About Time

About Time is a romantic comedy that poses the question, “Could you find love if you had unlimited do-overs?”  Here’s the setup: Domhnall Gleeson is an insecure young Briton who learns that he has the ability to travel backward in his own timeline and relive any moment.  Say the wrong thing at a dinner party?  No problem.  Go back and try again.  Twist your knee skiing?  No problem.  Go back and take a different rout next time.  And away we go.

It’s a fine setup for a romantic comedy.  As with any endeavor, however, it’s all in the execution.  And it’s in the execution thatAbout Time stumbles in two key areas:  it fails to give us a reason to fall in love with its leading romantic couple, and it actually focuses on the wrong couple 

Let me explain:  for a romantic comedy to work, the audience must fall in love with the couple at its center.  That’s a tall order – it can’t be easy to craft characters who appeal to (potentially) millions of people.  Still, About Time doesn’t give us much to fall in love with.  The protagonist (Gleeson) isn’t a particularly interesting figure.  He has interesting parents, an interesting sister, and an interesting roommate, but he’s just … some guy.  A well-meaning guy, sure, but there isn’t anything about him that particularly captures the imagination.  The object of Gleeson’s affections, played by Rachel McAdams, is little more than an object.  The film doesn’t work to give me the sense that she’s anything greater than your Mk 1, Mod 0 Dream Girl.  She spends the film being manipulated by a Gleeson character with the ability to manage their every moment.  She has no agency of her own, and the film expects me, as the viewer experiencing the film through the eyes of the male protagonist, to fall in love with her simply because she looks like Rachel McAdams and she seems nice. Buddy, that’s not going to do it.

Gleeson’s parents, however – that’s a different story.  The couple, Bill Nighy & Lindsay Duncan, are delightful.  Yes, Nighy also has the ability to travel backward in his timeline and get the little things right, but one gets the sense that he does so more to savor his time with his family than say and do the right things to keep his wife happy.  Lindsay Duncan, for her part, is a mature, together woman who knows how to make things happen.  These are interesting people, played by fine actors, and I wanted to spend more time with them.

Alas.  We don’t always get what we want.  Perhaps someone can give About Time a do-over.

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 Wolf of Wall Street

Given:  Martin Scorsese ranks among the greatest filmmakers of all time.  Given:  Leonardo DiCaprio ranks among his generation’s finest actors.  Question: together, can they make The Wolf of Wall Street worth watching?

“What?” you may be asking.  “Why is this even a question?”

It’s a question because The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of absolutely terrible human beings.  The film knows they’re terrible.  They characters know they’re terrible.  How does one invest in the stories of a bunch of people who, if they were all incinerated in a nuclear inferno at the end of the second act, would leave the viewer thinking, “Serves ‘em right?”

One invests because Martin Scorsese is an undisputed master of the art form of motion picture creation, and Leonardo DiCaprio is an absolutely brilliant actor and movie star who can find something compelling in even the most loathsome of characters.

The film traces the rise and fall of DiCaprio’s salesman, stockbroker, and felon as he learns to the keys to amassing enormous amounts of wealth through means illegal, unethical, and, well, just plain evil.  It’s a cry of rage against an industry that crashed the American economy in 2008, costing untold numbers of people their jobs, their savings, and their homes while its executives reaped ever-larger bonuses.  The film doesn’t go into the specifics of 2008 – in fact, it ties DiCaprio and his cohort into other shenanigans.  But the rage is the same.

So why watch two+ hours of rage?  Because Scorsese knows who to frame a scene, how to build tension, how to craft a narrative in such a way as to keep us on the hook.  And DiCaprio, man, this guy is amazing.  He gives a charismatic, snakelike, evil performance that is absolutely riveting.  Even when he’s at his most evil, duping some unsuspecting schmuck out of his money and, quite possibly, jeopardizing the guy’s marriage, you can’t help but watch him.  This is an actor at the height of his powers, and you must respect the craft.

Does all this mean that you have to see The Wolf of Wall Street?  I don’t know – I’m not here to sell you anything.  All I know is that this film brings together serious talents and presents a compelling narrative.  If that’s your thing, and you don’t mind a little rage, have at it.