Her

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

While watching the new science-fiction drama Her, I was reminded of a movement sparked by Spike Jones’ first feature film Being John Malkovich, that seemed to climax about a decade ago with Michel Gondry’s, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Maybe this wasn’t a movement, but there is a level of heavy magical realism present in Her that has been so very absent in movies for too long.

It is a very relatable and personal film, while set in a near future where humanity is even more fused with digital social media. A new operating system has been released that contains the first artificially intelligent assistant for consumer use. A lonely man (Joaquin Phoenix), painfully going through a divorce, loads the new OS, which runs him through a few questions to specify a compatible personality. This results in Samantha (the voice of Scarlett Johansson), who is maybe “more human than human,” to quote a great sci-fi movie. The man and the operating system become close and eventually fall in love.

Yes, of course it’s weird and some people will walk out of the theater, as they did during the show I attended. Many daring movies have this effect. It is very thought provoking and those many thoughts will either be entertained or ignored depending on what ideas intrigue you. I find it impossible to ignore that this film accurately portrays what technology is continuing to do to us and what relationships have always done to us.

What makes this movie so absolutely admirable is Jonze’ handling of the concept, which could go in so many typical directions. Jonze is too mature to turn his first solely-written screenplay into a technophobic horror -or comedy film (Electric Dreams) comes to mind). He isn’t criticizing our increasing dependence on technology. He may be embracing it but shows us how weird we are becoming.

Phoenix’s character works for a website that employs writers to create “beautiful handwritten letters” and find words for the personal lives of others. This movie, like many great futuristic science fiction stories is exploring the idea of technology picking up our humanity when we’ve gotten to lazy to take care of it.

The climax that this movie finds, is mysterious if not entirely satisfying to me. I am tempted to say that this movie gets a little lost at the end but I could be horribly wrong. I'm simply happy that it didn't get lost trying to satisfy everyone.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

*** out of ****

If you are looking for something friendly and unchallenging, look no further than Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It is no masterpiece but there are moments when it has such potential. It is a gorgeously shot comfort-film. I actually enjoyed it. There are many reasons to doubt a Stiller vehicle, but not when he's the one at the wheel -directing that is. I think that he's always had talent in this area. The visual ambition in each of his films leaves imagery engrained in ones memory. This is even true of The Cable Guy. Stiller likes using very intensely shot imagery for comic effect and it works a lot of the time.

This film, very loosely based on an old short-story that has gone through all kinds of incarnations, follows the adventures of a daydreamer (Stiller) who has been sparked with enough ambition to go on a REAL adventure. As an employee for Life Magazine, he is tasked with finding a missing photo for their final issue. The picture's freelance photographer (Sean Penn) may be the only person who knows of its whereabouts and is said to be across the world in a remote location. Driven by the encouragement of a love interest (Kristen Wiig), Mitty embarks on a journey.

The movie, while about the finding of a photographer, is clearly in love with film itself -and if my eyes don't lie, it is definitely shot on film. Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh captures the National Geographic-like splendor of the beautiful locations (mostly in Iceland).

On the downside, the story could stand to be a little deeper, and is pitifully dependent on product placement –even though Stiller tries to make the products work with the story and its comedy. These were still things that I could live with. It’s not a repeat-view film, but it wasn’t a waste of my time either.

The Wolf of Wall Street

*** out of ****

The Wolf of Wall Street is another demonstration of Martin Scorsese’s great craft as a filmmaker who delivers cinema with a punch after nearly half a century in the business. On the other hand, it’s essentially Goodfellas III. Our protagonist is an amoral man of great ambition. No time is wasted deconstructing our psychopathic hero. We are simply fed the narration of a person whose only regrets are not in the things he’s done, but what he failed to get away with. Once again, Scorsese also controversially bases the film on the memoir of someone who stands to benefit from a story of bad deeds they committed. I wonder if Scorsese waits in confession booths to figure out future projects.

