REVIEW: The Zero Theorem

17 08 2014

The Zero TheoremLondon Film Festival, 2013

Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem” is the kind of film that raises so many important and intriguing questions that it’s entirely possible to forget some of them along the journey.  This oblique tale, bordering at times on the absurd, stuns with the sheer density of the thematic issues that Pat Rushin’s screenplay can pack into 100 minutes.

The film grapples with conundrums as timeless as the meaning of life, the nature of happiness, and the imminence of death and nothingness.  At the same time, “The Zero Theorem” also has its finger on the pulse of many modern malaises, such as screen addiction, the fading appeal of observable reality in relation to virtual reality, and the electronic mediation of human connection.

We explore these through the work of a computer programmer known as Q, played by Christoph Waltz, as he attempts to solve humanity’s conundrums.  In a change of pace from the two silver-tongued Tarantino characters that won him a pair of Oscars, Waltz sits back and delivers a largely reactive performance.  As he attempts to unlock the zero theorem and get to the core of human existence, Q doesn’t instigate events so much as he lets them happen.  Because we’re less focused on a conventional narrative, “The Zero Theorem” can easily delve into the realm of the existential and philosophical.

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REVIEW: The Trip

16 08 2014

The TripThis summer, Adam Sandler made a few headlines for admitting a fact that shocked many but surprised few: his movies are essentially paid vacations.  Be it the countryside in “Grown Ups,” Hawaii in “Just Go with It,” or Africa in his latest disappointing film “Blended,” Sandler certainly knows how to milk the studio teat.

Across the pond, it would appear that Steve Coogan has figured out how to pull a similar magic trick.  He stars as himself in “The Trip,” a film where he gets to go around with his pal Rob Brydon (also playing himself) on a restaurant bender around England.  Surely at some point along the way, Coogan thought to himself, “My, this a great way to eat well and expense the meals to the BBC!”

The film is not without its entertaining moments – a spirited discussion of how to properly impersonate Michael Caine’s voice springs to mind – but this hour and a 45 minute trip feels like an exercise in self-indulgence above all else.  “The Trip” is a chance to spend time with Coogan and Brydon just … because.

To be fair, Coogan is a much bigger star in his native England.  In the United States, we know him mostly as a character actor from films such as “Tropic Thunder” and “The Other Guys;” he has only really begun to enter our consciousness as a public figure with the arrival of 2013’s “Philomena.”  As for Rob Brydon, I hadn’t heard of him before “The Trip” and haven’t heard from him since.

So maybe the concept would work better for me if it was done by two actors with whom I was more familiar.  If a sequel to “22 Jump Street” doesn’t happen, “The Trip” with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum would probably be just fine.  B- / 2stars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (August 15, 2014)

15 08 2014

The BelieverIt seems hard to believe now, but there was a time when Ryan Gosling was not a movie star.  Plenty of people acknowledge his Mickey Mouse Club days with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, just as others recognize how hilarious he is in “Remember the Titans.”   But most seem to think that he just came out of nowhere, like a gift from God, to steal their hearts in 2004’s “The Notebook.”

In actuality, though, Gosling first got his moment in the spotlight as leading man from 2001’s “The Believer.”  The performance may well be the polar opposite of his stoic characters in “Drive” and “Only God Forgives.”  As Danny Balint, a self-loathing Jew who turns from his upbringing to join a radical neo-Nazi cell in New York, Gosling absolutely electrifies the screen as he futilely struggles to suppress memories of his background in order to commit heinous deeds.

But “The Believer” is not my choice for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week” simply because it is a great performance piece for Gosling.  Though he does steal the show, Gosling is hardly all the film has to offer.  “The Believer” may not quite rival “American History X,” another similar film about neo-Nazis, but it’s still a powerful examination of radicalism on both the personal and the political levels.

