They Live

Okay, I’ll say it.  I submit that John Carpenter's They Live is not a very good movie.  It’s not a disaster: it features a great premise, a tight screenplay, and a stable of solid supporting actors. 

But those laudable elements can’t help They Live conform to anything like a pattern for a good movie.  It has low production values, a cheap synth soundtrack that will put you to sleep, a simplistic political viewpoint requiring next to no thought, and a wooden lead performer.

Everyone may love star Roddy Piper in Hell Comes to Frogtown, but I didn’t buy him here.  He comes across like an amateur, desperate to remember his lines and hit his marks, and I never once believed that his character was an actual human.

Yet, They Live really does get the most out of its premise.  It features great monster design, some iconic imagery, and more than enough chuckles to keep things light as you watch TV.  I don’t know how much media you consume; even though They Live isn’t very good, however, you may want to put this one on the menu.

Trouble with the Curve

“Hey, Alex.  Whatcha watchin’?”

“Trouble with the Curve.  Clint Eastwood plays a salty old baseball scout whose eyesight is going.  Amy Adams is his daughter.  She works for an uptight law firm, has issues with her dad, and has a boyfriend who is clearly The Wrong Guy.  Justin Timberlake just showed up; he’s going to be her new love interest and win her heart from The Wrong Guy.  I’m not sure whether it’ll be before or after she works things out with Clint and quits her job at the firm.”

“Oh.  How far along are you?”

“About ten minutes.  I know where the movie’s going, but that’s ok.  A movie like this, it’s all in the execution.”

And I’m happy to report that Trouble with the Curve executes very nicely.  Featuring a supporting cast led by John Goodman and some of the best character actors in the business (Ed Lauter, George Wyner, Bob Gunton, Matthew Lillard, Robert Patrick, etc.), this by-the-numbers family drama succeeds on the basis of its unobtrusive direction, solid production values, and excellent performances.  It isn’t flashy, but it looks nice, covers the bases, and gives us an excuse to spend ninety minutes or so with a bunch of good people who are trying to do the right thing.  Heck, it even features a “roadhouse” scene in which Adams and Timberlake try to convince us that they can’t really dance.  

This film played out just as I thought it would, but it did so with satisfying professionalism.  If you’re tired of watching computer animations of demigods punching one another, you can’t go wrong with Trouble with the Curve.

Wild

Wild tells the true-ish story of  Cheryl Strayed, a troubled woman who sets out to through-hike the Pacific Crest Trail and, in a sense, wipe her personal slate clean.  It’s wonderful, not just for the effective and deft way it tells Strayed’s internal story, but for its depiction of the experience of backpacking the PCT.

As it happens, I grew up in town just off the PCT, a trail that runs all the way from California’s Mexican border to Washington’s Canada border.  Every spring, through-hikers would descend on my town, standing in line to pick up packages at the post office, hitching rides to the store, and generally catching their breath before heading on up the trail.  I, personally, have logged more miles than I can remember on the trail, both backpacking and working on maintenance projects as part of various Eagle Scout projects.  In other words, like Wings of the Navy, Wild tells a story about my personal world.

And it nails it.  When she begins her journey, Strayed has no idea what she’s doing.  She makes all the rookie mistakes: she overpacks, she fails to field-test her gear before starting out, she buys the wrong boots, and so on.  As a guy who has also made all of those rookie mistakes, the first act played (for me) like a horror movie: what disaster would this character bring upon herself next?  But slowly, across the miles and with a little help along the way, Strayed figures it out.  She sheds all the crap that isn’t doing her any good.  She learns how to take care of herself.  She finds her strength.  The film goes from horror-show to powerful character study, and before we know it we aren’t watching a movie about a woman walking in the woods, but about a woman walking out of her past.

This is powerful stuff, aided by a keen eye for technical detail, a genuine affection for the PCT and its through-hikers, and sure knowledge of what it’s about.  Wild is worth the trip.

Enough Said

Enough Said is a charming romantic comedy anchored by two engaging leads.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus turns in excellent work as the protagonist, and James Gandolfini makes for a surprisingly effective love interest.  Add to this a supporting cast that includes Toni Collette (CDNW) and Katherine Keener, and you get 90 or so minutes with interesting, complex people whom you’re happy to meet.

