This is 40

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in Judd Apatow's This is 40

**1/2 out of ****

This is 40, is pretty much what I expected from Judd Apatow: Amusingly funny yet too long and unfocused to feel totally satisfying... or meaningful. Let me stress that the hilarity of his movies is always the draw for myself and others to see them. He makes comedies and he has a great sense of what's funny. The drawback to them is that he has a poor sense of what's realistic. His constant attempt at slice-of-life drama in his movies has varied results. There are parts I relate with and other parts I wonder if anyone could relate with.

This movie isn't the editorial mess that was his potential masterpiece, Funny People. It does have most of the same problems. There's a lot of clever comedians featured all over the film. Apatow has worked-in subplots for all of them and it takes our focus off the implied care we're supposed to have for the characters.

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow's wife) reprise their roles as a the bickering married couple from Knocked Up along with Apatow's children, Maude and Iris, playing their children. The movie is generally about the couple dealing with the fear of becoming old and the struggle to be good parents. 

This ensemble does a good job at playing a family. Rudd is still a witty smart-ass who angers Mann when he responds to her eccentric ideas for household reform with indifference. Maude bravely captures how annoyingly insecure and emotional teenagers can be. Iris is pretty funny at mocking how needlessly complicated all these older people are.

There is a subplot revolving around Paul Rudd's character in financial trouble through an independent record label he's been running and is trying to provide Graham Parker a comeback album. I was thinking along with disinterested characters Rudd is trying to turn on to this older Rock artist, "Who cares?"

One of the best running plot elements that deserved more attention, was when the parents confiscate their older daughter's iPad and then spy on her Facebook exchanges discovering that she is defending herself against the harassment of a boy from school, who they choose to threaten along with his mother, played by Melissa McCarthy. This feud should have played a bigger role in the film because it was too funny. 

Albert Brooks brings his hilariously dry presence as Paul Rudd's father who uses shameful guilt tactics to get money from his son. Jason Segal, who also reprises his role from Knocked Up, has little purpose in the story but has amazingly funny exchanges with Chris O'Dowd and Megan Fox near the end of the film.

Still, I wondered why, in spite of all the laughs this movie inspires, did I have to spend two and a half hours with these characters? Apatow's heart is in the right place but he really wastes time where he shouldn't and can't ever seem to find a way to wrap his film around a center...

Just go rent Parenthood.

Zero Dark Thirty

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty

***1/2 out of ****

In Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal reteam to make another war-on-terror themed movie. This worked for them with their excellent 2008 film, The Hurt Locker, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Their collaboration seems to be working again with great reviews and a Best Picture nomination.

The film is about the incredibly long-lasting CIA operation to find Osama Bin Laden. It starts off with a dark screen set to real audio of World Trade Center emergency phone calls on 9/11. Then it cuts to a scene featuring the inhumane treatment of a terrorist suspect, which jarringly tests a viewer’s dilemma between vengeance and empathy.

We are then introduced to a strong female lead named Maya, played by Jessica Chastain who has been nominated for Best Actress for this role as a CIA operative. She approves of these tactics to gather intelligence, if it will help find leads to the whereabouts of Bin Laden.

Chastain plays Maya as an obsessed and intelligent character who is very good at focusing on her objective in spite of the emotional tension attached to her occupation. This character is the product of conjecture, as we can’t really know the identities of those who worked this operation or their personal stories. What she does very well here, as an actress, is walk the line between being an audience surrogate of curiosity and boiling emotion while appearing realistically commanding in a job for which most of us will never know the stress. It is fair to say that Chastain is now well established as an ideal leading lady for big movies to come.

For the most part, this film is a procedural investigation story with occasional moments of violent intensity. Bigelow has always been talented at portraying danger and generating dread. She directed one of my favorite dystopian science fiction movies ever, the very underrated Strange Days, which was one of the first hard R-rated movies I managed to see in the theater as a kid. It had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. I’m really glad that she has been successful in taking this kind of mood to more serious projects.

While this film is primarily a suspense drama, I think the most amazing thing Bigelow gets away with, is during the final twenty minutes when she shifts gears taking it into full-on action. This is where the team of Navy SEALs raid the dark and gigantic compound, where Bin Laden is hiding, in a minute by minute relentless sequence. Alexandre Desplat’s score takes charge of the movie at this point. The haunting mood the music creates feels like we’ve ventured into another film but it works.