Writer/director Henry Bean satisfyingly delves into the psychology of Danny, looking at what might explain his volatile and unpredictable behavior.  There’s never one definitive answer, though, and the only person that seems to frustrate is Danny himself.  He’s a complete wild card, vacillating constantly between his desires to embrace the Jewish community that brought him up and his impulse to eradicate that same group altogether.  Maybe Gosling, now Mr. Strong and Silent, ought to watch “The Believer” now to bring some of the turmoil and conflict back to his work.


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REVIEW: The Giver

15 08 2014

The GiverIf there was any doubt that we’re reaching the point of supersaturation with dystopian YA adaptations, “The Giver” confirms that the tipping point has arrived.  I get that life in post-recessional America doesn’t exactly inspire hope, be you a teenager or an adult.  But I doubt real life could be any worse than escaping into this derivative and, often times, outright laughable film.

I first read the film’s source material, Lois Lowry’s Newberry-winning novel that is now a staple of middle school English curricula, as an impressionable 12-year-old in 2005.  At the time, the post-“Harry Potter” adolescent fiction boom had not begun to tarnish the newly bolstered reputation of writing aimed for emerging readers (not even the “Twilight” series had been published).  YA was neither a dirty word nor a marketing buzzword then; it was just my demographic.

Lowry’s book might have been relatively short, but it sure packed a punch.  “The Giver” can serve a crucial function in the escalation of material for language arts, providing a key stepping stone towards more weighty adult literature.  If you can place yourself in the position of a teenager, the dialectical push and pull between order and chaos as well as pain and pleasure are actually quite thought-provoking.

Yet no matter how deeply one might have regarded the thematic content of the novel, it’s entirely possible to discredit “The Giver” as little more than a compilation of shallow marketing hooks for a cookie-cutter dystopian YA film.  The very premise of the story loses sophistication and nuance as it’s forced to fit the mold made popular by “The Hunger Games.”  What made Lowry’s story special is largely discarded in favor the conventional, leaving behind a film that’s a shadow of its literary incarnation.

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REVIEW: What If

14 08 2014

What IfRomantic comedies have been all but abandoned by major studios since 2011’s “Crazy Stupid Love,” leaving any filmmaker with an itching to tell a love story to develop their project with independent financing.  In that realm of moviemaking, the rom-com is either being outright lampooned (as in “They Came Together“) or struggling to escape the trappings of post-“(500) Days of Summer” ironically detached revisionism (like “Ruby Sparks“).

“What If,” from director Michael Dowse and adapted from a stage play to screen by Elan Mastai, feels odd to watch in 2014 because it falls into neither predominant trend.  The film is unabashedly earnest as it tells the tale of Daniel Radcliffe’s Wallace as he struggles with his romantic feelings for Zoe Kazan’s Chantry, a close personal friend who happens to be in a long-term relationship.

In other words, it’s the kind of film that might have seemed quite redundant if it were wedged between, say, “27 Dresses” and “Definitely Maybe” in 2008.  But in today’s moviewatching climate, it’s a refreshing reminder of the kind of movie that’s been largely pushed out of the market by tentpole comic book flicks.  Say what you will about “Guardians of the Galaxy” being fun, but you could probably use the lessons from “What If” in your daily life much more easily than anything from the aforementioned space caper.

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REVIEW: Hateship Loveship

13 08 2014

Hateship LoveshipCraig Johnson, director of the upcoming Kristen Wiig vehicle “The Skeleton Twins,” remarked that even in her funniest moments, there’s a certain sadness to the characters Wiig portrayed.  I had never really thought of the comedienne in such a way, so I scoured YouTube to examine her work through such a lens.  Sure enough, the undercurrent is there in everything from her bit part in “Knocked Up” to her infamous Penelope sketches from “Saturday Night Live.”

In “Hateship Loveship,” we can see what’s left when you drain all the humor out of Wiig – and, as it turns out, it’s quite a morose sight.  She plays her character, Johanna Perry, with all the quietude of a church mouse.  Such restraint turns out to be devastatingly effective in creating a believable woman who is so passive that she practically lacks a personality altogether.

