Melancholia

Kirsten Dunst in Lars Von Trier's Melancholia

** out of ****

It's hard to see a movie that has a lasting effect and call it bad. It's unusual for any movie to have that kind of power over me at all. Melancholia is, no doubt, very strong and gorgeously executed. Lars Von Trier is a director who can upset his audience. What separates his good work from bad, is complicated. Maybe it has to do with how meaningful the film feels to the viewer.

Whether his work is good or not, I feel as though this is an artist venting his misery to distract himself from suicide. He usually creates characters in a situation that is hopeless and gets you interested in them. It's as if he sees beauty in sadness and maybe, you the viewer, might hope for triumph. But he is just going to take the movie further in to hell.

His last film, Antichrist, hypnotically seduced me into the sad, yet empathetic world of it's two characters and then released it's horror. For that, I thought it was excellent.


Melancholia is just as morbid, if not more, but I felt a great distance from everyone in it. This is Kirsten Dunst's greatest performance that I've seen. That performance is still alienating  because it embodies true inescapable depression, which even inescapably depressed people don't want to think about. Von Trier surrounds us with the beauty of a dream wedding. It's luxurious and tasteful. He seems to want to share a pain that comes with depression: Even being surrounded by true bliss is no consolation.  He's created a dark nightmare world where everything is beautiful but no one is good except for a child who Dunst's character constantly turns to for her only faint sense of security. 


The other problem I had is that this film is in two acts which both feel like very different films. The first is the wedding party I described. The Second shifts to the point of view of her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) after the wedding. The plot shifts to be about a planet called Melancholia which is coming towards earth and the sister fears it will collide with us. This part of the plot was only conveyed in a surreal prologue to the movie and had no exposition during the wedding party. I don't know if this is to suggest that the last part of the movie is something of a dream or not. I just know that during the last part of the film, the depression and despair are stretched out to an unnecessarily tedious level.


In the end, I suppose this movie subscribes to an attitude that laughs at human beings attempts to be good and welcomes apocalypse.

The Help

Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer in The Help

 *** out of ****

Hey white people! Do you feel white guilt? Well now you can relax. 

The Help offers 24-hour relief from such feelings.

How does it work? 

By creating a fictional white girl who bravely defends black maids during the years of Jim Crow laws in the American south. Comic relief plays a part as well. You, as a white person, can feel reassured that you too may have been a good person back in such a pressure-filled terrible time. Understanding the injustice done to blacks is always much easier and less alienating when a white character, who black characters are cool with, acts as your vessel.

Now that I've dished out the sarcasm necessary to vent my disdain for movies like this, let me be objective: The Help isn't a bad movie. I just think it's a shame that we live in an age when black-made movies expressing a black American voice rarely get attention. We've taken a major step backwards in the history of 'race in film' when 'white perspective' stories about black people are the only ones that make successful films. The Help is still emotional, empathetic, and, above all, well-acted.

The movie is what it is and I can't blame a fictional work for not being more authentic. It is an entertainment that has a lot of life breathed into it by a superb cast, of which the heart is the excellent Viola Davis. Listen to the interview here as well as her defense of the film.

This is like a refined version of a Hallmark TV movie. That ought to give you an idea whether this is your kind of flick or not. It's classic American cinematic drama with doses of silliness. Which is something I don't mind.

The cynicism I feel isn't so much about the movie. It's more about the audience it attracts: People who want a story about such a sad subject to give them a false sense of gratification.

Here is another opinion worth considering from Scott Tobias of the AV Club.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Rooney Mara is Lisbeth Salander in the new version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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

It is no surprise to me that I just saw a very well directed and produced movie. David Fincher is called one of today's greatest directors and I have no argument with that. I was disappointed when I first found out he was making a movie that had already been made. Sure, he's perfect for the material, but it just sounds too easy to look at a film that already works and see how it might be better. Frankly I think Fincher could assemble a team to do a remake of Citizen Kane and I wouldn't be terribly bothered. Well maybe I would. The point is that he's too good an artist to be improving the works of others. 

This movie looks and sounds gorgeous, it's perfectly cast, intense, Trent Reznor's score is no-surprise fitting as hell, and there is a part that uses the music of Enya in the most unexpected way.

 

There are minor changes in the story that don't bother me, when comparing films. The films running time of 158 minutes could have been shortened a bit by tightening up the subplot of Blomkvist's reputation and it's repair. This section made what felt like an unnecessary extra act tacked onto the end of the film.

Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol

Jeremy Renner and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol

*** out of ****

Here it is: An Action Movie!

The Mission: Impossible movie series has been a vessel for film directors to have a little exercise in their abilities for action and spectacle with little consequence except for giving people a fun time at the movies. No one is truly invested in the series protagonist Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and no one needs to be. We're simply watching an able-bodied actor perform stunts and survive impossible odds. The investment in these films is over how well the action and thrills are executed. Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol is exactly what I needed it to be.

Brian De Palma, John Woo, and J.J. Abrams have had their hand in this franchise and now one of today's greatest directors in the world of animated cinema brings us a fun-filled intensely choreographed action spectacular. Brad Bird had a talent in his animated films for evoking great performances through naturalistic voice actors and subtle character-driven animation choices. In live action, he brings weight and gravity to some seriously cartoony ideas.

The highlight of this film is in Dubai where Hunt has to climb the side of the worlds tallest building. You have to give a lot of credit to an animation director who knows how easy it is to simulate such a thing with today's digital tools but doesn't. He also brought IMAX cameras along for the ride.

Of course there are plenty of CGI special effects, but like the other movies in this series, only the best. ILM's John Knoll who supervised the groundbreaking train scene in the first one returns to deliver more eye candy including a chase scene in a sand storm.

Simon Pegg is funny. Paula Patton is drop dead gorgeous. Jeremy Renner adapts to any materiel he is given like the professional he is. And of course Tom Cruise runs, climbs and does that intense look that make people afraid for those in his personal life.

J.J. Abrams who directed the last movie returned to produce this one. Abrams and Bird make a great team. They produce action which feels like a relief from the current shaky-cam kinetic editing method. Things feel coherent like they actually bothered planning how one shot would connect to the next. The other mission accomplished here is making this outing more of an ensemble piece. In the first two films the scenes where Ethan Hunt worked with a team seemed seldom. The 'team' aspect of Mission: Impossible is important given that the TV series it was based on was always about a team on a mission. They've lived up to that expectation with this movie and avoided Hunt being James Bond for the most part.

I really don't think anyone ever intends to make put a profound twist on this franchise. All of the entries have threatening ideas of global catastrophe but play it safe by creating enemies and issues that have little to do with current events. Attempts to breathe a little emotion and personal understanding of who Ethan Hunt is may seem a little irrelevant but a noble effort to treat the audience like humans. The point is have fun and forget about it.

Check out this review from the AV club.

   

Young Adult

Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in "Young Adult"

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

Young Adult is Diablo Cody's best screenplay. It may be Jason Reitman's best film too.


Cody was responsible for the screenplay Juno, which a lot of people liked but I didn't. When watching that film, I sensed a writer with a lot of potential who had interest in engaging themes and pop-cultural commentary. I wanted to like her work. But Juno and the unsuccessful Jennifer's Body were both tainted by kitschy interchangeable one liners that removed me from believing in the world where it took place or wanting to. There was this self-gratifying tone about her work. I used to say, "Diablo Cody doesn't write screenplays, she texts them."

Why did this one work so well for me? Maybe because she invented a character you're not supposed to root for. She isn't trying to impress us with this person and therefore not writing to impress.

Charlize Theron plays Mavis, a divorced late-thirties young adult fiction writer living in Minneapolis who travels back to her home town. This trip was prompted when receiving an email from her high school boyfriend announcing that he is now a father. 


Mavis rationalizes this trip as an opportunity to win back the man she believes to be her true love even if it means breaking up his home to liberate him from what she thinks must be a life of banal misery. Mavis, who was also once the most popular girl in school, seems to reconnect with people in the town in a condescending pathetic attempt to feel that she won and they lost.


Being an alcoholic, she needs a drinking buddy and uses an apathetic cripple and former class-reject to vent all her self-absorbed problems on. This character is Matt, played by Patton Oswalt (Check out this great interview here). Matt is one tragically damaged character who seems lonely enough to oblige her but has no hesitation to point out her transparent desperation. Their dialogue is gold.


I suppose what works about this movie so well is how it is a dark comic drama that never drifts into the romantic comedy, psycho-horror, or emotionally-despairing Baumbach-like movie it could easily be. It just kind of lets it's characters have space giving it's excellent cast room to expand them through perfect performances.

