Half-Assed Movie Reviews

February 6, 2011:  Alice in Wonderland

The combination of Disney and Tim Burton seems to result in something tremendous to look at, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  With his usual muses Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter on board, Burton gives us his odd take on the Lewis Carroll story, a warped interpretation of Wonderland and its inhabitants, with a story driven by a strong and simple moral.  I wouldn’t have bothered with this if not for the Oscar nominations for art direction, costumes, and visual effects, and I can’t say that I feel that viewing this film was time well spent.

At first, I wasn’t even convinced that the visual effects were even all that great, with the strange physics accompanying Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole, but the effects improved significantly after that and were well worth the nomination, with live-action and CGI elements mixed together throughout the film.  The costumes represent a typical Burton-esque take on Carter’s Red Queen and her minions as well as Anne Hathaway’s creepy and perhaps miscast White Queen.  The weird cast of supporting characters includes Alan Rickman and Crispin Glover in appropriate roles, but their tone only added to my wondering what the intended audience was for the film.  It didn’t seem to be geared towards kids, but at the same time it wasn’t oriented to the adult perspective either.  This was OK entertainment but I really didn’t care.

Throwaway entry with artistic Oscar nominations.

February 2, 2011:  Unstoppable

I watched Unstoppable, technically, because of its Oscar nomination for Sound Editing, but I was interested in seeing it before that nomination forced my hand.  On the surface it was likely to be simply another hyperactive and overwrought Tony Scott action film, but it reviewed well during its theatrical run and did fairly well at the box office.  The film, extremely loosely based on real events, is about an out of control train running through urban areas and the courageous actions which brought it to a halt.  I wouldn’t call this a great film by any measure, but it was entertaining and it was loud, and that’s what I was looking for.

The stage is set with the standard character setups, with union-based tension between the old-time freight train conductors who are being laid off to make way for younger and cheaper newcomers.  Denzel Washington is one of the grizzled veterans and Chris Pine is a young fellow who seems to have come into the profession by way of inside connections and intergenerational family guilt.  Washington, unlike the other long-time employees, gives Pine the benefit of the doubt, which turns out to be a good thing since the two of them are then paired up to drive a train together on that fateful day.  Lazy rule-breaking in the freight yard leads to a train with no driver accelerating along a heavily used track between busy cities, and as it gains speed and a few close calls are avoided, the administration tries to decide how to handle this uncontrolled and unstoppable train, which of course happens to be carrying hazardous chemicals as part of its load.

All of the standard players are here.  There’s the bureaucrat who’s so far removed from the reality of driving trains that he decides not to derail the train in a safe area because of the potential loss of money.  There’s the plucky female dispatch operator, played here by the always wonderful Rosario Dawson, who knows the right decisions and pushes for them to be made, but is powerless to enact them unless she puts her own job at risk.  There’s the egghead regulator guy who happens to be visiting the dispatch office that day for an inspection, and he has thoughts about how to stop the train but nobody listens to him because he’s only talking theory and hasn’t done the dirty work of actually driving trains (I’ll give you one guess as to whether or not his suggestions turn out to be right).  There’s the train full of schoolchildren learning about how great rail travel is, who miss being plowed down by the unstoppable train by a margin of about 4 feet.  There’s the recently-estranged wife of Chris Pine, who has a restraining order against him but gets caught up in the drama of his heroics and is right there waiting for him when he emerges successfully from stopping the renegade train.  Unstoppable is “inspired by true events”, not even “based” on them, and it’s easy to see that some artistic license has been taken here.

Still, this is an engaging action premise about men and their big toys, with a freight train doing a side wheelie as it goes too fast around a critical bend on an elevated track in the middle of a city, and the heavy bass rumbling as trains attach to one another and rumble down the track is exactly what Tony Scott is known for bringing to life.  My only serious problem with the film is that the impression of speed is not really achieved.  I know that obviously the real movie trains aren’t travelling as fast as they purportedly are in the story, but usually fast and careful editing can fix that, and I’m surprised that it didn’t.  I could also have done without the silly sentimentality at the end, but it’s inescapable in a movie like this, so I have to let it go.  Unstoppable is good popcorn entertainment, nothing too high-brow, and pretty much delivers on what it promises.

Just prototypical modern-day Tony Scott fare.

February 1, 2011:  The Fighter

How do you know when or whether someone has recovered and is ready to be trusted again?  With some people, there’s a question of whether they can or will ever again be worth taking a chance on.  The Fighter, based on a true-life story, illustrates how families wrestle with that painful dilemma all the time.

Dicky is a former boxer who nearly had a shot at the title, but missed because he didn’t quite have what it takes.  His younger brother Micky is now close to getting his shot, but his family and particularly Dicky may screw it up.  When it comes to family, even in the face of obvious evidence that they aren’t looking out for you, it’s really hard to decide not to stick with them.  After a disastrous Las Vegas fight which they should have turned down because of a substitute opponent, Micky is facing his options and having a hard time deciding what to do.  He eventually goes out on his own, and at the same time Dicky’s drug use catches up with him and he spends some time in jail.  When Dicky gets out the circumstances are different but it’s hard for them both to adjust, especially when this goes against everything they’ve known for decades.  Dicky is an unmatched instinctive fighter, and Micky needs him in his corner in order to succeed, but Dicky has blown so many chances with so many people that they can’t accept him for who he now is.

