Admission

Tina Fey, Nat Wolff and Paul Rudd in Admission

** out of ****

There’s a scene early in Admission when its main character pushes the importance of smart kids going on to earn honorable degrees. For with a prestigious education, they have the power to positively impact the way this crazy world is run. Could they start with how feel-good comedies are made?

Director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and screenwriter Karen Croner (One True Thing) are two people I would assume to be very educated and probably hold important credentials, but they have made a rather bland comedy that only stays afloat due to a likeable cast.

  

Admission is about a meticulous no-nonsense Princeton admissions officer played in perfect deadpan form by Tina Fey. Her world is suddenly changed when she discovers an applicant (Nat Wolff) may be the accidental child she gave up for adoption in her twenties.

  

The seventeen-year-old attends a progressive school, which resembles a commune-style farm. The school is run by an ideal man - and this film’s love interest - played by Paul Rudd, in a performance that has the same mild tongue-in-cheek nature as the experimental school his character runs.

  

Rudd’s character champions the kid’s brilliance and his dream to go to Princeton. Fey’s character, unable to tell the boy she is his mother, sets aside her stingy objectivity and tries to get him in, despite his uneven academic background.

  

The film has a kind of stupid misplaced focus on the subject of its title. The main character wants her estranged son to be happy and he wants to go to Princeton. She starts to pull strings in the admission process. What she eventually does is wrongly portrayed as sympathetic, as this unconventional learner may not be Princeton material at all. It is conveyed that he is a good and smart kid deserving of great things, but an Ivy League School might be a terrible place for someone who lacks structure. The movie really tries to make a big deal about him getting in and I couldn’t get behind that for one minute.

  

Lily Tomlin plays Fey’s mother and that is truly inspired casting. She is a reclusive feminist scholar and is emotionally insensitive to her daughter’s troubles with the belief that everything can be made better by liberation from any attachments -Hardly the thing a woman who thinks she’s found her son needs to hear. This is a good element of the film. Unfortunately it’s a subplot and fails to fuse, as well as it wants, with the rest of the movie.

  

I went to see Admission without imposing very high standards. I just wanted an innocent and simple crowd-pleaser that existed on it’s own terms of comic reality and didn’t owe us any kind of accurate portrayal of how the admissions office of a degree-earning institution really functions. I was prepared for all of that as long as I was entertained by witty banter and original farcical inventions.

Instead, I got a semi-funny movie broken up by weak attempts at sincere drama, never funny enough or emotionally investing. It left me hyper-aware that the only thing driving the emotion, were the bittersweet contemporary music selections plugged into every emotional passage the film took. If you know what I’m talking about, you know this kind of editorial method is used and abused in every comedy/drama movie you see these days, and aren’t you tired of it too?

I was kind of surprised that this movie came from Focus Features, normally known for more art-house fare. Universal, for which Focus is a division, would normally put out a movie of this kind under their label. Did the subject of Ivy League schools sound too intense to market as a mainstream movie? It sure felt like one to me. Maybe this was slated to be a Focus release from the beginning except it was planned to be interesting.

  

Tina Fey, who often writes the great material for herself as a performer, was only involved with this project as an actor. As a movie star now, she deserves better and should have possessed the wisdom to stamp a “deny” when she was handed this script.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Are comedy movies funny? I don't remember anymore.

*1/2 out of ****

Just about everything I resent in modern comedy movies can be found in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: Funny moments that don’t feel strong in the scheme of a film with a weak foundation; a formulaic story; and the notion that talented actors will elevate uninspiring materiel.

Here is a film about a subject that should have the laughs built in. Those laughs must have been installed by incompetent workers during the construction process as they are few and far between. This is a purposeless comedy about magicians, never clear on whether it loves or mocks their trade and doesn’t do a good job at either approach.

Steve Carell wastes his energy in the role of a pompous egotist about to be humbled by the failure to appeal to a changing world. Why isn’t Will Ferrell playing this role? Because he’s played it an intolerable amount of times. Can Steve Carell play a character like this? No. Carell is great at many things but playing a careless jerk isn’t one of them.

