Rango

Rango is a great Western.  It’s a great kids’ movie.  It’s just plain great.

This beautifully animated film both ribs and pays homage to the Western, and particularly the spaghetti Western.  It’s a tale of an evil boss and a new sheriff, and it references enough classics of the genre to keep the aficionado in deep clover.  More importantly, it tells its own Western story, and it does so well enough to capture the imaginations of children for whom it represents their first exposure to the genre.

Johnny Depp voices the titular Rango, a chameleon who dreams of adventure and heroism.  When he wanders into an Old West town populated with (beautifully rendered) desert creatures, he tries to blend in.  After all, that’s what chameleons do.    Next thing he knows, he’s the sheriff.  Now, if he can only figure out how to work that gun …

And away we go.  Rango has gunslingers, saloons, jailbreaks, and even a plucky belle struggling to save her ranch.  It also has great music, funny jokes, and the most beautiful animation I’ve enjoyed since Kung Fu Panda.  I loved it, my wife loved it, and my kids loved it.  Now, if only I can get ‘em to watch Stagecoach.

Hugo

In the first ten minutes of Hugo, Martin Scorsese delivers a breathtaking flight above the wintry streets of beautiful Paris, through the crowds at a downtown railway station, and into the very workings of the beautiful clocks that keep the people in the station on time.  Further, he introduces the ragamuffin boy Hugo, our hero, wins our sympathy for him, and dazzles us with the beauty of his photography and vision.

And then he gives us the opening credits.  Basically, the first ten minutes of Hugo is Martin Scorsese saying, “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the best there is.”

He’s right, of course.  He is the best there is, and he uses his mastery of his craft to tell us a story (of the plucky young Hugo and his adventures in the railway station), experiment with and expand 3D technology, and proclaim his love for film, both aesthetically and technically.

He’s aided by the kind of cast a Scorsese can command: Christopher Lee as a bookshop owner who reveals hidden depths, Sacha Baron Cohen as the Station Inspector, Emily Mortimer as the flower vendor who’s the glint in his eye, and Jude Law as, in a sense, the soul of the picture.  And that’s just the supporting cast!  In the lead, we find the remarkable young Asa Butterfield as the titular Hugo, Chloë Grace Moretz (whom I’m beginning to see as the next Jodie Foster) as an educated young girl who yearns for adventure, and Sir Ben Kingsley in one of his most evocative roles since Death and the Maiden.

Right around here, I usually summarize the plot to help you decided whether the story’s for you.  Not this time.  The story’s good, and it’ll capture your imagination, but Hugo is for you simply because it’s beautiful.  It provokes a feeling of aesthetic wonder, a joy that mankind is capable of creating such visions and experiences, a shared delight in the possibilities of film as a medium.  I loved Hugo and consider it among the best films of the year.  I think you’ll love it, too.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The very worst thing about INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is John Hurt. Hurt plays an old friend and colleague of the Joneser, one who has lost his wits after peering too deeply into the eponymous Crystal Skull. The problem with this is that Hurt's performance recalls his Fool in the 1982 BBC production of KING LEAR. Attention filmmakers: if you want to drive a stake through the heart of your movie, cast a great character actor in a pale shadow of one of his career-high performances. It's a sure-fire way to get your audience thinking about how much better that other picture was than the one it's currently watching.

That may be the worst thing about Indy IV, but it has competition. The opening sequence, a car chase between people we don't care about and whom we'll never see again (punctuated with supposedly amusing animal reaction shots), starts the film on an offputting, wtf note. When the picture finally gets around to giving us Ford and Ray Winstone (clearly wishing he was in Ibiza), we've already nearly lost interest. Then Cate Blanchett shows up as the villain, she gets a boner joke, and the whole thing just runs off the rails.

Ok, I admit it. I wrote that whole paragraph just to find an excuse to work in a SEXY BEAST joke.

INDY IV is just plain boring. Dull. Flaccid. A yawner. And I like Spielberg. I like Ford. I like Allen, Winstone, LaBeouf, Blanchett, and Hurt. But my pulse never quickened. I never believed in what was happening. And at the climax, when I was supposed to be going, "Wow," I was only thinking, "Huh. Spielberg and Lucas didn't trust me enough to have the Blanchett speak Russian."

I may have seen this one for free, but I still want $10 back. For my time.

Beowulf

The motion-capture version of BEOWULF, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Robert Zemeckis, is a great time at the movies.