We know how this movie will end but it is very good at keeping us in a state of suspense with Maya, the SEALs and the officials involved in this operation, which according to the movie, may have not been backed up with enough intelligence for everyone to be certain of its success. There is so much damage done during the final event, I kept thinking to myself, “Bin Laden had better be there.” –despite my knowledge of recent history.  

In the end, this film is more thought provoking than meaningful. It depicts torture, expensive bargaining and shady operations that America’s high intelligence probably implemented to finding the world’s most wanted man. The movie doesn’t directly ask the question: does the end justify the means? Like The Hurt Locker it is an objective presentation of people working in a world of constant danger and leaves it to audience interpretation to deal with the moral questions.

This is a very good movie, worthy of the Best Picture nomination, but I have a hunch it won’t win. Films of escapism are more likely to be awarded. They are a comfortable thing to turn to, when we as a people, like Maya in this movie, aren’t sure how to move on.

Samsara

 **** out of ****

My favorite film of 2012 is Ron Fricke’s Samsara. This is the kind of movie I consider to be great cinema: Amazing imagery set to gorgeous music. Give me those two things and I’m pretty damn satisfied. 

Cinema has many values. Story and dialogue are two of them but I am opposed the notion that the two are necessary in all movies. Samsara is a vivid experience of high-end cinematography covering places all over the world from the haunting ruins of Katrina to the unreal luxury of Dubai and then the beauty of ancient temples to sad inhumane food processing plants –Movies like this one are just trying to frame life on earth and provide unforgettable images.

There may be an intended message embedded but this film, like Fricke’s previous masterpiece, Baraka and in the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi for which he did cinematography, but the message isn’t essential. His movies are beautiful because they don’t use words. They utilize seeing a movie as a hypnotic kind of experience where you can let it wash over you. I think the Academy Awards have shown good taste this year, but I’m always mystified as to why there is no place in any of their categories for greatness like Samsara.

Red Hook Summer

Clark Peters is a devoted man of God in Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer

** out of ****

Spike Lee, a director whose taken a decade-long hiatus from success but still commits himself to making enemies, made a film out of his own pocket last year. As a defender of the artist beneath the public hot-head, I am saddened to say that this is only almost a good movie.

The film is Red Hook Summer, the story of a thirteen-year-old African American vegan atheist boy from Atlanta, made to stay the summer with his strict old-fashioned evangelistic Baptist preacher of a grandfather in the rough Red Hook district of Brooklyn. The script is co-written by Lee and previous collaborator, James McBride (Miracle at St. Anna). It is said to be loosely based on real experiences of McBride's childhood. I can see Lee identifying with it in terms of its theme of religious culture-shock. However, Lee's earlier film, Crooklyn based on his own childhood was a slight inversion as that film dealt with being sent down south to experience the religious crazies.

Lee is still the stylistically strong director he was known to be with his abstract montages and creative cinematography (You can always expect his signature 'actor-on-the-dolly' shot). The subject matter does become intriguing as well. Near the end, the story goes in an unexpected direction which challenges your perception of a character in the jolting way that real life does and cinema is rarely brave enough to.

So why doesn't it work? Our lead character, Flik is played by first time actor Jules Brown. This character, during his time in Red Hook, meets a girl his age, Chazz, played by Toni Lysaith. I cannot describe how wooden and lifeless their dialogue delivery is in EVERY SCENE. It's pitiful. Like middle-school play, pitiful. Either Spike picked two performers beyond hope, or Spike doesn't know how to evoke good performances from non-actors.

The grandfather is a phenomenal character and well played by Clarke Peters. Lee regular, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, continues to play an urban decrepit flawlessly, though with age, he's a little less scary now.

Another thing I like about Red Hook Summer, is the soundtrack. Ever since Clockers, I've enjoyed how Lee likes to contrast soulful music that inspires hope with chaotic hopeless environments. It creates a sense of comedy as though there is a god smiling down on human insanity. In this case, he has employed singer Judith Hill to do several original songs for the film and they are beautiful.

Sadly, the potentially fascinating lead character and his coming-of-age circumstances are dead in the water for this film at the beginning. I understand what frustrates Lee about the state of cinema today and the lack of a profound African-American experience to be seen in most films. He may have struggled to get this movie made. It's obvious that the film was barely distributed. All I can say, is that it doesn't do this director any good to speak ill of other artists. 