Sadly, the film veers off into such unbelievable directions – particularly in its second half – that it undermines the potential for Wiig’s performance to be a major breakthrough.  The premise of “Hateship Loveship” starts off with promise: Johanna moves into the home of an aging man (Nick Nolte) to be his caretaker and gets catfished by his granddaughter Sabitha (Hailee Steinfeld) in a rather mean-spirited prank.  Yet right when the film seems ready to veer into the realm of the tragic, it takes an unexpected turn.

After this rather shocking development, “Hateship Loveship” seems rather detached from reality.  Characters’ motivations seem hardly plausible, casting a shadow of doubt over the entire film.  The tone gets rather wonky, too.  It’s a pity that director Liza Johnson didn’t model her helming on the restraint and good judgment that Wiig brought to her character.  C / 2stars


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REVIEW: Neighbors

12 08 2014

If you’re Zac Efron, how do you get people to take you seriously as an actor?  See you as something more than a Disney Channel star without feeling yourself with a foam finger half-naked on television?  Treat you as something more than a Google Images search?

Taking a page from the Channing Tatum/”21 Jump Street” playbook, Efron took on a role in “Neighbors,” a comedy where his entire archetype of the ultra-macho pretty-boy is a consistent butt of jokes.  The arrangement works out well for everyone.  Those who choose to watch the movie will enjoy the self-parody of Efron’s relentless shirtlessness and his over-the-top portrayal of a self-deluded frat lord.  And those fans who just want another look at Efron’s chiseled figure are indulged in the process.

Initially, Efron didn’t seem to be meshing with his character, Delta Psi Beta president Teddy Sanders.  Perhaps I was expecting him to fit a certain model of the fraternity meathead that I knew, but it’s clear that “Neighbors” knows what it’s doing with him.  There’s pretty consistent and purposeful fetishization of Efron throughout the film, by Seth Rogen’s older and squarer Mac as well as within his own fraternity.  The desire for a firm bond with him is laced with some homoerotic undertones and really provides some interesting commentary on the kind of brotherhood fostered within fraternities.

Teddy’s relationship with Dave Franco’s Pete Regazolli, another high-ranking Delta Psi officer out to preserve his legacy, provides ample hilarious opportunities to analyze the implications of the bromance.  One particular exchange of rhyming affirmations of their friendship, which sounds like something potty-mouthed teenaged girls would exchange in gym, sounds so preposterous that it’s clear “Neighbors” does not intend for its portrayal of fraternity life to be taken at face value like “Animal House.”

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REVIEW: Locke

11 08 2014

LockeLondon Film Festival, 2013

There’s no denying that a one-man show is a tough feat to pull off, so all props to Tom Hardy for holding the screen so effortlessly in “Locke.”  It takes true presence to power a film with no one else to play off physically, and Hardy keeps us strapped in for the real-time ride with him.

From no more than phone conversations, Hardy constructs a character who is far more than his surface roles of vital construction contractor and family man.  His Locke is a decent man who made a mistake and is trying to face the consequences while still keeping his world in orbit.  But he quickly finds out that maintaining balance will be a much loftier task than he initially expects.

We’re locked in the car with Locke (couldn’t resist the pun) as he drives from Birmingham towards a reckoning in London, alternating conversations with his boss, his wife, and another figure of great importance whose precise role I shall not spoil.  Unlike a similarly claustrophobic “127 Hours,” there are no cutaways, no flashbacks: it’s just this moment, and we’re trapped in it.

Director Steven Knight keeps the voyage visually interesting, finding just about every possible shot and angle of Hardy and the highway.  There’s something vaguely hypnotic about the way he captures the peculiar lighting of the road at night, and it imbues the film with an aesthetic calm that clashes interestingly with the big turmoil Locke is facing.