Louis-Dreyfus plays a remarkably affluent massage therapist, driving from appointment to appointment in her immaculate little Prius and living in the kind of nice little rancher that’s dotted across Los Angeles and Orange counties, and that goes for roughly $600k as of January, 2016.  Gandolfini plays a remarkably affluent archivist, working in a reconditioned warehouse, driving an Audi, and living in another roughly $600k home.  Keener’s a poet who somehow lives in a million dollar mission-style place in Santa Monica, and Collette’s a therapist who actually lives in the kind of home a therapist to the wealthy could conceivably afford.

But enough about the fact that everyone in this movie, apart from Collette, should be living in dumpy apartments in Torrance.  This is a fantasy – a fantasy in which working people get to live like rich people, and that’s ok.  More importantly, this is a romantic comedy, and both Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini do fine jobs selling both the romance and the comedy.  They play adults – a little damaged, trying to get along – who find one another.  Complications ensue, as they must, and they’re played with just the right touch.  Consequently, Enough Said delivers just what one could want from such a film.  I smiled; I got a little choked up; I didn’t want it to end.  Really, what more could one want?

Calvary

Calvary is rough going.

The film begins with an Irish priest (Brendan Gleeson) sitting in confessional.  He’s listening to a man recount his tale of having been raped by a priest at the age of seven.  Then he hears the man say that since the rapist is long dead, the man will take the life of one good priest in a week’s time.  Brendan Gleeson is the good priest.

One could go a lot of places with a story like this.  It could be a pre-murder mystery.  It could be a meditation on faith.  It could be a thriller.  This film’s approach, however, is right there in the title: Calvary.  This is The Passion of the Christ, with the scorn of an Irish village and the sting of cruel words taking the place of the scorn of Jerusalem and the sting of the lash.

You see, this is an Ireland reeling from financial meltdown and revelations of years of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy.  The people of our priest’s little town have not only lost faith, they’ve turned actively hostile to faith, actively hostile to the church, actively hostile to our priest.

And in the middle of it all, walking his own road to Calvary, our priest struggles to maintain his own dignity, his own faith, his own love.  He’s miserable.

On one level then, we can view Calvary as an exercise in making Brendan Gleeson unhappy.  On another, however, we can see it as a story of the very toughest part of Christianity: the imperative to actively love people who may actively hate you.  As such, Calvary has much to offer the devout viewer.

But that viewer is going to have to work for it.  This is not a film for the faint of heart or faith.

Crimson Peak

Crimson Peak is marvelous, if you like that sort of thing.

That is, if you like haunted mansions.

If you like downright evil, hiss-able villains.

If you like tortured villains.

If you like virtuous, brave heroines.

If you like virtuous, brave heroes.

If you like sumptuous costuming and set design.

If you like Wuthering Heights in particular, and Brontë novels in general.

If you like House of Usher in particular, and Vincent Price movies in general.

If you like Mia Wasikowska, and Jim Beaver, and Jessica Chastain, and Tom Hiddleston, and Charlie Dunham.

If you like slow-burn horror.

If you like jump scares.

If you like movies.

If you like that sort of thing, Crimson Peak is marvelous.

Focus

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FOCUS AHEAD.  This is a “con” movie, so these spoilers could ruin things.  Nevertheless, I don’t think I can write about the film without spoiling it.  Sorry.

Ok.  You’ve been warned.

I have three problems with Focus.  First, it’s a con movie without a long con, only shorter cons that keep the action moving.  Second, it has a romantic element that’s kind of creepy.  Third, costar Margot Robbie, while particularly attractive, is not a particularly good actress.

First, the con.  Early in the film, Smith specifically tells Robbie to misdirect, to deceive, to make the con so invisible to the mark that the mark doesn’t trip until the con man is far away.  It worked on me, because I was misdirected.  I spent the whole movie focused on Robbie, trying to sniff out her misdirections and the long con she had to be pulling on Smith.  But, alas, there was no long con.  What kind of a con movie leaves out the long con, the one in which the student outwits the master?  Or, at least, the one in which the student thinks she’s outwitted the master, only to find out she’s been the mark all along.  Alas, no.  Focus starts out a promising film about the art of the con, but ultimately it just fizzles out into another BS love story.  And there I was, staying focused for 90 minutes for no reason whatsoever.  I mean, c'mon.  It's right there in the title: the imperative Focus.  If you aren't going to follow through on your title, why bother?

