Director: Aaron Katz
Genre: Comedy?
Source: USA (2010)
Rating: NR
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: D
This was a movie I saw. I fell asleep during it. It ended with no real resolution. It felt like a lot of the annoying parts of indie films combined into one, though there was a funny sequence about buying a pipe. Or maybe the whole movie was really good and I was too tired, and falling asleep made me miss the brilliance. Very possible. But I don't care enough to try to watch it again and find out. Dumb.
Alternate Film Title: "Long Pauses Aren't Always Deep. Sometimes They're Just Boring."
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Blu-Ray
Grade: B
I know in my intellectual bits that I should like The Master a lot more than I actually do. Paul Thomas Anderson is a brilliant filmmaker, and I full believe there is a whole lot more going on in this movie that I picked up on. But I never felt quite clear on what he was going for as a filmmaker, or even (at times) what the plot of the movie was. Joaquin Phoenix has PTSD, sexual hang-ups, and a drinking problem. That much was clear. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the leader of a Scientology-like cult. OK, check. But the ins and outs were by turns intensely compelling and bone-numbingly dull, so in the end I came away lukewarm on the movie as a whole. Though a lot of critics seem to be calling it his best film yet, it didn't compare to There Will Be Blood, or even less "careful" works like Magnolia and Boogie Nights. I know there's genius there, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Shame on me, perhaps.
That said, there is a lot that I really did like about this movie. It's beautifully shot, for one, from the opening shots to the close. There's a sterility and a picturesque aloofness to the era that is captured well, and the quality of the light and camera plays off the 50s era hairstyles and fashions beautifully. Even when the plot lost its hold on me, the picture kept it.
The liquidity of the film impressed me as well, and I mean that in several senses. Water is everywhere in the movie, from the boat wake (boat unseen) that pops up throughout the film, to the beach on which Freddie Quell, Phoenix's character first appears, to the boat on which he meets Hoffman, there is an emphasis on water that impressed me after the vivid use of oil in Anderson's last film. I think there's a metaphor there for Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman's character) himself, continually shifting his philosophy, his identity, his religion to fit his needs and desires of the moment. His "religion" is liquid, shaping itself around whatever ideas he feels at the moment. An interesting sequence halfway through the film cuts from Dodd singing a song to a group of friends to Dodd still singing the same song, but now with all the women nude. At first I had trouble determining if this was real or if this was Freddie Quell's vision of the world (as mentioned, he has some severe sexual hang-ups and obsessions), but the following scene with Amy Adams as Dodd's wife convinced me that no, this was one possible route Dodd could take his new cult--down a path of sexual exploration. That she convinces him to back off from this only reiterates his own liquid sense of truth.
Similarly, Quell's name itself could be metaphorical in relation to water. He wants to be quelled, to be calmed, the way storms and waves are, and looks to Dodd to make it happen. Their dynamic is complex and ever-shifting, and though Freddie first looks for peace by making ridiculous dangerous alcoholic concoctions, Dodd convinces him to start looking elsewhere. Whether or not he can "fix" and "quell" Freddie's raging demons seems to be at the heart of the film.
In the end, the film didn't quite come together for me. That said, I have to admit that the first time I saw There Will Be Blood I liked it but didn't love it, and now it's one of my favorites, so it's possible a repeat viewing would change my mind. The problem is, I'm not sure I want to watch it again. Blood's Daniel Plainview is such a fascinating figure, but partly because you're not sure whether you love him or hate him as the movie goes on. Quell, on the other hand, I never really liked. While Phoenix's performance was great, the character himself is just a little too greasy and smarmy and mean for my taste. I wanted him to find peace, I suppose, the way I generally want people to find peace. But I can't say I felt particularly empathetic toward him. I just didn't really want much to do with him.
Alternate Film Title: "Sand Women I Have Loved"
Director: Mike LeighGenre: Comedy
Source: UK (1999)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: C-
I will have to take a lot of the blame for my reaction to this movie. It's not that it is bad--I have the feeling it is probably actually pretty good. But it was not what I expected, and it was way, way longer than I realized.
