few scenes together are strangely moving and deeply sad.
Pay particular attention to newcomer Anthony Kelley, who plays Bennett's basketball star student Lamar Allen, a kid who looks up to his teacher even if he can't seem to pay attention in his class. Bennett must enlist Lamar in some shady dealings late in the film, and it throws a terrible light over their relationship. Keep a close eye out for colorful cameos from the likes of George Kennedy(!), Domenick Lombardozzi and Andre Braugher, all of whom add impressive accents in just the right doses to The Gambler.
If you think The Gambler is going to be some overly stylized, ultra-slick film about playing cards (like the abysmal 21), you can just stay outside in the car. This film is closer to Owning Mahowny (the grossly underrated/under-seen 2003 Philip Seymour Hoffman indie) than anything else. It's a creature of almost pure tension and fractured emotions — so much so that it's sometimes difficult to watch Wahlberg go through some of the pain he brings on himself, admittedly. Wahlberg brings his workman-like energy to the performance but fine tunes it with a craftsman's skill. There were times watching the film that I had to remind myself who I was watching. Gone is the oversized, muscle-bound knuckled head from Pain and Gain and the last Transformers film. Hell, Bennett only owns one sports coat, and it's too damn big for him.
At its core, The Gambler is about an intelligent and logical man who behaves like the very losers he clearly hates in both literature and life. He surrounds himself with lowlifes so he can feel better about himself, but he so rarely does. It's a delicate, fragile film that feels rough and tumble because so many of its locations are gritty and not pretty. There are moments lifted right out of the original film, and others that are unique to this updated version of the story, which is set in the present but maintains something of a '70s vibe. I suggest you go in to witness some tremendous acting, but I'm guessing you'll come out digging the whole package. In the landscape of holiday releases, The Gambler is certainly unique and a fascinating watch.
Mr. Turner
As much as I dearly love the more intimate, purely emotional works of writer-director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake and his previous film, Another Year), one of my absolute favorite films by him is Topsy-Turvy, his 1999 exploration of the creation of the musical The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan. There was something about the way Leigh dove into the troubled state of the artistic mind that really drew me in, and so when I heard that the filmmaker was tackling the life of the great British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, I was quiet thrilled.
Coincidentally, just recently I saw the latest Frederick Wiseman documentary called National Gallery (about the famed London museum), in which are housed several of the finest works from J.M.W. Turner, so my interest in the subject was further piqued. Leigh regular Timothy Spall (who was also in Topsy-Turvy) portrays the admired painter, who for quite some time was looked at as an outsider. The film skillfully captures that transition period (the 1830s until his passing in 1851), when his experiments in light and seascapes that frequently featured majestic ships began to get noticed and admired by other artists. His progression into the early stages of what later became Impressionist art was viewed as downright scandalous by some.
The movie does a tremendous job of allowing us even the slightest glimpse of Turner's creating process, but he was a man of few words and only a few more grunts that only those closest to him even understood. Among those were the women in his life, and what an odd array they were. First there was his ever-loyal housekeeper Hannah (Dorothy Atkinson), whom he sometimes had casual sex with when the mood struck him. Then there is his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Ruth Sheen), with whom he has a child and nothing else beyond contempt. Finally, there is the sweet widow, Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), whom he deeply cared for and eventually moved in with in her seaside home. It goes without saying that none of these relationships were conventional, or even healthy, but they all shaped and reflected what was going on in his mind at the time, and they are crucial to understanding him.
I was particularly moved by some early scenes between Turner and his aging and frail father (Paul Jesson), whose passing had a profound impact on the painter's emotional well-being. But it's the scenes between the grunting and groaning Turner and Mrs. Booth that help us form a great deal of our views regarding the artist, who often has the disposition of a wild animal, which is nicely countered by her charm and serenity. Also of great interest in Mr. Turner is his interactions with other painters of the time, whose praise he greatly appreciated and whose scorn angered and wounded him deeply. Art shows at the Royal Academy of Arts are especially entertaining, as the great painters of the day go from room to room praising and tearing down, seemingly at random.
The winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor prize this year, Spall is phenomenal. His performance almost dares us to find Turner in any way charming or physically appealing, and yet that's exactly what he does with Bailey by his side, looking at him as only a great lover would. And in her eyes, we see his better self. Mr. Turner succeeds at giving us a fairly complete portrait of an artist and a man, while still managing to be unconventional in its emphasis and being a perfect Mike Leigh film by allowing his actors to completely inhabit these characters for weeks or months before he ever turns the camera on them.
Having met and talked with Leigh before, I also feel like Mr. Turner is one of his most personal films. Although the filmmaker isn't as gruff as Turner, he's not far off either, and that in no way diminishes the scope and power of his art. This is an undeniably beautiful (thanks to Dick Pope's stunning cinematography) and in-depth work that helps define what "inspiration" means to certain creative minds, and it reminds us that true beauty can often arise from the most unlikely soil. The film opens today in Chicago at the Landmark Century Center Cinema.
Zero Motivation
In what I'm hoping is meant to be a dark comedy, this winner of the Best Narrative Feature prize at the Tribeca Film Festival focuses on the female soldiers on an Israeli Army base that features as much fighting among the troops as it does against enemy forces. Zero Motivation centers on two best friends, both of whom are being driven borderline insane waiting for their service stint to end. Zohar (Dana Ivgy) is an emotional powder keg who actively bucks the system and her commanding officer Rama (Shani Klein), who only cares about elevating her career and the impression the male officers have of her all-female unit. While Zohar's bestie Daffi (Nelly Tagar) dreams of nothing more than running out her service in her dream location, Tel Aviv, and joins an officer training program in the hopes of being sent there, which translates into Zohar feeling like Daffi is abandoning her.
It takes about five minutes to realize that the women at this particular post (or at least this group who only seem to be secretarial work) are looked at as servants and second-class citizens — fetching coffee and snacks, shredding documents and just generally pushing papers that mean nothing to the function of the base. Even with so little to do, the female soldiers still find ways to do their job poorly and waste a phenomenal amount of time playing video games and avoiding work at all costs. First-time feature director Talya Lavie has done an admirable job capturing the inanity of paperwork and office jobs, as well as the frustration these women feel every minute of their lives being overlooked, or worse, looked through.
The interactions among the women, especially when they aren't in the office, are priceless and so biting and funny that they make some of the office antics seem pedestrian. The film actually opens with a fresh face (Yonit Tobi) coming onto the base, whom Daffi assumes is her replacement after she goes off to Tel Aviv. But the truth about this new recruit is so much darker, and it changes the dynamic of the office in unexpected ways, and it sets a tone for the rest of the film that seems to be "Don't take anything for granted, including friendship."
There are few things that happen on this remote desert base that don't have lasting ramifications. One of my favorite characters is Irena (Tamara Klingon), a soldier of Russian extract, who talks dirty and acts dirtier (according to her), but something happens to her that is both humbling and utterly creepy, but it also seems to transform her in likely positive ways. Zero Motivation is more M*A*S*H and less Private Benjamin in its portrayal of inane military life. Cynicism runs deep in its veins and with good reason. The film illustrates how office boredom can bring a group together, but it also makes them turn on each other eventually.
The performances are strong and purposeful, and I'm really curious to see any of these actors in something else soon, just to see what kind of range they have. It's a film that isn't afraid to wear its edge proudly, and in a strange way it's inspiring to know that boring, repetitive jobs are the same all over the world. When you tire of the standard-issue holiday fare, you might want to consider this one. The film opens Friday in Chicago at the Music Box Theatre.