Second, the romantic element.  Will Smith is too old to be playing Margot Robbie’s love interest.  His character is supposed to be completely together, but how emotionally and intellectually stunted does a guy have to be to go for someone who never saw Ghostbusters on the big screen?  This whole element of the film creeped me out, as if it were the collective wish fulfillment of a bunch of old men in the entertainment industry.

Third, Robbie has this scene in which she’s supposed to break down and cry.  She can’t quite pull this off, so she does that thing where she covers her face with her hands and just sorta heaves her shoulders up and down a few times.  I don’t care how attractive an actress is: if she isn’t willing to learn her craft, I’m not willing to spend 90 minutes watching her.

So, there you have it: no long con, no compelling love story, one poor performance in a major role.  Focus on another film.

The Best Offer

The Best Offer could as easily been entitled Geoffrey Rush is a Really Good Actor.  In the film, Rush plays an art and antiques valuator and auctioneer with a tightly controlled, distant life.  He is his work, and he is very little else.

Until, that is, he meets a girl.

Once he meets a girl, the plot kicks in.  It’s a perfectly fine, if heavy handed, tale, but the tale isn’t the draw of The Best Offer.  The draw of this film is the opportunity to watch Rush assay a particular kind of solitary gentleman, then to watch him develop this character into a three-dimensional man.  He really is breathtaking, even if the film he’s in begins to fade from memory mere days after its viewing.  I do enjoy Geoffrey Rush.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation pits Tom Cruise and his pals against SPECTRE KAOS HYDRA SMERSH COBRA FOWL VILE SCORPIO – aw, jeez, guys.  “The Syndicate?”  You’re putting them up against “The Syndicate?”  I could come up with five better names for evil organizations right off the top of my head:  1. SPAWN (Special Project for Anarchy, War, and Nachos (seriously, those things are really bad for you)); 2. OUCH (Organization to Undermine Capitalist Hypocrisy); 4.  MTI (Moustache Twirlers International); 5. The Bay City Rollers.  Honestly, this stuff isn’t hard.

Fortunately, choosing a boring moniker for the villains appears to be the only serious shortcut taken by this latest entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise.  Here’s a spy fantasy with a cleverly written script, well-shot action set pieces, cool gadgets, a beautiful heroine, and movie star’s movie star Tom Cruise busting his tukkas in one incredible stunt sequence after another.  This movie has exotic locales,  gymkata, motorcycle chases, gunfights, even a hacker character pushing a big red button – I mean, it has it all.  Best of all, it has laugh-out loud humor, a wonderful sense of fun, and absolutely world-class production values.  

While it can’t boast a sequence that tops the amazing Burj Khalifa bit from Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, this entry in the series delivers everything one could possibly hope for from this kind of film.  If you like this genre, I don’t see how you could possibly not enjoy Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Man, I just reviewed Paddington, which will probably make my yearly Top Ten.  How do you follow that?

Well, you could do worse than How to Train Your Dragon 2, a CGI action-adventure with beautiful animation, thrilling set-pieces, and touching emotional beats.

The film follows the continuing adventures of Hiccup and Toothless, a rider / dragon team, and the rest of the members of their Viking village as they seek to spread peace and love for dragonkind throughout their stylized version of Scandinavia.

Yes, there’s a villain.  And yes, there are more and bigger dragons, and yes, the stakes are (expectedly) higher in the sequel than in the original.  Ho hum.  Nevertheless, it’s all in the execution, and How to Train your Dragon 2 executes the material at the very highest level.  This is a wonderful adventure, technically awesome yet with a beating heart.

It just isn’t Paddington.  I think I should have watched a couple of episodes of Breaking Bad to cleanse my palate, because it turns out that a gentle little movie about a talking bear was one hard act to follow.

Paddington

Paddington is a carefully crafted, well intentioned, entirely adorable movie that my whole family enjoyed.  If you’re the kind of person who won’t see a kids’ movie without kids present, go make or find some and sit them down for Paddington.

Here’s the setup: Paddington is a walking, talking anthropomorphic bear who journeys from darkest Peru to modern London, there to find a family who will love him.  Upon his arrival, he meets the Browns, led by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville (who got my wife’s attention) and Sally Hawkins (who got mine).