Last night at 9:30 Clementine and I wanted to watch a movie, but The Master, which we have on Blu-ray, seemed to be way too long--in the neighborhood of three hours. Somehow we settled on Topsy-Turvy instead, which had a much shorter running time of two hours and forty minutes. By which I mean, about fifty minutes longer than we really had the patience for.
In theory, it's a movie that's right down my alley. It's a bit of a biopic of Victorian British theater legends Gilbert and Sullivan, and it's broken into roughly two halves: in the first hour and twenty minutes it explores their falling out, disagreements, and various reactions to their fame and reputations. The second half deals with Gilbert's inspiration for their famous opera The Mikado and their reuniting over it. The film also touches on the feelings and responses of several of the actors in their company, though only in bits and pieces, which is one of my complaints. We get enough of these fringe characters to see some of their pomposity, or weakness, or whatever, but not enough to make them full-fledged characters. The revelation that one of the actors is a drug addict (30 minutes before the film ends) should have mattered more, but there was no real hint of it beforehand or resolution to it afterword. It was just a thing that happened.
There were lots of other "things that happened" that could have been shortened or skipped over all together, and by the end of the film, rather than being excited to see the production get underway, I was just ready for the whole thing to end. It became tedious and boring. I liked the actors, I liked the idea of the movie . . . I just didn't really care for large stretches of the actual movie. Maybe I'd like it more if I saw it at a different time, when I knew what I was getting into. After all, this film just recently got a Criterion Collection release, so there must be something there. But last night? Nope.
Plus, there was something weird going on with the sound on Netflix that kind of diluted the experience (since it's about an opera, after all--sound should matter).
Alternate Film Title: "British Gentlemen Are Ridiculous"
Director: Don Scardino
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinemas
Grade: C
I mean, honestly. Can nothing good come to the theaters in February and March?
I will admit that I enjoyed this movie almost entirely on the good will I have toward the actors, though the film on the whole wastes a perfectly good setting in the absurd world of Las Vegas magicians. I really like Steve Carrell, though he is a caricature of a person for a good 2/3 of the movie, speaking with a weird cadence that doesn't quite work. I also really like Steve Buscemi, who always seems genuine, even when he's in a sub-par comedy. There's just something about him in this movie that says, "I'm just happy to be here," and that worked pretty perfectly for the character. And once again, my crush on Olivia Wilde allows me to forgive the otherwise average-ness of her performance here.
Jim Carrey, surprisingly, is the only standout to me here, playing Steve Gray (Mind Rapist), a Criss Angel/David Blaine mash-up character who is so absurd and out of touch with reality that everyone wonders if he's an idiot, a savant, or just buys into his own hype. Until his final gags, Carrey works well, with a sincerity and a ridiculousness that makes the character entertaining--even as everyone around him is grossed out.
But still, this one is going to fly under the radar of most people, and deservedly so. Though I enjoyed myself because of my fondness for the actors, most of the jokes miss, the plot is obvious and straightforward, and the emotional resolution unearned. The funniest part of the film is the "revelation" of how the final magic act is performed, which is so ridiculous that one can't help but laugh. Unfortunately, that's one of the very few real laughs in the film--and I don't think comedy is what they meant to make disappear. (Wow, what a bad pun!)
Alternate Film Title: "Too Much of Steve Carrell's Waxed Chest"
Director: Bryan Singer
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinemas
Grade: C+
Poor Bryan Singer. I don't think he ever fully recovered from the critical slaughter of Superman Returns (a movie I still think is not as bad as everyone else seems to think). Since then he had Valkyrie--solid but not great--a couple of TV movies (Football Wives, which I don't know anything about, and Mockingbird Lane, which is a reboot of the Munsters, and that in itself is horrific) and this.
Now, maybe (as a lot of directors and actors do) he just has kids now and so is turning towards more family-oriented fare. But this movie was just bland enough that it's hard for me to acknowledge that this is the same director who brought me The Usual Suspects and X2. Where is the wit and cleverness that drove those two movies? Where is the tight action and suspense?