Yet I couldn’t escape this sinking feeling that “Locke,” for all the novelty of its packaging, was really just a rehash of very familiar dramatic stakes.  The issues and problems Locke wrestles with behind the wheel of his car feel like they’ve been played out before, and frequently.  No matter how you slice it, a banality is a banality.

Hardy and Knight do their best to freshen up the stale material, and they provide a smooth, slick experience.  But they don’t elevate “Locke” above the level where its narrative runs on anything more than gimmickry.  B / 2halfstars


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REVIEW: The Railway Man

10 08 2014

The Railway Man“War leaves a mark,” states Jonathan Teplitzky’s “The Railway Man,” a film that ironically leaves very little mark on the viewer.  Two hours of events chug along like a train just pulling out of the station, and there’s hardly any rewarding byproduct from enduring it.

Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson’s script moseys through Eric Lomax’s autobiography, cutting back and forth between his time as a young soldier (Jeremy Irvine) trapped in a Japanese POW camp and his life as a haunted older man (Colin Firth) unable to connect with his wife (Nicole Kidman).  The format feels a little clunky, sure, but that fault pales in comparison to how blandly they present the story.  Nothing about “The Railway Man” seems meant to inspire thought about larger ideas, unless that’s what you’re making for dinner after the movie is over.

Firth does a nice job conveying the damage of his traumatic wartime experience; it’s almost as if he’s just doing a more reserved, understated reprise of his Oscar-winning role as Bertie from “The King’s Speech.”  But “The Railway Man” does a better job of conveying that isolation and sense of smallness with its striking, emotionally detached long shots than Firth does with any acting.

Teplitzky clearly knows how to make a film like this by the book, yet as a result, it comes across as rather cold and unfeeling.  I would have loved to have seen it delve more into the psychology of Eric, both when he’s emotionally scarred as a prisoner and when he embarks on a mysterious quest for revenge as a veteran.  Without such insight, “The Railway Man” just feels like a placeholder for a truly hard-hitting World War II flick to really sweep us off our feet.  C+ / 2stars


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REVIEW: Belle

9 08 2014

“Costume design porn” (if that’s not a phrase yet, I call dibs on the trademark) rarely satisfies for me, but I’ll admit, “Belle” came as a pleasant surprise.  Amma Asante’s 18th-century set period piece focuses far less on the threads and refreshingly more on social values of the period in England.  And for once, I felt like I should care far more about what the characters had to say than what they wore.

Perhaps my interest in the film’s subject came from having visited Kenwood House in London, the film’s setting.  I spent one beautifully foggy morning exploring the newly refurbished historical site while it was nearly empty, and one particularly kind docent took the time to explain the history behind Dido Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the mixed race daughter of an English aristocrat.  Dido is brought up just like any other legitimate child by her aunt (Emily Watson) and uncle (Tom Wilkinson), who is tasked with deciding a landmark case of the rights of slaves.

Ironically, her cousin Lady Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) has far more power and standing in British society … yet far less of a dowry to offer suitors.  A rivalry develops between the two that feels completely believable, and the tension propels “Belle” throughout some dull moments in the middle of the film.

Assante’s film has its heart in the right place, promoting causes like racial equality and the rights of women as self-sufficient individuals.  She gets a little self-righteous and preachy at times, but at least these struggles ground the world in reality as opposed to the first-world problems that seem to occupy most films of this genre.  Sadly enough, these are battles still being fought, and “Belle” reminds us that we’ve still got some distance to go even though we’ve progressed from the times being covered in the movie.  B / 2halfstars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (August 8, 2014)

8 08 2014

The House I Live InIt’s often easy to put a good deal of distance between ourselves and the Holocaust.  In no way am I promoting this as a good development, but the continuous passage of time only amplifies our sense of removal from the era of mass extermination.  Moreover, Americans in particular can see themselves as the liberators in such a genocidal scenario, not as perpetrators.