[A quick aside about my feelings for Sally Hawkins: I first noticed her in Happy-Go-Lucky, in which she played a willfully cheerful and optimistic woman who, even though she often exasperated those around her, raised spirits and souls through her example.  Next, I saw her in Made in Dagenham, in which she played a union organizer of uncommon wiliness and determination.  Sally Hawkins could play Hannibal Lecter, and I’d root for her to find a particularly charming Chianti.]

Mr. Brown’s not too keen on inviting a bear into his home, but Mrs. Brown overrules him and opens the door, much to the delight of their boy and horror of their girl.  What follows is a lovely story of a little bear trying to fit in, trying to find a home, and trying to elude the devilish taxidermist / commando / all-around villain Nicole Kidman.

[Another aside, this time about actors, villains, and children’s movies: You can tell a lot about an actor by how he or she approaches the role of villain in a children’s movie.  On the one hand, you look at David Cross in Alvin and the Chipmunks.  He’s clearly slumming it, holding his nose while he goes through the motions and collects the paycheck.  On the other, you admire the gold standard: Peter Dinklage in Underdog.  Dinklage understands that a serious actor can take portraying a comic villain in a children’s film seriously, hitting just the right balance of menace and harmlessness.  It is hard to do, and only the best can pull it off.]

Ms. Kidman makes for a wonderful comic villain: evil enough to give the climax real stakes, yet icily silly enough to avoid actually frightening young viewers.  She measures up to the Dinklage Standard of age-appropriate villainy, turning in her best performance since The Others.  It helps that she has the good taste to recruit, for a henchman, the wonderful Peter Capaldi (In the Loop) – another actor who absolutely nails it.

I sense a theme emerging.  Producer David Heyman lined up top talent for Paddington, from voice actors like Ben Whishaw, Imelda Staunton, and Michael Gambon, to the onscreen performers I’ve noted above.  The talent lineup, however, doesn’t stop with the cast.  Paddington the Bear, himself, is a wonder of computer animated and practical effects.  Falling somewhere between photorealistic and teddy bear, he’s like a real bear, but with the rough edges sanded down and wearing an adorable hat.  The costuming, the set design, the color palette, everything about this film is captivating, serving to create a world just real enough to keep things grounded, yet magical enough to whisk us away. 

In short, Paddington is a wonderful, wonderful film.  Bravo to director Paul King and everyone who came together to make this gem.  I loved it.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

If you enjoyed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I have good news for you.  The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel offers another ninety minutes with the first film’s delightful cast.  These ninety minutes are warm, they’re cozy, and they offer more than a few opportunities to wipe your eyes.

The story picks up perhaps a year after the close of the first film.  Your favorite regulars remain at the hotel, and Sonny & Sunaina are preparing for their impending marriage.  There’s a primary story involving a hoped-for acquisition of a second property and the threat of a rival for Sunaina’s affections, but the magic of The Second Exotic Marigold Hotel happens around the periphery of that story, as the hotel’s pensioners and assorted guest stars live their own small dramas.

So, the question to ask yourself is simple:  Did you enjoy spending time with Judy Dench & Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith & Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup & Diana Hardcastle, and assorted other stars familiar to those who spend a lot of time watching PBS and BBCA during The Exotic Marigold Hotel?  I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending another ninety minutes with them.  I look forward to The Third Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Her

Her is the kind of movie that makes me love movies.  It’s a challenging piece of science fiction, a moving drama, and a piece that illuminates the human condition.  It’s brilliant.

The film, set in a washed out, near-future Los Angeles, follows an emotionally damaged man, one reeling from divorce, as he tries to reconstruct his life.  He downloads a new, artificially intelligent, operating system on his computer.  It cares about him.  It understands him.  It sounds like Scarlett Johansson.  Of course, he falls in love.

The AI, self-named Samantha seems real.  In some ways, she is real.  But she isn’t corporeally there.  She isn’t human.  What kind of a life has this man, brilliantly portrayed by Joachim Phoenix, bought into?  What kind of connection can he sustain with a glowing screen and a voice in an earpiece?