This movie is not bad, really. I enjoyed it well enough, and I did like it more than Snitch, our last theater outing (the bleak movie season of the first quarter of the year strikes again). And there were some fun scenes. And if I had a ten-year-old son or daughter, this is exactly the kind of movie I'd be excited to take them to. But overall it's also a movie that will do fine, and it will do fine on DVD, but it will never be anyone's "favorite movie." And it will never be one (as with The Usual Suspects) where I'll be excited to find people who haven't seen it to share with. It's got average CGI, main characters that are just this side of Snoozeville, and a story that really doesn't twist the famous fairy tale in any exciting ways.
On the other hand, it does have a scenery-chewing Stanley Tucci and an entertaining Ewan McGregor, so I guess it's not all bad. It's just not all that good, either.
Alternate Film Title: "That's King Al Swearengen to You" (Deadwood, I miss you)
Director: Jim Field Smith
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2011)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant
Grade: A-
Well this was a random Netflix find that I ended up enjoying way more than I expected, and not--as my wife assumed--just because Olivia Wilde played a stripper. In fact, she's less hot in this than in a lot of movies. Instead, this movie was surprisingly funny, surprisingly sweet, and an entertaining send-up of the Midwest. This is full-on satire territory, and it works.
The film follows the twin story lines of Bob and Laura--a retiring butter-carving champion and his social-status-and-political-aspirant wife--and Destiny, a young foster child looking for a home and with untapped artistic talent. As Laura refuses to give up the status (and the political hopes) that came along with her husband's fame, and as Bob tries to contain the stripper he owes hundreds of dollars to, Destiny tries to make sense of her new foster parents, her blossoming talent, and a world that seems to be more and more challenging every day.
Butter has a lot of unexpected comedy as it allows actors to play with the types of roles they rarely get (except Ty Burrell as Bob, who is yet another fumbling but well meaning dad, though he does have a darker heart here than on Modern Family, and he's so good at that role anyway I don't resent his "Phil with fewer morals" take on the character): Jennifer Garner as a power-hungry shrew and Rob Corddry as a really likable and sweet foster father who just wants to develop a good relationship with Destiny both really stood out, and Yara Shahidi as Destiny was also a delight to watch.
But most enjoyable was the incisive dissection of "heartland values" that tries to expose the gaps that the get-ahead mindset of Reagan-era capitalism and Bush-era fundamentalist values leave on the under-privileged. Without being overtly political, the film exposes Laura's willingness to trample anything in her way to get what she wants, even as she uses traditional American iconic imagery for her own ends. Her final butter sculpture in the film is hilarious in its tastelessness, and it skewers those who rewrite American history to suit their own ends.
At least that's how I saw it. But even if you don't buy or notice the political undertones of the film, it's still really entertaining. And it reminds me that this is one of the things Netflix is great for--to stumble on something you would never seek out on your own, and then to find out how much you enjoy it.
Alternate Film Title: "Movie Orphans Are Always the Cutest and Most Talented Kids--I Wonder If Real Orphans Ever Get a Complex About It"
Director: Tim Burton
Genre: Animated
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: PG
Location/Format: Blu-Ray
Grade: B-
I'm not sure there could be a more Tim Burton-y movie than this (but then again I think that with pretty much every Tim Burton movie. It's like each gets a little more twee, a little more black and white, a little more Danny Elfman. I made a point in an earlier post about Wes Anderson movies always being immediately identifiable, but that might be more so with Tim Burton, and this time I don't mean it as a compliment. Too much of a good thing, and what not).
This movie was fine, and relatively cute, but 2012 was also the year Para-Norman came out, and that stop-motion film is superior to this stop-motion film on all counts, from character to animation to paranormal fun to general entertainment value. This one made me laugh and "Aww" a few times, but no more than I expected to, and not in any unexpected ways. Though the nods to Universal Horror monsters of the 30s-40s were fun, I just don't have the connection to that era of films that a lot of directors do. Yes Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein are ground-breaking and innovative, but I have more interest in them for their historic value than their inherent entertainment value, which is not the case with all "old" movies.
All things considered, the movie's fine, but I'd rather go watch Para-Norman and Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline than sit through this one again. All three of those are more original and more fun.