  

It doesn’t matter because the character doesn’t make much sense. The movie starts off with his childhood as he is bullied by peers and neglected by his mother but finds happiness in the discovery of the art of illusion. While performing a trick at school he finds friendship with a fellow reject named Anton, and they form a bond as a magician duo growing up to look like a hetero Siegfried and Roy performing giant Las Vegas magic shows. (Steve Buscemi plays Anton and I don’t know why) The sweet childhood innocence of their friendship during the first few minutes transitions poorly to their adulthood first showing how loyal they’ve stayed to one another and then inexplicably to Burt being an impossible prima donna constantly demeaning Anton.  

One day the two are drawn to the attention of a popular street magician with a reality TV show, played by Jim Carrey, who channels Criss Angel, David Blaine and himself from the early nineties -as a masochistic exhibitionist. He doesn’t wish to be friends with the two and serves as the comedy’s antagonist, trying to steal the spotlight in the world of Vegas magic.

After a strong talking-to by the Casino Owner (James Gandolfini) about the archaic nature of their act, the two decide to step things up and do their own street-performance endurance test but Burt can’t adapt and causes a literal falling out between the two. He then finds out he’s broke and turns to find help from a former assistant played by Olivia Wilde, who in spite of such a likable screen presence, is given a boring love-interest role.

Burt finds work in last resort venues including a rest home when he accidentally meets his childhood hero, a classic magician played by Alan Arkin. The collaboration with Arkin’s character to entertain the old-timers turns Burt into a nice guy, once again lacking a good sense of transition. Is Burt Wonderstone just a mean insensitive buffoon for a good chunk of the movie because that’s what makes a character funny?

  

Arkin is funny on the occasion that he’s onscreen but it’s Carrey who does wonders with his given character. I am glad he is being humble enough to take supporting roles recently avoiding the responsibility of carrying every movie he is in. Though, this movie is hardly worthy of what he brings to it.  

  

One of the worst things about The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, aside from the lack of laughs it inspires, is how it is about magic and doesn’t properly display it most of the time. There appear to be plenty of real tricks being performed in-camera but the film’s editing employs too many cuts, destroying their impact. Then the movie treats the subject with total disrespect by showcasing CGI special effects to simulate all the other tricks.

  

I would have accepted this film as a mean-spirited insincere dark spoof on over-the-top magicians or as an endearing insightful comedy about the love of the profession. This wimpy PG-13 movie sits safely in between those two concepts.

  

By the end I couldn’t believe all these great people were in a movie that was this stupid. The end credit sequence is maybe the movie’s most hilarious segment but it frustratingly possesses a kind of humor that belonged in every scene that preceded it.

  

This comedy, like so many I see in a given year, has funny parts but demands a level of complacency from its audience for lazy filmmaking and that is like a bad magic show. You can see through the whole thing and feel no sense of surprise. Instead, you just feel conned.

I take it back. A bad magic show would be funnier. 

Oz the Great and Powerful

James Franco in front of a green-screen looking at nothing but imagining a pile of money... for motivation -in Sam Raimi's film of Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful

**1/2 out of ****

Are you a good waste of time, or a bad waste of time? A prequel to The Wizard of Oz definitely sounds like a time-killer movie. The concept of how a con-man became a great and powerful con-man (who would one day play a role in a Kansas farm girl’s concussion-induced dream) isn’t very interesting. It could still be a little fun, right? I guess it was. 
 

The structure echoes the beloved classic film. It appropriately begins in black and white but amplifies the transition to color by changing from the classic square-shaped screen to widescreen as we arrive in Oz. He then finds his way to a city is given a task, which leads him to make some whimsical friends along the way.

This time, the lead character lacks innocence and his journey is about finding greatness he regularly fools people into thinking he possesses. The story is about how those who spin illusions can be heroes. Disney would love to spread such a message. 

The world of the movie never looks very real and doesn’t have to. Like the original film’s obvious painted backdrops and matte landscapes, this movie is mostly a bunch of visual effects that fill the screen with bright colors and provide the essence of an animated film with real people inserted. 