We could see this film simply as a wry commentary on the smartphone generation, but I think it has more to say.  I think it’s a commentary on all the things that draw us from human connection: our obsessions, our hobbies, our games - whatever it is that beckons us away from those who do, or those who would, love us. 

Her, however, isn’t just vehicle for late-night navel-gazing.  It’s also a finely crafted, beautifully performed and scored drama that quietly, subtly draws us in and invests us not only in the emotional life of Mister Phoenix, but in that of Johansson’s disembodied voice.  You could plug Her into your device of choice, plug that device into your car stereo, and just listen to it on a long drive – I suspect you may have an even more moving an experience than did I, watching it on a laptop in an airport lounge.

In short, Her is a thing of beauty, not to be missed.  I want to watch it again – this time, with people.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Because I’m a good father, I sat down with my 8-year-old and showed him Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

 

Revisiting it for the first time in well over a decade, I’ve come to the conclusion that while it’s a great movie, it isn’t a particularly good movie.

It’s great in the sense of, “Having a long-term influence and presence in the public consciousness.”  Nevertheless, it has some serious problems.  There’s a voiceover which distracts us and pulls us out of the movie.  There’s an uneven performance from Edward Furlong, the preadolescent actor playing the young John Connor.  The dialogue seems functional, at best, and everything moves at such a stately pace that my young’n lost focus for much of the second act.

Nevertheless, there are some wonderful things about this film.  Robert Patrick, as the next generation Terminator sent to provide this story with an antagonist, is marvelously deadpan.  The special effects hold up today and keep us in the story.  And Arnold, well, he’s Arnold.  The guy’s a movie star for a reason, and that reason is that his magnetic screen presence raises anything he’s in.

Still, I’m glad I saw it again and I’m glad I shared it with my boy.  I wonder when he’ll be old enough for The French Connection.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is an unqualified masterpiece.  It’s the kind of movie that makes you laugh, not in scorn or even amusement, but in wonder at the filmmakers’ audacity and vision.  It’s the best new release I’ve seen this year.

Here’s the setup: Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, and you owe it to yourself to see Locke), our supposed protagonist, is mad.  Not angry, but nuts.  Loopy.  Maintaining a tenuous grasp on reality.  He starts the movie by getting captured by post-apocalyptic tribesmen and-

Well, at this point, we cut away from him entirely.  We transfer our attention to Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron.  A war chieftan of the tribe, she leads a crack team from behind the wheel of her big-rig battle truck.  When first we meet her, we see her face.  Then, she turns and walks away from the (static) camera and into the story. 

I’ve been to the movies before.  I know what comes next.  As she walks away from the camera, her entire figure will come into view.  They camera's gaze will linger, and those who are so inclined will admire her tukkas.

But here comes the first of many of this film’s subversions of my expectations.  The camera watches her for only (maybe) three seconds, cutting at just the moment the lower edge of the screen hits her waistband.  And here’s the genius of the cut: until that moment, I hadn’t even realized that I was expecting to stare at this particular character’s backside.  I hadn’t realized that the language of film that I’ve come to “speak” has made me think of this particular kind of objectification as normal.

In that moment, Charlize Theron’s body becomes the least interesting thing about her very interesting character.  Mad Max: Fury Road humanizes her not by telling me that she's more than the sum of her parts, but by showing me through its refusal to dwell upon said parts.

Maybe twenty minutes later, after Furiosa has rescued a group of the villain’s childbearing slaves, it pulls a similar trick with one of the actresses playing an escapee.  It caught me again.  It’s the first time I’ve ever sat in a major motion picture and thought, “I’m complicit in the villain’s objectification of his captives.”

Holy smokes.  I was not expecting this in a Mad Max picture.  I just came to watch stuff blow up real good.

Don’t get me wrong: lots of stuff blows up real good.  In fact, this movie has some of the best set pieces I’ve ever seen.  But Mad Max: Fury Road has something more, something that takes it to an entirely different level of excellence.  It has an agenda, and not a B.S. “hero gives a speech, earns a slow clap, and goes home and nails the love interest” agenda.  It’s crafty, and thoughtful, and genuinely thought provoking in a way to which most “message” movies can only aspire.

All this, plus a set, prop, costume, and makeup design that’s not only a joy to behold, but surprises the audience time and again with new ideas, new angles, and new visions.  This film introduces at least five different cultures among the wastelanders, each with their own look, their own vision, their own unique identities.  From loving riffs on Star Wars' Sand People to an entire culture of stilt-walkers, this film delights time and again.