Since BEOWULF puts its technology front and center, I think it’s fair to comment on that technology. In deciding to go with motion capture animation for this film, Zemeckis made a conscious decision to trade Uncanny Valley drawbacks for the freedom of vision afforded by computer graphics. His choice pays off in riveting battle sequences, impossible camera movements and viewpoints, and the realization of a complete world. The price he paid shows in sight lines that are sometimes confusing and a certain deadness to the eyes that no computer animator has yet been able to overcome. In some cities, BEOWULF is available in IMAX 3-D, but such was not the case in Salt Lake City, where I happened to see this film. Watching it in 2-D, I noticed “payoff 3-D” shots that were more of a distraction than an entertainment. Overall, however, the presentation looked sharp and interesting.

Now, on to the movie. Neil Gaiman has long been among my favorite writers. He combines a love for and knowledge of folklore and literature with sensitivity to the human condition and remarkable storytelling talent. With BEOWULF, Gaiman wrote a screenplay whose deviations from the source text served to further the story, provide multiple viewpoints on the action, and stay true to the heroic tradition of which Beowulf is a part. It’s terrific, moving stuff that lends immediacy to both character and action sequences, not to mention serving up a few surprises.

As for the performances, they’re fine. Anthony Hopkins was bearable, for a change, and no one dropped the ball. Having said that, nothing stood out as being particularly noteworthy. It’s hard to act past those dead, dead eyes, no matter how much you try.

Taken together, the animation, story, and performances craft a two-hour film that made me lose track of time, that got my heart racing in all the right places, and that even managed to make Angelina Jolie look attractive. BEOWULF is fine entertainment, technologically marvelous, and, as I said, an all-around great time at the movies.

Now, if I only could see it in IMAX 3-D.

The Proposition

Ray Winstone. Guy Pearce. Danny Huston. John Hurt. That spooky Aborigine tracker from RABBIT-PROOF FENCE. These guys are serious guys in a serious movie, THE PROPOSITION, written by Nick Cave and directed by John Hillcoat with brutal pitilessness. Winstone's the law in an arid Outback town that may as well be called Tombstone, and he's out to capture or kill Huston. Others will die, some by intention and some by accident, but it matters not: Huston's the rabbit, Pearce is the hound, and the rest, well, perhaps they'll survive.

But then things change. I won't say how or why, but I will say that they do so in ways I did not expect. That's the trick of this film, and its unique allure, though I'm not sure if it's enough to recommend a viewing. THE PROPOSITION is difficult to watch not because it's brutal, but because it's brutal to people about whom we come to care. Further, it's slow, reflecting a time during which patience wasn't a virtue so much as a requirement. The two combine to create a sense of dread that, while powerful, is far from pleasant. One can imagine that this is how people lived, and this is how they made the decisions they made, and this is how they came to regret them.

So, THE PROPOSITION. It's a well-made film, but I did not enjoy viewing it. Your mileage may vary.

The Departed

When THE DEPARTED’s final credit rolled, I looked at my watch and thought, “Where did the time go?” Scorsese’s film, which clocked in at over two hours, raced by and I enjoyed every single minute. And yet, much as I liked it (and I really, really liked it), I think INFERNAL AFFAIRS is a better picture.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS, the Hong Kong Thriller remade in THE DEPARTED, stars Andy Lau and Tony Leung in the Damon and DiCaprio roles, respectively. The movies are nearly identical, with one major exception: moral ambiguity. In THE DEPARTED, Matt Damon’s character is a gangster in his heart. His decisions come from a position of self-interest and cold analysis of his situation. In INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Lau’s character began as a gangster, but he’s spent so much time on the right side of the law that he’s no longer playacting: he has conditioned himself to goodness and there’s a very real part of him that genuinely wants to become good. In THE DEPARTED, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is noble at heart. He’s so filled with horror at the demands of undercover work and sublimated fear of death that he turns to pills just to help him maintain his equilibrium. In INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Leung’s character kind of likes being a gangster: he’s grown used to it and, though he’d like to come in, we have a sense that he could continue to thrive in the underground world to which he’s become accustomed.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot to like about THE DEPARTED. It’s a Scorsese picture, so of course it looks and sounds great. The cast is phenomenal, the story brisk, and situations involving. It’s a four-star movie, no doubt about it. But I like a little more moral ambiguity in my movies. INFERNAL AFFAIRS wins by a nose.