It’s a pleasant visual experience, no doubt, and Sam Raimi’s directorial style is energetic with his typically corny sensibilities. Then there’s the script, which reminded me of how much I hate the word prophecy in fantasy movies, but still seems worth forgiving because everything weak about it, was bound to be elevated by a good cast… That wound up being this movie’s biggest problem and the worst of that casting is sadly the wizard himself. 

James Franco needs to be demoted from his current status in Hollywood. I think a lot of him, but he continues to take high-paying roles that are way outside his range. IMDB’s trivia section on the movie claims Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. and Christoph Waltz were all considered for the role. I can imagine how improved this movie would be if any of those men had been Oz, but I’m sure they had better things to do. 

The other weakness is Mila Kunis. Bless her heart. She does what she can with the role but doesn’t have the chops to play Theodora, the good woman destined to turn into the Wicked Witch of the West. As silly as that role is thought to be, there’s creativity and playful energy required, that I hate to say, this beautiful actress lacks. 

It’s Rachel Weisz as Evanora, for whom a house will one day be dropped upon, who shines with perfect theatrical versatility. There’s also Michelle Williams as Glinda, who doesn’t have to try very hard to look like the sweetest witch in Oz. 

There’s other supporting characters like a monkey who sounds like a less-funny Nathan Lane but is in fact an unenthusiastic Zach Braff. He’s really one-upped by the 13-year-old Joey King who does a very emotional voice performance as a tragedy stricken little girl made of china. 

There’s also three-foot six-inch actor Tony Cox (Marcus in Bad Santa) who doesn’t have enough screen time but is always great, and the Raimi-arranged cameo by Bruce Campbell as one of the Witch’s guards. 

I don’t know what Danny Elfman’s scores are like to fresh ears, but his approach to fantasy movie music for the past decade, has been nothing but imitating himself. I am so tired of everything he does for this genre sounding like a weaker version of his score to Edward Scissorhands.

The movie is fun but not enough. This yellow brick road is a rough ride varying between a zany bubble riding scene and boring scenes of needless exposition, which drag out the running time to two hours and ten minutes. I was decided on seeing this movie as a glass half-full during the climax when Oz finally becomes the Wizard, which was a goofy visual feast that put a grin on my face almost as awkward as James Franco’s. This was preferable to a stupid battle scene and I liked it. 

By the end, I could say that this seemed like a good waste of time. Oz is something acceptable but nothing to get excited over. Okay Disney, what are you doing to Star Wars? (Fingers crossed)

Check out this funny review for the film on Half in the Bag along with a Return to Oz review for extra shits and giggles! 

Side Effects

Rooney Mara in Steven Soderbergh's final theatrical film, Side Effects

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

 

I rarely feel this warning is necessary, but if you intend to see this movie, then don’t read beyond this paragraph. You’re better off going into the theater knowing as little as I did. I will simply assure all who are curious, that this film is quite good. If you are skeptical, I will try to persuade you to see it anyway.   

Still in theaters, Side Effects is a dark drama with star power and a great director at its helm, who has spent the past few years making less-ambitious and humble projects than some of his more ambitious works like Traffic.

Steven Soderbergh claims this will be his final theatrical release as a director. I wouldn’t exactly call this “going out with a bang” but its still a reminder that sometimes it is the simpler movies of skilled directors that show you what they, as artists, are made of.

Side Effects is clever and assumes the audience is too. It follows the life of a young woman who begins to have a meltdown of deep depression as her loving husband (Channing Tatum), a Wall Street white-collar criminal, is released from prison to return home. After attempting suicide, she begins seeing a psychiatrist played by Jude Law who puts her on several anti-depressant trials.

Despite the supposed casting issues of this film’s production, its makers picked the perfect woman for the part. Rooney Mara has maybe the most gorgeous-yet-mysterious screen presence for any young actress working today. She killed in the opening scene of The Social Network and really killed in Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Her character in Side Effects must have the audience under a spell and she pulls this off splendidly.

Jude Law as the pill-pushing doctor does everything necessary for the character to come off as a likeable professional with good intentions as he bends over backwards for his new patient. He even makes a visit with her former psychiatrist played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, who suggests he try prescribing a new drug still in the experimental stage. As his patient’s condition worsens, he decides to take this advice. Excellent progress is made… Then very unexpected results occur.  