Jordon Belfort’s memoir inspired the film’s screenplay, by Terence Winter, about the greed and excess of a self-made Wall Street tycoon who was eventually indicted and imprisoned for fraud and embezzlement (but is currently successful as a motivational speaker). Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort effectively within his limitations. The movie augments his stories of drug-addicted hedonistic activities among wealthy colleagues, such as his business partner, Donnie Azoff, played with loathsome hilarity by Jonah Hill. Their outrageous scenes together are among the best and most in the movie. I laughed a lot.

The same cannot be said for later scenes between DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, a gorgeous actress who plays his second wife. She creates a perfectly seductive performance but inevitably must become antagonistic later in the film. That’s where her character becomes boring.

If there’s anything I’ve resented about Scorsese, it is how he needlessly dwells on jerks and their trophy wives when their superficial relationships crumble. The scenes between DiCaprio and Robbie screaming at one another are no different than those between Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone in Casino or Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas. There’s little depth to their long arguments. They’re just tedious. They also pale in comparison to the hilarity achieved between Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence in a similarly miserable relationship featured in the recent, American Hustle.

The majority of this movie is well made, but it could have used a little trimming. The last thing I heard was that Scorsese was not perfectly satisfied by the final edit but that could have been misinformation.

The unfair controversy that comes with films like this is through the idea that scumbags are being glorified. Fascination shouldn’t be mistaken for admiration. Sure, there will always be fools who want to be Scarface, or someone of the sort (despite the fact that these characters tend to be defeated). This is an age-old argument about life imitating art and art imitating life.

Oldboy (2013)

**1/2 out of ****

Spike Lee’s version of Oldboy, –or as I am calling it, Newboy –is a faithful remake of the now ten-year-old Korean film, which still holds high status as a cult film and a highlight of Asian cinema. I still hold on to the feeling that the remaking of great foreign films by Americans is a shameful thing. People who refuse to deal with subtitles don’t deserve the movies they choose to ignore. When you consider the international splash that American movies make, our tendency to filter the well-executed concepts of other countries through the remake system, makes us look like jerks.

This doesn’t stop these remakes from being good. I though David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was pretty great. However, a good amount of them are simply decent, yet forgettable. Even though this particular one falls in the middle, it is still admirably true to the original story, while changing up most of the details in order to tell it differently.

Both versions follow a man who is kidnapped and held in a cell - resembling a motel room - for years with no human contact, until one day, he wakes up out in the open, a free man. Years of captivity have turned him into a deadly vengeful machine and soon goes on a violent rampage, seeking information as to who was responsible for his life-altering incarceration and why. In the hope reuniting with his daughter (the only family he has left) he obliges the tasks given by a mysterious rich man behind everything.

The idea of a director, whose work I admire, doing an alternate take on this material seemed interesting. Lee has the stylistic chops to render the pulpiness of this material honorably. He didn’t necessarily seek out this project. Oldboy was going to be remade eventually, and it could have been a lot worse.

At one point Spielberg was going to direct and Will Smith was going to star… With respect those two talents, I guarantee the whole movie would have been neutered, had that collaboration gotten of the ground. Earlier, it was going to be a Nicolas Cage vehicle. The protagonist role of this story would have been too fitting for the beaten-to-death Cage shtick. Enter, Josh Brolin, a tough-guy, who regularly walks the line between B-movie schlock and high art.

He does good work at making the gruff and furious man vulnerable. Physically, he is up to the task of the famously ridiculous side-scrolling fight scene in the hall with the hammer. Michael Imperioli, a Lee regular, is a pretty cool choice as the best friend. Elizabeth Olsen as the volunteer medical assistant helping a dangerous man seems a little far-fetched. It’s one of those issues, where I’m not sure if it’s the fault of the writer, director or actor.

There’s also Samuel L. Jackson as an underworld jailer. This story was originally a Japanese Manga, and Jackson really looks like he’s out of a comic book. That brings me to the biggest problem in this film, which is Sharlto Copely’s head-villain character. I really liked him in District 9 for his improvisational skills in the weasel-like role of a man in horrific trouble. This year, in Elysium and in this movie, he plays a villain -but on a generically cartoonish level. I can tell that he’s having fun, but he’s just not convincing.