I was liking this movie's realism so much that I was a bit disappointed near the end when Marvis has a breakdown in front of a large group that consists of almost all the film's characters. This is as much as I will give away. I feel like talking about it because these kinds of scenes get on my nerves. I rarely believe them. This is just based on personal experience. In my life, those big breakdowns or moments of truth happen behind closed doors and if they happen in front of big groups, they end quickly. Nobody likes embarrassment to be sustained that long. 


As for Reitman, I think this film is his best. He is a very experimentally stylistic director and I think that all his choices in this one work better than in his prior work. I love the close up micro-exploration a cassette tape being replayed again and again while Mavis is on the road just obsessing over something that should have been discarded a long time ago.

Our Idiot Brother

Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, and Rashida Jones in "Our Idiot Brother"

*** out of ****

Paul Rudd's film career has spent the past decade with a concentration in comedy. While the man is meant for more genres, I can't deny, he's a deadpan genius. "Our Idiot Brother" shows off his knack for timing as he subtly coveys the gears of his character's head having trouble turning. It's so refreshing to see someone play a dim hippie stoner without doing a Slater ("Dazed and Confused") voice.

As he involves himself in the lives of his three sisters, the scene stealer is, no surprise, Elizabeth Banks who's always great.

I should take this opportunity to point out a woman who I love so much I'm going to look up her name on IMDB... Here she is: Kathryn Hahn. What an amazing talent. Why? Because she disappears into every role I've ever seen her in. It's the versatile ones who don't get the fame and I suppose most of them like it that way.  It's amazing that this was the sister-in-law in "Step Brothers" and the repressed housewife in "Revolutionary Road". In this movie, she plays Rudd's ex-girlfriend and a total hippie-crite without an ounce of compassion. 

This movies comedy seems to be immersed in a left wing world and hippies are still the biggest joke in the scheme of where the laughs are directed. The protagonist has a Jesus persona. Is this movie calling Jesus a dumb hippie? Maybe.

Rudd's character is always doing the right thing because it rarely occurs to him when doing the right thing may compromise his standing with family, the law, and self-preservation. There are identifiable scenarios of idealistic yet idiotic behavior in this movie because we've either known someone like this or we've caught ourselves being this way.

The weak part is something that comes along with many comedies: It sometimes seems to shift between the sincere and the insincere. This is something I'm likely to grow used to with repeat viewings but it always bothers me on the initial experience. I am losing my objectivity if I forget to ask myself if I laughed anyway -and yes, I certainly did.

Here's a slightly less favorable review from the AV club.

The Rum Diary

(Left to Right) Giovanni Ribisi, Johnny Depp, and Michael Rispoli in "The Rum Diary"

*** out of ****

I really enjoyed this one.

Don't expect "Fear and Loathing".

What makes "The Rum Diary" incredibly different from the over-sensory zaniness of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and appropriately different from the Landis-inspired bad comedy of "Where the Buffalo Roam", is how objectively realistic this film feels even thought it is telling embellished tales of misadventure.

There is only one scene I can think of where the filmmaking seems to be under the influence with it's characters. Like Hunter S. Thompson's writing, it is disjointed and episodic. You should go into this one expecting something that is trying to transport you to a time and place. This is a film that is strong on atmosphere.

Bruce Robinson hadn't made a film in almost two decades and was a rather fitting choice by Depp and Co. to get this long awaited project off the ground.

Johnny Depp delivers a very different version of the Hunter S.  character than we have come to expect. This is a younger less judgemental man who is easily distracted by luxury. This portrayal of his character has it's fault with the film when it involves his obsession with a beautiful yet underdeveloped love interest played by Amber Heard. As soon as she is onscreen the score shifts to a romantic theme which seems like a little much for this cynical movie. It doesn't work since there's nothing in the script to suggest that the main character's attraction is anything more than one of lust. Amber Heard just has a screen presence that begs for a classic hollywood tone. Wrong movie.

The cast is great all the way through. Richard Jenkins is an angry and inept newspaper editor. Aaron Eckhart is a greedy entrepreneur. Michael Rispoli plays an alcoholic yet energetic photographer.  Giovanni Ribisi plays a character so foul, we're thankful we can't smell him because if we could we could we wouldn't laugh as much.

Here's a fun argument on "Ebert Presents"

and the Scott Tobias review on AVclub.