Soderbergh’s cinematography (under the his normal D.P. pseudonym Peter Andrews) is simple, psychologically effective, intimate and beautiful. The intrigue of the film is enhanced by Thomas Newman’s hypnotic music, which gives one the impression that this slow movie is bound to change gears –and it does.

  

This brings us to the potential side effects of the film: Viewers may become aggravated with plot twists. Come prepared to suspend your disbelief just a bit. Things get rather Hitchcockian –and I don’t use that label lightly. I’m not willing to give much away, but at the halfway point, this movie changes its genre as well as who the main character is.

  

The screenplay, by Scott Z. Burns, feels informed when concerning its subject matter of psychiatry, pharmaceuticals and legal issues that surround them. Like his previous film with Soderbergh, Contagion, the plot is a stretch, but the surrounding elements give the film weight.

I consider Soderbergh to be one of the most influential filmmakers in my lifetime. Not in the way that star-directors like Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen will be remembered for their obvious signature themes and styles. Soderbergh is more like Sidney Lumet who approached his material with a rational and humble attitude applying style where it worked.

  

If there is any theme I notice repeating in Soderbergh’s career, it is the subject of therapy. It makes sense because I have always seen him as the therapist of directors. He usually appears calm and willing to work with anyone or anything without discrimination and is determined to move that person or thing in a productive direction. 

The influence of his approach toward filmmaking is more philosophical than stylistic. Maybe that’s why he feels satisfied retiring. He hasn’t taught people how to make a “Soderbergh movie”, he’s taught people how to make a good movie. If Side Effects is truly the final big-screen effort from this man, it’s still an inspiration.

Here's Kenneth Turan's review. He Liked it.

Here's a guy who hints a spoiler due to misplaced social sensitivity. He didn't like it.

Fat Kid Rules The World

Jacob Wysocki is the Fat Kid

** out of ****
 
Whatever happened to Matthew Lillard? You know, that guy who was great in SLC Punk! and annoying in everything else. Other than his surprise appearance in 2011's The Descendants, he has turned to directing and has made a film called Fat Kid Rules the World. Is he a good director? Not really, though it's clear his heart is in the right place.

Listen to Lillard talk to Elvis Mitchell here.

Jacob Wysocki plays Troy, an overweight, unpopular and unhappy high school kid living with his authoritarian father and brother in Seattle. The mother of the family died some time ago. One day during a suicide attempt, his meets a pill head delinquent named Marcus who has dropped out of school. Marcus is currently the member of a popular local punk band with whom he is on terrible terms. With nowhere to go, Marcus manipulates Troy into doing favors for him with the promise that they will start a band together.

Troy doesn't play any instruments, but Marcus thinks he would be good on the drums. Hey, good exercise right? Naturally this will create a big conflict with his discipline obsessed ex-marine security guard father right? Well, yes and no. The setup is typical but to the story's merit, things don't go in the most predictable direction.

The father is played by Billy Campbell. Yes, Billy Campbell... Oh, you don't know who that is? He was The Rocketeer. Anyway the humorless controlling father who is normally the obstacle in stories like this, bound to show his heart -if he has one- at the end, winds up showing empathy for his son quite early in the film, acting more as a regulator than an antagonist. He knows that Marcus is bad news
but isn't stupid enough to ban his obviously depressed and friendless son from something with which he takes an interest -besides online role-playing games. He buys Troy a drum set and allows him to go to shows with Marcus in the agreement a strict curfew. 

Overall, I really like the story this movie is telling. It's about good parenting and has the message that even the most downtrodden social rejects can find acceptance. So why don't I like the movie? Matthew Lillard doesn't seem to be a very natural director. Sure, he's dealing with a small budget production, but he makes a lot of annoying artistic choices. There are cheap comic music cues, stupid fantasy sequences designed to fake out the viewer, and some pretty dull cinematography -at times. 

Lillard seems right at home during the punk-show scenes. He really captures the right kind of lighting and crammed atmosphere of those small venues. He also works very well with Wisocki as Troy whose performance is subtle and reserved as a real kid with desires and frustrations that are on the edge of eruption.