The Fighter doesn’t deviate far from the typical formula of a sports underdog who triumphs over adversity, which is exactly what I expected, but still, it was better than average.  Amy Adams as Micky’s on-again, off-again girlfriend is mostly wasted, despite her Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress.  Melissa Leo as the boys’ mother did deservedly win that award, as she completely inhabited the character of the domineering mother who can’t comprehend that one of her children would go against her.  Christian Bale also won the Supporting Actor Oscar, with his energetic performance as the hyperactive but brilliant Dicky.  The Fighter is a quality film, not one I feel any great attachment to, but absolutely worthy of its high consideration during this recent awards season.

Standard story based on real people.

January 31, 2011:  Winter’s Bone

There was plenty of buzz about Winter’s Bone as Oscar season approached, although the film was relatively unknown at the time.  A surprise Best Picture nomination among the newly expanded field of 10 has undoubtedly been a boon for this little film, and further nominations for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay speak to the core strengths of this film – the writing and the acting.

Jennifer Lawrence delivers a breakout performance as a teenaged girl in the US south who effectively acts as caregiver to her two younger siblings due to her mentally ill mother and absent drug-dealing father.  When she learns that her father has put up the family home as part of his bail for his most recent arrest, and that the house will be forfeited if he fails to show up for court in a week, Ree goes out into the complex social web of the local community to try and find him.  She intends to either get him to go to court or to find proof that he’s dead, the only two outcomes which would let them keep the house.

Ree’s uncle, portrayed by the Oscar nominated John Hawkes, is tough like his brother and knows the code of the land, and brings a steely calmness to his role which I found reminiscent of Sam Elliott 20 years ago.  In this often forgotten part of rural America, everyone is related to everyone else, and that brings a certain code of honour to everything that people do.  They get out of line from time to time, but they know the price they have to pay if they do.  The uncle warns Ree to stay out of this, but of course she doesn’t listen and gets herself into trouble.  However, this isn’t like it is in a thousand movies you’ve seen before.  She knows full well that she’s walking into trouble, but she knows it’s what she has to do in order to play her part in the drama of life.  Despite their low social position and even through all this trouble, she insists on teaching her siblings both academic and life skills and emphasizes manners in order to help them improve their station in life.  Crucially, she too follows the code and never tells anyone’s secrets to anyone else, and people recognize and respect that and it’s what keeps her alive and moving forward.  When Ree finds out the truth about where her father is, she does what she has to do in order to set things straight, and it’s just about the most horrific experience you can imagine.

I don’t like to fall back on genderalizations in my reviews, since it’s a typical cheap movie review trick, but I think there are times when it’s relevant.  Winter’s Bone is directed by a woman, and in segments of society like the one portrayed here, there is still very much a traditional divide between what a man is expected to do and what a woman is expected to do.  Far from the politically correct cosmopolitan society of today, in the rural south the women are still forced to bear the weight of the conflict put on families, and they tolerate and work within the inescapable male code of honour.  In the brilliant final scene of the film, Ree sees her uncle come to a sudden realization, and pleads with her eyes for him not to go and do what he has to do, but she knows that her pleading will be fruitless.  She can’t cry out or react because the younger kids are right there, but she wishes just this once that the cycle could be broken and families could survive instead of fight.  The cold, brown, late fall setting of the film reflects the sentiment of this bleak and difficult film which captures the bleak and difficult lives of people who live in their own society in a county which barely acknowledges that they exist.

What they say with their eyes.

January 26, 2011:  Tangled

I saw Tangled because of its single Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.  It had reviewed OK so I wasn’t dreading the experience, so I trotted off to the nearest multiplex to see it in 3D.  It turns out to be totally formulaic but well enough done to stand with the typical Disney pedigree.

I was skeptical after a pandering introductory sequence which explained the whole back story and what we were supposed to think about it, which struck me as a overly spoon-fed even for a kid’s movie like this.  In this telling of the Rapunzel story, a young girl is kept captive up in a tower by a woman claiming to be her mother, when in reality she is a kidnapped princess, taken shortly after birth in order to pass along her gift of eternal life to her selfish and vain captor.  She is discovered and saved by a Prince Charming type, and returned to the life she was meant to live.

Of course, we need to throw in some conflict along the journey home, including a run-in with some gruff individuals in a tavern who turn out to be not quite so rough when someone lends a sympathetic ear, and a horse who behaves like a dog and tries to track down Prince Charming who also happens to be a thief.  There is as always a goofy and supportive pet, in this case a chameleon.  The princess has ridiculously insanely huge glowing eyes.  Everyone breaks into song when it suits them.  Generally, it’s the standard Disney animated film template.  For a brief moment I thought they might chop out the invetitable conflict and just end the movie, but no dice.

All of this sounds like I’m kind of getting down on the movie, and it really wasn’t that bad.  It’s just that it didn’t really stand out in any way.  The 3D was OK but probably unnecessary, the story didn’t vary from exactly what we knew would happen, and the characters are cookie-cutter players from countless other similar Disney films.  Tangled was fine, but I didn’t feel that my afternoon had been used to its fullest potential.

Disney animated template fare for kids.