Short Takes

Headhunters

This Norwegian thriller pits an full-time corporate recruiter and part-time art thief against a very angry and implacable would-be victim, Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.  It's taught, surprising, and altogether effective - this movie literally had me on the edge of my seat.

The Dictator

There's a comic bit in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator involving a severed head, a henchman with rather vague loyalties, and remarkably bad taste.  A masterpiece of timing, the bit took me from incredulous disgust to full-throated laughter to intellectual admiration, all in the stretch of about five minutes.  If I lost you at "severed head," so will the movie.  If I piqued your interest, invest ten minutes: that's all you need to decide whether this film is for you.

Moonrise Kingdom

This seems like the film for which the word "charming" was invented.  Moonrise Kingdom is about basically good people trying to behave basically well, and I found myself rooting for everyone.  The production design is pleasingly eye-catching, the locales beautiful (this one was filmed near my current home in Newport, RI), and the story engaging.  I loved it.

The Expendables 2

The Expendables 2: better than the first, with better action choreography and a more comprehensible sense of the battlespace. Filled with 'splosions, gunfire, and bad jokes, this movie won me over when it devoted a good five minutes to what was essentially one long Chuck Norris joke, punctuated by Chuck Norris telling an actual Chuck Norris joke.

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.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

I'm the only member of my family who didn't like MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA. My ambulatory kids danced along with the lion at the climax. My wife and sister in law nodded along happily. I sat there, bored at a commercial venture with as much heart as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Here's the setup: a bunch of anthropomorphic animals rehash the hit song from the first movie, then get on a barely functioning airplane for their trip to New York City. The plane goes down in an African game preserve, where the Mustafah ripoff is being challenged by the Scar ripoff. It's up to our favorite beasts to save the day, find self-realization, and sing and dance.

But nothing funny happens. The film celebrates a subculture (New York and New Yorkers) that doesn't capture my imagination (Maybe if my crash pad wasn't so close to the J Train). The whole thing feels like a rote recycling of successful elements from the first film, with no chances taken and every element audience-tested.

I don't hate this movie. It's not interesting enough to engender hate. I just plan to be out of the room the next time my kids spin this one up.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I enjoyed the hell out of SWEENEY TODD.

This film was my first exposure to the story, and I admit that I went into the picture not expecting to like it. My tastes run to the bright and cheery, frankly, and this stuff is pretty dire. But it works. It works because Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, even under all their makeup, infuse the proceedings with a compelling, dark humanity. It works because of top notch supporting performances. And it works because Tim Burton creates a world, and a worldview, so complete that we can enter into it and live there for a while, even if we don’t care to live there much longer than a couple of hours.

Johnny Depp, a strong contender for Can Do No Wrong status, is Todd, a man with vengeance in his heart. I knew Depp could do vengeance (Hell, I knew he could accomplish most any acting task set before him.), but I didn’t know he could sing. His numbers, and his performance of those numbers, enhance his character and entertain – he’s just great here. Helena Bonham Carter, an actress to whom I’ve always found it difficult to warm, is just right, as well. She’s creepy and off and fascinating and, what do you know, she can sing, too.

As for the supporting work, well, look at this cast: Alan Rickman (CDNW), Timothy Spall, and Sacha Baron Cohen (a performer whose stock keeps rising, in my book), among others. Rickman, of course, Can Do No Wrong. Spall is taking too many “slimy guy” roles, but he’s mighty good at them, and who knew Cohen could sing? Even as I recognized their faces, I bought their roles.

And Burton, well, he’s Burton. He creates films that come fully alive in their self-contained worlds, and his choice of palette and scene here is spot on for the material.

This is a successful film, and a damn fine entertaining one. Color me pleased.

Madagascar

My 6yo has been dying to show me MADAGASCAR. Tonight, I made the time to sit down and watch it with him.