But wait – there’s more.  Mad Max: Fury Road is fun!  It has a simple, effective story; interesting and engaging characters; an excellent mix of serious and humorous beats; and a grasp of its geography and politics that never waivers and ensures the viewer never scratches his or her head in confusion.

In short, I loved Mad Max: Fury Road.  I loved everything about it.  It’s exciting, it’s dazzling, it’s complex, and it’s thought provoking.  In short, it is absolutely wonderful in every way.

I thought I was getting too old for this kind of thing, but writer/director George Miller has shown me that I was wrong.  I’m simply getting too old for mediocrity.  Mad Max: Fury Road is anything but.  What a lovely film.

Saving Mr. Banks

 

Saving Mr. Banks has a fundamental structural flaw that keeps it from being more than half of a good movie.

The film tells the story of one P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson, and you owe it to yourself to queue up Wit right away), author of the ‘Mary Poppins’ book series.  Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) flies her to California to convince her to sell him the film rights, but she’s having none of it. 

This is a recipe for a good movie.  Thompson and Hanks (and Paul Giamatti, in a small supporting role) rank among the best actors of their generation; I love Mary Poppins and I’m interested in the “making of;” and "unstoppable force meets immovable object” is a great recipe for drama. 

There’s a problem, however.  The film tells a parallel story, that of young Ginty (Miss Travers), her father (Colin Farrell, and you really, really should see the Fright Night remake), and their family’s attempt to make it in the banking business somewhere in the Australian outback.  Not only did not I not particularly care about Ginty and her dad, but I felt the time spent showing us Ms. Travers’s deep backstory killed the momentum of the Thompson/Hanks conflict.  What the film could have told us through a few lines of dialogue, a photo on a mantelpiece, and Thompson’s extraordinary talent, it instead delivers through a plodding, predictable, depressing series of flashbacks.

An hour-long Saving Mr. Banks, with most of the Ginty material excised, would make for a film I’d happily recommend.  As it stands, however, I suggest you see this one with your thumb on the fast forward button.

Locke

Wait, what?  Tom Hardy is an actor?  I mean, sure, he was terrific in Bronson, but his character was so over the top that he seemed kind of easy to play.  Locke, however, is a movie about a concrete engineer driving to London in a car.  That’s it.  We never leave the car.  We never see any other actors.  Hardy barely even moves – he just has one cell phone conversation after another as his life crumbles around his ears.

But oh man, does Hardy sell it.  We come to admire his character’s professionalism, feel aghast at his mistakes, and completely engage in his problems.  No voice over, no scenery, just a guy and a phone and a crisis.  It’s brilliant, masterful stuff (written and directed by Steven Knight), and it puts Hardy in an entirely different league.  This is the kind of movie that lands an action star in prestige pictures.
And that screenplay – wow.  It fills in the story like a painter adding layers, each layer expanding and deepening the picture.  I want to read it.

This is a brilliant film.  I’m so glad I saw it.

The Grandmaster

The Grandmaster tells the story of influential kung fu master Ip Man.  Ip Man won renown in pre-Invasion China, suffered through the Japanese occupation, and eventually made his way to Hong Kong, where he taught a young Bruce Lee.  His is a fascinating story, told well in the film Ip Man, starring Donnie Yen.

This telling, starring Tony Leung and directed by Wong Kar Wai, misfires.  This surprised me, as Tony Leung (Chiu Wai – there’s also a Tony Leung Kai Fung, who was terrific in DetectiveDee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame) and Wong Kar Wai have, in the past, worked together to make remarkable, moving, and memorable films such as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, and 2046.

The problem is that The Grandmaster, a kung-fu biography, is better suited to the directorial talents of a Zhang Yimou or Yuen Woo-ping.  Filmed kung fu is dance: extensively choreographed, intensively practiced, and performed by people with years of training.  When photographed in medium- to long takes, it’s one of the most beautiful things one can see onscreen.  While Leung is entirely capable of performing in such takes (see Jet Li’s magnificent Hero), Wai chooses to shoot and edit his battles in a kinetic, quick-cut style of the sort one uses to hide that fact that one’s star doesn’t actually know what he’s doing.