Ask Eugene Jarecki about the Holocaust, however, and he will tell you that America has and continues to perpetrate their own against its own citizens.  Sound a little dramatic?  By the time he analogizes the War on Drugs with the Holocaust in his documentary “The House I Live In,” it might not feel all too hyperbolic.

Jarecki’s haunting, informative opus marks my pick for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week” because it nimbly balances both the personal and the political as it explains how the War on Drugs began and the ways it tears at the fabric of our society.  He brings in top academics and scholars (as well as David Simon, the creator of “The Wire”) to discuss the roots of our current situation of mass incarceration.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, a whole lot of it comes back to racism and capitalism.

But “The House I Live In” is far from a lecture.  Jarecki really drives the film’s thesis home by interviewing the victims of the War on Drugs, namely, low-income families and racial minorities.  Crucially, Jarecki allows an emotional entry into the film through the story of his African-American help from his childhood, Nannie, and her family.  He shows the damage the broken system has wrought on her family to devastating effect.

If you saw John Oliver’s segment on prison and crave more information on the problem, go straight to “The House I Live In.”  You’ll be shocked, enlightened, and hopefully outraged enough to demand some changes.


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REVIEW: Calvary

7 08 2014

Summer 2012 has been uncommonly rife with spiritual themes, from “The Immigrant” to “I Origins” and even “Wish I Was Here” all delving into faith issues on a personal scale.  Writer/director John Michael McDonagh’s “Calvary” expands even further, taking a look at the institutional level of religion through his protagonist, the unconventional Catholic priest Father James (Brendan Gleeson).

McDonagh imbues James with a unique brand of wisdom, partially due to his unusual path to the priesthood.  Father James was a normal man who even fathered a child, only finding his way into the cassock after the death of his wife left him reeling.  This background in the realm of the worldly leads him to be a more patient, understanding paternal figure for the small Irish town he oversees.

Such purity of intent makes him a perfect target for one villager, who comes to confession in the first scene of “Calvary” announcing his plans to make Father James a sort of sacrificial lamb.  This mysterious man, who was repeatedly sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a child, seeks the blood of an innocent man to atone for the sins perpetrated against him.

McDonagh doesn’t shy away from looking into the effects of priests’ sexual misconduct, both for the victim and for the church at large.  In that respect, “Calvary” goes quite a bit deeper than 2008’s “Doubt,” although that’s not necessarily a fair apples-to-apples comparison.  (The latter film takes place when the scandals were only just beginning to enter public consciousness, while “Calvary” takes place in the present.)

Sadly, McDonagh doesn’t always play to the strengths of the story and character.  The opening scene would appear to indicate that the film will follow Father James as he deals with this threat on his life.  Yet for the most part, “Calvary” just provides a rather episodic snapshot of his odd bunch of parishioners.

The film is still interesting in these portions, largely because of Gleeson’s nuanced, deeply felt performance and the wide variety of interactions he can have over the course of a week.  But the large bulk of “Calvary” does not seem to be pushing the action towards its inevitable conclusion, making the film feel a little unfocused and meandering in the process.  McDonagh’s finale arrives with a bang, though it could have been a sonic boom had the whole plot been building behind it.  B / 2halfstars


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REVIEW: The Quiet Ones

6 08 2014

The Quiet OnesI don’t quite know what I was expecting when I followed a group of friends to see “The Quiet Ones.”  When I looked it up on IMDb, all I really saw was Jared Harris from “Mad Men” and assumed it must be a prestige drama.  But as we walked in, I heard someone mention it was a horror film … and at that point, it was too late to turn back.

The films in that genre I like are few and far between, and most of those I can actually get behind are ironic or self-aware.  If I want to be scared, normally I go to more artfully crafted films like “Requiem for a Dream.”  A more atmospheric horror can get underneath my skin and chill me to the bone, leaving me terrified long after the movie ends.