Les Misérables

Hugh Jackman stars as Jean Valjean in Tom Hooper's cinematic adaptation of the musical adaptation of Les Misérables.

** out of ****

As Anne Hathaway sings, I Dreamed a Dream everything that is right about this movie is in front of you. The song is performed in a single take. The camera’s focus is shallow capturing only the raw emotion from the face of a tortured woman as she sings her heart out. This scene and many others do everything they can for a musical I am never going to like.

There’s a monotonous quality to musicals of this kind. Every conversation is sung. Every thought that goes through a character’s head becomes an excuse to indulge in his or her vocal abilities stretching out as long as possible. This takes power away from the few surrounding songs that actually sound good. For me, Les Misérables is another chapter in an ongoing struggle to understand my love/hate relationship with musicals.

I have faith that the sung-through opera-like form can work for me… But it didn’t here. I also believe you can make a great musical out of tragic subject matter without it seeming silly… But that didn’t happen here either. What I do understand about this particular movie is that Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) has made artistic choices that are absolutely admirable but I found the musical content mostly tedious.

His casting utilizes great performing talents with few exceptions. His use of recording on-set vocals, works much better than when the same method was used for the abominable Beatles-themed musical Across the Universe. Danny Cohen’s 35mm cinematography richly captures the grittiness of the excellent locations, sets and faces to be featured in intimate detail through the constant use of wide-angle lenses.

If you are a fan of this musical, you need not read my opinions. I am well aware that this show has stood the test of time and that people adore it. For those who do not know it, Les Misérables is a musical based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, widely regarded as one of great works in the history of western literature. It features several characters with Jean Valjean (Played in this film by Hugh Jackman) in the center as an ex-convict who finds redemption. Along the way we meet many elements of the nineteenth-century French working class and their suffering culminating in the Paris uprising of 1832.

While this story has a lot of ground to cover and many characters to know, I felt very little engagement. I started to get invested in a character and then they’re taken away and I’m stuck with a totally new group of people for the next twenty minutes. It’s as though the music didn’t change enough to give me the feeling of a new atmosphere –Except for the scheming Thénardiers played by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter who bring maybe too much of their Sweeney Todd comic relief to the film.

Eddie Redmayne and Aaron Tveit are relatively new to the screen and play young revolutionaries wonderfully with the beautiful Samantha Barks in her first film possessing a voice that will probably make a star out of her. Hugh Jackman can sing, yes, but near the end I was getting tired of listening to him test his range. Amanda Seyfried was good. No surprise there. I don’t need to say again how wonderful Anne Hathaway is, but her job is pretty much done early in the film.    

The only miscalculation on which I hope everyone can agree is that Russell Crowe has everything it takes to play the unwavering police inspector Javert… minus the singing voice. This is clearly star-power in favor of ability. I really wanted him to sing about fightin’ ‘round the world but one can only dream.

Musicals in this day and age are strange. There’s something so vulnerable about a person going into song outside of a music venue. So we’re all the more moved when such a daring act wins us over. I’m sure my opinions on this particular work are offending someone. I love Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge so much I’m frankly hurt when someone tells me they feel otherwise. Hedwig and the Angry Inch, All That Jazz, Sweeney Todd and Singin’ in the Rain are all musicals I consider to be amazing experiences. All I can say to explain why they work so well for me, while others don’t, is that most of their songs feel strongly linked to the emotional passage the film is taking. When the characters go into song, it feels inspired and not obligatory. Les Miz is a show where I felt many things but I rarely did I feel moved.

Bernie

Jack Black is Bernie

***1/2 out of ****

Richard Linklater's new film, Bernie, is a hilarious bittersweet story based on a very strange but true murder case. Jack Black in one of his best performances, plays Bernie Tiede, a flamboyant mortician in a small Texas town destined to befriend a wealthy old woman, become her curious companion, and eventually murder her. The old woman was Margorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), who known throughout the town as a mean old witch which greatly contrasted Bernie's kindness and popularity. By the time he confessed to killing her. The people of the town either refused to believe it, our said that she must have had it coming.