This short changes Leung, as well as the stuntmen and dancers with whom he performs Ip Man’s contests, and draws the viewer out of the film.  Once drawn out, one begins to notice Wai’s other stylistic choices, such as snap closeups to direct the audience’s eye (rather than trusting the audience to notice important elements for themselves) and a frenetic editing style at odds with the calm and self-possession of the film’s title character.

I’m sorry to find this film so disappointing, as I have great respect for Wai, Leung, and co-stars Zhang Ziyi and Chen Chang.  Nevertheless, Wai and Leung have created enough wonderful films that I’m happy to give this one a pass.  Though The Grandmaster disappointed me, I look forward to their next collaboration.

White House Down

Now, here’s a role for Jamie Foxx: President of the United States.  He has presence.  He has dignity.  He can pick up an automatic weapon and spray small-arms fire into the chests of evildoers. 

Unfortunately, White House Down makes him a supporting character.  That’s ok, however, because the lead is the surprisingly versatile Channing Tatum.  Together, the two of them run and gun through a film that’s basically Die Hard in the White House, and they do so with gusto and wit.

In my review of TheAmazing Spider-Man 2, I took that film to task for being nothing more than a formulaic product.  The film’s great failing, however, wasn’t in the fact that it was product: it was that it was poor product.  White House Down is, unabashedly, product.  But it’s good product, with excellent casting, slick effects and editing, and beats that flow one into the next.

Do you like rocket launchers?  White House Down has rocket launchers.  Do you like machine guns?  White House Down has machine guns.  How about genius villains who play Beethoven during their moments of triumph (I told you this was Die Hard in the White House!)?  Spunky kids?  Grizzled veterans who say things like, “I was wrong about you?”  Villains who practically shriek “And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids?”  Oh, yeah.  White House Down has all of these, and more, but it sells them with such glee that you can’t help but bop right along with it.

All this, and a Jamie Foxx on his game.  What more could you ask for?

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I saw the first act of Amazing Spider-Man 2 on one of those little screens on the back of an airplane seat in business class.  All I could think about was how fake the CGI looked.  I saw the second and third acts on my nice tv at home.  All I could think about was how lame the story was.

Here’s the movie in a nutshell: it begins with Andrew Garfield breaking up with Emma Stone (who is wonderful in everything.  I’d watch that woman burn toast.).  So right off the bat, we know he’s an idiot.  Soon enough, we meet proto-villain Jamie Foxx.  Foxx plays a nerd as only a jock can play a nerd:  a complete loser, a barely functional basket case who just happens to be an incredible genius.  Soon enough, the nerd turns into a super villain and the movie loses me for good.

Why?  Because Jamie Foxx is an Academy Award winning actor, and the movie doesn’t trust him to show us how he’s feeling.  Instead, it gives us a horrible voice-over of his supposed inner monologue.  It’s a waste of his talent and an indication of just how simplistic and condescending The Amazing Spider-Man 2 really is.

But wait- there’s more!  This film boasts an Emo Harry Osborn who (a) doesn’t dance, and (b) should be wearing a t-shirt reading “B Story.”  He’s there solely to pad things out and provide an additional villain.  This makes no sense.  The movie’s already over two hours long.  They could have cut his entire arc and still had a ninety-minute movie.  

There’s still more!  The climax plays like it was written by some guy working from an outline provided by some other guy who not only lazily Xeroxed a page from some screenwriter’s manual, but is actually stupid.  I mean, the whole thing hinges on the audience’s willingness to believe that you can punch electricity.  There’s a subplot about airliners in danger that feels like it was added in post to generate extra tension, and that doesn’t even make any sense to anyone who knows the first thing about air traffic control.  There’s a needless death that, while well handled, eliminates the only reason I can think of to see The Amazing Spider-Man 3.  And there’s a denouement that suffers from a shockingly bad performance by Paul Giamatti, embarrassing effects rendering by the F/X department, and unearned emotional manipulation that just feels cheap.

Oh, this movie.  While Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 still stands as a high-water mark for the genre, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels like something hastily cobbled together by people with no investment in the material.

I even liked TheAmazing Spider-Man.  If Sony decides to have another go with this creative team, it’ll take one heck of a critical reception to get me to so much as stream it on Instant.