When the movie was over, my girlfriend, who hadn’t seen the original film, gave me the satisfaction of looking disturbed. The movie does its job. It’s unforgettable, bold, filled with action and has a mind-blowingly messed up twist. At the same time, I felt a sense of waste. I was told a story that I already knew while watching talented performers demonstrate a fraction of their abilities all under the direction of a guy who would much rather be making the personal projects, for which he has passion, but big studios don’t.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

*** out of ****

I can’t really disguise my enthusiasm. Without any objectivity, I’ll geek-out out at the beginning of the review. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is pretty damn cool. Everything from the film’s opening - which features the familiar setting of “The Prancing Pony -Inn & Pub” - to three-hours later when a dragon is preparing to destroy a town – is filled with amazing production design and thrilling sequences. Even one of the movie’s dumbest sequences, in which the dwarves fend off vicious orcs as they roll down a white water river in barrels, had me amused.

In the second installment of this new trilogy, Bilbo Baggins (played by the excellent Martin Freeman) and the dwarves continue to evade the orc hunting party as they take the dangerous path through a dreadful forest where they are briefly taken captive by the woodland elves. After escaping, they are successful in a making their way to a town on a lake which is just shy of their final destination, The Lonely Mountain –where there is treasure and terror in store. Meanwhile Gandalf (Ian McKellen) parts from the group to find the powerful source of evil, which is beginning to spread through Middle Earth.   

This is a movie that is bound to take just as much criticism as the first Hobbit, for being a product of post-Avatar experience-cinema, where narrative strength takes a backseat to thrilling spectacle. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that this is a dark epic action odyssey based on a light-hearted children’s novel. There’s something a little messier about this series than the previous trilogy, but I look forward to having it in all in my Blu-ray collection to save for those days when I’m under the weather and desire nothing more than something lengthy, beautiful and mindless as I drift in and out of consciousness on the couch.

An issue I take with most of Peter Jackson’s films is something that a lot of action filmmakers don’t seem to understand: Showing characters survive impossible odds may seem fun, but the more they escape danger in one piece, the lower the stakes are. We need to feel afraid for them and if they’re invincible, we feel nothing.

I love Peter Jackson but like all excessive directors, his tendency to stretch things out has its ups and downs. Sometimes, special effects shots look less polished than others. His comic silliness can be successful just as much as it falls flat. New characters can add emotional strength or they can bore us. Throwing the character of Legolas (Orlando Bloom) into this story actually makes sense but his character overstays his welcome and would have been better as a cameo. The subplot involving the Elf-hero and a love-interest, Tauriel (the gorgeous Evangeline Lilly) is interesting but could have been scrapped for time.

What’s wrong with The Hobbit Trilogy is that it’s a trilogy and should have been one movie. An average person who goes to see it just wants to enjoy a simple adventure story. There are so many subplots in this film that I’m trying to figure what small percentage of the movie actually featured Martin Freeman as our title character. People may enjoy binge-watching an entire television season at home, but at the movies, they expect a more condensed design. This film’s anti-climax only frustrated the people who surrounded me in the theater -maybe more than the thirty-minute-climax of The Return of the King.

Like Jackson’s remake of King Kong, I like what it delivers, but I doubt the majority of the audience is as enthusiastic. If the studio really wanted to cash in, they could have tried simultaneously releasing a two-hour cut for impatient people and a three-hour cut for people like me, who just can’t get enough. Maybe the longer cut could have been reserved for the High Frame-Rate 3D version only. 

Speaking of HFR, I’m in awe of movies being shot at twice the motion quality of what we’re used to. At the same time, I fear that Jackson may have damned it by using this film series as its debut. My strongest opinion of HFR is that it creates a greater contrast between what is real and what is simulated. From digital effects all the way down to excessive camera movement, I feel hyper-aware of what is being controlled. HFR shines when the camera remains still and the content is authentically captured without special effects. I have not seen such potential for the advancement of cinema in all my life. I hope that it catches on and that it allows filmmakers to discover non-traditional approaches to shooting a movie. Believe me, like the last Hobbit movie, there are parts when it works wonderfully.