Linklater's creative streak is evident in his utilization of real people from the town who knew Bernie. They are prominently featured throughout the film in semi-staged interviews. As wonderful as Jack Black is in this film, these people inspire the biggest laughs. They offer great lines no screenwriter could imagine.

The movie has a funny and bright spirit in spite of it's morbid subject matter. It's goal is to get you involved in Bernie's joy of life and the world of his small town popularity. Gospel music is prominent throughout. A lot of the humor is aimed at the naivety of the Christian community who seem oblivious to the likelihood of his homosexuality.

Matthew McConaughey plays the local District Attorney, determined to put Bernie in jail and struggles with a town that is way too forgiving. His performance is good but it almost belongs in a Cohen brothers film -not that this movie is too far from their territory.

Bernie is another entry in Linklater's versatile directorial career. He's gone a variety of places since he hit it big with Dazed and Confused in 1993 and he continues to make memorable films like this one.

Django Unchained

Left to Right: Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Jamie Foxx

*** out of ****

Quentin Tarantino’s newest film Django Unchained is something of a companion piece to his previous film, Inglourious Basterds. It is a period film exploiting a sensitive and shameful time in history for B-movie style entertainment. It also features the excellent Christoph Waltz who made a very strong impression in Basterds. This is the first Tarantino film to call itself a western, but the Spaghetti Western genre has been creeping into his movies for a long time now.

This film stars Jamie Foxx as a slave in the American South before the Civil War. His name is Django. He has just been freed and recruited by a bounty hunter named King Schultz (Waltz). Schultz is a German immigrant who hunts down dangerous felons with lots of money to earn for their corpses. He wants Django to help him identify a group of slavers on his list. He assures Django that when the job is all done, he will help him get back the wife who was taken away and sold-off long ago.

Django adapts to the Bounty hunting business naturally and proves to be a fast gun and clever business partner. When they eventually move to locating his wife, they encounter her new owner who proves to be a formidable obstacle. His name is Calvin Candie played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Leave it to Tarantino to ask pretty boy Leo to play someone absolutely deplorable. Candie utilizes his ownership of human beings in every imaginable way.

By this part, I realized I was watching Tarantino’s most offensive film ever. Aside from the use of the N-word having an exponential growth as the film moves, he is borrowing from awful stories of slavery and putting them in the context of a melodramatic American adventure story. I know this was to be expected, but I usually expect Tarantino to redeem himself after a savage exploitation. What really disappointed me was how I never truly felt a payoff to the revenge that naturally came next. The film is so filled with savage slave drivers and owners getting their comeuppance throughout, that it becomes gimmicky and redundant. By the film’s final act, I anticipated the direction it was taking and it just felt sloppy. Tarantino’s better than this.

There’s no denying that the movie starts off strong and has brilliant lines from beginning to end. Tarantino is one of America's few big name auteurs who can write and direct something that feels different from everything else you see. You know that his stories have an agenda of their own and you’re just not sure where they’re taking you. This was much more true of his vastly superior Inglourious Basterds.

One of many Tarantino trademarks is bringing back forgotten actors. The highlight to this one is Breaking Away star Dennis Christopher as Candie’s lawyer. The beautiful Kerry Washington plays Django’s wife Brunhilda (The name is amusingly explained in the film). Walton Goggins is uncreatively cast as a sadistic redneck –big surprise. Finally, Samuel L. Jackson puts on a deliberate minstrel show of a performance as Candie’s elderly head house slave, loyal to his master and treacherous to his fellow slaves. This is a great comic performance and an amazingly uncomfortable one.

My favorite scenes in the film are just between Foxx and Waltz. Foxx plays Django with curiosity, which grows to conviction as Schultz kindly shows him the trade of hunting bad men. Waltz, as always, plays with his accent and annunciation in a way that makes music out of Tarantino’s great monologues.

Robert Richardson brings the gorgeous cinematography we’ve come to expect in all his collaborations with this director. Shot on film with a scope lens and a beautiful color pallet, Django has a very energetic appearance.

While I enjoyed a lot of Django Unchained, it let me down and there’s still a feeling of disgust Tarantino wanted me to feel in the middle that I couldn't shake off when the good guy wins at the end. Although, this is the first of his films that I’ve sat down to write about -right after viewing, I must consider the rule I can apply to most Tarantino films: They get better the more times you watch them.