Here's the worst thing about watching a terrible movie that your child adores: there's no escape. You can't pick up a paper; you can't check your e-mail; you can't strike up a conversation with your significant other. Your child is monitoring your attention like Big Brother, and brother, you'd better be paying attention.

MADAGASCAR assumes that New York and New Yorkers are inherently interesting. They aren't. MADAGASCAR assumes that pop-culture parody is more interesting than character - based comedy. It isn't. MADAGASCAR thinks racial and cultural stereotypes make for great entertainment. They don't.

Here's the story: a lion, a zebra, a hippo, and a giraffe all live at a New York City zoo. They're happy. Their needs are met by the attentive and competent staff. They have everything they want. Except for the zebra. The zebra's pen sits opposite a frescoe of zebras frolicking in nature, and said zebra hatches a plan to escape and see the wilderness for himself. One thing leads to another and, before you know it, the friends wind up on the island of Madascar - an place which, though it holds a population of over 18 million and has a serious deforestation and desertification problem, looks like that island from "Lost" and doesn't appear to have a single human within its borders. Some of the animals want to go back to New York, some love it on the island, and everyone has to figure out a how carnivore is supposed to get along with his herbivorous friends without
zookeepers bringing him steaks every night.

The movie feels NYC-centric. Its animals are proud New Yorkers, and MADASCAR thinks that jokes about which train runs to Connecticut generate big laughs. The movie so thoroughly roots itself if NY culture that one wonders whether anyone involved in the financing or production of this film ever step foot outside of Mahattan. I've passed through and flown over New York a few times - I mean, I can find the Museum of Natural History - , but I'm not particularly vested in that city or its denizens (In the collective. Shari and Andy are both great.). I didn't empathize with the animals' love of their metropolis and I didn't find the NYC-centric gags (Look! The police horse has a Brooklyn accent!) particularly amusing.

The movie, a Dreamworks production, loves pop-culture parody and references. After the towering success of the SHREK films, they've probably written it into the corporate bible. Problem is, those kinds of jokes age extraordinarily quickly. Many of them already felt passe, and many of them would've made me grown had I been watching alone. (Which I wouldn't have. At least, not past the first twenty minutes.) MADAGASCAR is supposed to be a comedy. It made my child laugh, but the gags that they mixed in just for me simply did not work.

Finally, we have stereotypes. Oh, how I love 'em. But the fat hippo as sassy-black-Big-Momma? Who are these people?

I'll tell you, MADASCAR hurt. But a dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

If BEERFEST was mildly disappointing, TALLEDEGA NIGHTS was crushingly
bad. I sat through the entire excruciating affair with a stone face,
utterly unable to buy into the comedy on any level.

Ricky Bobby is a boring, one-dimensional character. His nemesis,
played by emerging favorite Sacha Baron Cohen, is a boring,
one-dimensional character. In fact, every character in this movie is
boring and one-dimensional.

TALLADEGA NIGHTS tries so hard to be wacky and over-the-top that turns
out a wild misfire. Not only that, but it's insulting: it's one thing
to make a little extra money through product placement; it's another
to stop the action for a full-blown commercial thinly disguised as a
"joke" I want my money back.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

I didn’t expect to like BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGSOF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN. I’m not a fan of the comedy of discomfort, and by the time the film got its release, its titular character had become overexposed. Nevertheless, I had to stay up late to recalibrate my body clock for something I’m working on, and it was either BORAT or HAPPY FEET.

While I didn’t laugh all through BORAT, I laughed through a great deal of it. Cohen has this way of making his character both so charming and so offensive that I couldn’t help myself: “I hope your President Bush drinks the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq!” may very well be the funniest line of 2006. Additionally, I loved the way he drew Americans into validating his faux-Kazakhstani stereotypes while validating the stereotypical way in which different regions of the country view one another.

I’m surprised to say it, but BORAT is that rare comedy that gives plenty to laugh about and plenty to chew on. In fact, the more I think about it, the better it gets. It’s easily my biggest surprise of 2006.