His major failure is through Matt O'Leary as Marcus who has an important and difficult role to play. Maybe O'Leary wasn't up to the task but I have seen him in movies before and have no reason to think he's bad. Marcus is untrustworthy and unlikeble right off the bat. People like Marcus in real life actually have a stronger degree of genuine charm. Even though they are screw-ups, they got to be in that band somehow. They went home with that beautiful girl somehow too. They use it to get what they want and show their carelessness when they're done. Lillard directs O'Leary creating a one-note performance of a stoned wise-cracking goofball at all times. The reason why I pick on Lillard for this young man's performance is because O'Leary seems to be channeling Lillard's acting style.

This is an honorable attempt of a "coming-of-age" film for young people who feel like freaks but it doesn't work like it should and felt to me like a waste of time.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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

Here’s one more movie you may have missed in 2012. Having just seen it on Blu-ray, I feel that it didn’t get enough recognition. Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on his bestselling novel is a very good “coming-of-age” film that didn’t get enough award attention or much of a release in theaters. I had little interest in seeing this one myself –even when my curiosity was sparked by critics like David Edelstein who praised its truthfulness about the joys and pains of youth. He also felt it was superior to the original book. 

His review is here.

I guess I felt a little turned off by the film’s trailer which tried to sell the film with a “best years of our lives” -vibe. I don’t typically like movies about high school. Maybe that’s a personal bias, as I don’t remember that time in my life being particularly fun. Objectively, I find the glamorization of high school life to be dishonest.

The movie is set in the early nineties and stars Logan Lerman as Charlie, entering high school after a traumatic event in his life that has left him lonely and emotionally distant. He copes with a recent loss by keeping a journal in the form of letters to a person he doesn’t know. Charlie is also prone to blackouts and feels he is barely managing himself.

Everything weak about this film is at the beginning. Lerman does what he can to play an insecure freshman with no friends, but he’s too good looking a guy and instantly likeable for me to believe that everyone would be giving this character such a hard time. Lerman still manages to convey Charlie’s yearning for friendship as he finds acceptance in a group of manic seniors with a taste for deviance. Charlie’s role as an audience surrogate puts one in touch with his insecurities and you’ll root for him as he starts to loosen up.

In the beginning of his interactions with the older kids, which involved a bit of music talk, I was dreading that this movie, with its warm aesthetics and rock soundtrack might begin to resemble a bad Cameron Crowe film (Elizabethtown) with empty characters and pop-culture references. Thankfully, as the movie progressed, it reminded me of a good Cameron Crowe film (Almost Famous) with soul and emotion that is tied to the subject of taste in music and literature.

The two important people in this new world he’s entered, are Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Patrick is gay and fearlessly out-of-the closet to his peers. Sam is a kind and pretty girl with a bad rep for a reckless sexual past and seems to get attached to bad guys. Charlie falls in love with her, while fearing that any confession of this may break his ties with these new people who are too good to him to lose. The theme of acceptance and the fear of loss is the strongest part of this film.

The other great strength of this movie is its nostalgia for a time when I was a child and these would have been the teens I looked up to. I remember babysitters talking about all the things they thought were cool. The Smiths often play in quirky romantic hipster movies, but in this one, they really have a place. A running plot devise, which won me over to the movie, was how the group of teens regularly involve themselves in Rocky Horror Picture Show events. This was a time when that tradition was still more of an underground movement where young people who felt like outsiders found each other. This movie represents the Rocky event quite accurately.

The casting of the school’s faculty makes fun supporting appearances with Paul Rudd as an English Teacher and Tom Savini teaching shop class. Like most high school related movies, the academic pressure is far away in the background but it still preserves the endearing memories one might have of their teachers.

Writer/director Stephen Chbosky has made a really good film, for being so fresh to the profession. It would be interesting if he manages to make another movie as good as this one. It’s been my observation that young auteurs with a personal story to tell don’t manage to top themselves later on. I think of Richard Kelly with Donnie Darko whose career followed with laughably convoluted films with no heart. I also think of James Merendino who I hear didn’t make anything worth watching after his excellent SLC Punk!.

I really liked this movie and hope that the talent behind it will bring more to a genre I rarely care about. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is about teens but sought out a broad audience and didn’t deserve such a hard time finding one.