“The Quiet Ones” is quite the opposite, resorting time and again to the oldest trick in the genre’s book: the jump scene.  You know the drill, where everything grows eerily quiet or tranquil, some strings begin to play, and then WHAM!  Out of nowhere, something jumps out and scares you.  It’s effective for an immediate jolt, though the scare dissipates the moment the surprise is revealed.

Was I scared?  Sure.  I’m not ashamed to admit that “The Quiet Ones” got the better of me on multiple occasions, and I quickly fell into a routine of plugging my ears and averting my eyes from the screen.  So in some small sense, the film is effective.

But “The Quiet Ones” fails to do anything else interesting and will likely be of little use to anyone other than adrenaline junkies who thrive off the jump scenes.   The plot of the film is really only filler to string together these jolts of terror.  And even though the story follows Harris’ Oxford psychology professor and a group of students (including one played by Finnick from “Catching Fire,” Sam Claflin) as they perform an experiment on a disturbed woman, the proceedings are void of any mental stimulation.

It’s just the same old schtick, destined for $5 DVD bins at the CVS checkout registers and BuzzFeed lists about other movie projects of “Hunger Games” cast members.  But if you’re only in it for the cheap scares, chances are the blandness of “The Quiet Ones” was never something that concerned you anyways.  C+ / 2stars


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REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

5 08 2014

When Marc Webb was announced as the next director to helm the “Spider-Man” series, more than a few eyebrows were raised (including my own).  With only “(500) Days of Summer” under his belt, Webb seemed like an odd figure to entrust with a multi-million dollar franchise.  While that film showed a true creative mind at work, its exuberant eclecticism was not an obvious fit for a series that had been rather somber under the guidance of Sam Raimi.

None of these qualifications showed at all in his first outing with the arachnid hero, 2012’s “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which slavishly recreated the hero’s mythology for the generation that didn’t see the 2002 version in theaters or in its million syndicated cable showings.  The reboot felt timidly directed by Webb, whose trepidation at approaching a new genre of filmmaking was clear.

In his second go-round, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” glimpses of his distinctive stamp on the series become a little more clear.  One scene in particular where Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker angrily puts in his earbuds and makes a map to decipher the mysterious past of his parents seems to directly parallel the sequence in “(500) Days of Summer” where Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom draws a cityscape of Los Angeles.  And in one of the film’s final scenes, Webb leaves us with a hauntingly emotional denouement using no words, just powerful images and montage.

Sadly, these small pockets of artistry in the film were few and far between.  Though the film as a whole feels more confident than its predecessor, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” still suffers from the general lack of inspiration plaguing big-budget filmmaking, and especially comic book adaptations.

The screenplay is crafted this time by the Kurtzman-Orci duo that has given us some of the more ingenious popcorn flicks of the past few years (“Star Trek“) as well as some of its biggest duds (“Transformers“).  This film falls somewhere in between; it’s good enough to keep interest throughout, but we can see every plot development coming from a mile away.

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REVIEW: Get On Up

4 08 2014

In any musical biopic, the key ingredient is channeling the persona of its subject.  So in that regard, “Get On Up” succeeds behind Chadwick Boseman’s electric performance as the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Boseman captures the firebrand in all his passionate fits of rage and spirited swaggering dance moves, and he does it with such astonishing accuracy that I had to remind myself on multiple occasions that I was in fact watching a fictional portrayal of Brown.

Beyond Boseman’s towering turn, however, there is very little else in “Get On Up” that manages to rouse. Most of the film’s issues, sadly, are deeply rooted in Jez and John-Henry Butterworth’s script. With the very blueprint of the movie so wonky, it’s tough to judge anyone involved in the film too harshly. They likely just did the best with what little they were given.

The problem has less to do with individual scenes, which were more or less fine when evaluated independently. The Butterworths’ problem is that these units drawn from various times at James Brown’s life simply do not cohere nor do they ever move in any distinct direction. Unlike “Boyhood,” the mere passage of time in “Get On Up” is not cause enough to watch a movie or maintain attention.

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