| 18 February 2010
Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island.
If you accept the premise that all moviemaking is viewer manipulation and you are willing to put yourself in the hands of a master manipulator like Martin Scorsese, then there is plenty to enjoy watching the loopy, melodramatic Shutter Island.
On the other hand, if you insist on clarity and loose ends neatly tied, this will only be an exercise in frustration for you.
Put me firmly in the former camp. With an emphasis on “camp.”
Now that his Oscar win for The Departed has taken the pressure off director Scorsese to make films for posterity, he has made one for the sheer pleasure of the hairpin-turn ride. Of all of his films, Shutter Island is probably most closely related to the tense jolts of his 1991 remake of Cape Fear, but the movie it more reminded me of was the preposterous potboiler Identity (2003), with its extreme narrative left turn two-thirds of the way through the film.
Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) set in 1954, Shutter Island is one of those films that the less you know about it going in, the better. But let me attempt a description in purposely vague terms.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese’s go-to guy since Gangs of New York 18 years ago, plays federal marshal Teddy Daniels, assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient/prisoner at Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, located on an Alcatraz-like fortress island in Boston Harbor. Partnered with him is a relatively new, but older marshal, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo).
From the opening artificial process shots on the ferry out to the island, Scorsese seems to be signaling us that some, all or none of this may actually be happening. Once at the hospital, the feds meet button-down hospital administrator Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and his German shrink sidekick, Dr. Nearing (Max von Sydow), who both make it clear that any cooperation on the case comes only begrudgingly.
Teddy, who spent the ferry ride heaving in the head, is haunted by memories of his dead wife (Michelle Williams), who died in an apartment fire, and of the stacks of corpses he saw at the end of World War II while helping to liberate the Dachau death camp. Scorsese conjures up these memories in nightmarish, technically impressive images throughout the film.
Still, such tangents are woven into the film without regard to subtlety, and the same could be said for the destructive hurricane that suddenly crops up on the island or the classical music that refuses to stay in the background, supervised by Robbie Robertson.
If the effect is that of a B-movie from the period, that is entirely intentional on Scorsese’s part, although executed with panache thanks to more contemporary technology and the director’s skilled camera moves.
Shutter Island is elevated further by an A-list of supporting actors. Emily Mortimer smolders playing the missing patient, Rachel Solando, convicted of killing her three children. It is a role she shares -- don’t ask -- with Patricia Clarkson, seen in a brief, but pivotal scene in a cave hide-out near the island’s shear rock cliffs. Also impressive in short appearances are Jackie Earle Haley as a physically abused patient and Robin Bartlett as an interviewed patient with a twinkle of craziness in her eyes.
Ultimately, Shutter Island is just a popcorn movie, a couple of hours of flashy filmmaking for its own sake. But Scorsese demonstrates that he can deliver on that level and do so with mischievous flair.
SHUTTER ISLAND. Director: Martin Scorsese; Studio: Paramount Pictures; Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Sir Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Michele Williams, Jackie Earle Haley. Rated: R; Opens: Friday. Venue: Most commercial houses
| 10 February 2010
Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Alba in Valentine's Day.
Who wouldn’t want to live in the antiseptic fantasyland of Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day?
Ostensibly set in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day, it’s a world in which women wake up in full makeup, irate motorists yell obscenities like “heck,” airport guards shrug off security breaches if the breacher is an attractive young romantic, and the meteorologists tap-dance the weather report. Even phone-sex operators speak with PG language and goofy accents. There’s no crime to speak of, just the occasional turbulence on the airways, but don’t worry, you’ll be through it shortly.
Yes, Valentine’s Day is as edgy as a circle – seemingly mindless fluff best suited for red-eye airplane viewing after a dose of Xanax. But underneath the plastic, gooey surface, the movie’s brazen implausibility and head-shaking naïveté border on the offensive – and I’m not speaking of the racially insensitive stereotypes in the phone-sex exchanges, which the movie milks for cheap laughs.
Rather, Valentine’s Day is offensive the way Reefer Madness and Cosmo are offensive: the prior, in presenting underage sex as a moralistic cautionary tale about the virtues of saying no to temptation; the latter, in perpetuating unrealistic ideals about love and romance. Your man say something hurtful? Just wait a couple of hours for his epiphany, and he’ll be showing up at your door with a homemade art project and a three-piece band (literally).
The characters inhabiting these ridiculous conceits are supposed to encompass a comprehensive swath of L.A. life, from cute little rugrats to young-at-heart grandparents and all the upper-middle-class WASPs in between. There’s the philandering Dr. Harrison (Patrick Dempsey, playing a nastier version of his Grey’s Anatomy Lothario), who’s having an affair with elementary school teacher Julia, who really belongs with platonic best friend and florist Reed (Ashton Kutcher), who’s celebrating a morning engagement to girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba).
Then there’s Jason (Topher Grace), a postal worker from backwoods Indiana who’s dating Liz (Anne Hathaway), a public relations cubicle drone and wannabe poet who moonlights as a phone-sexer.
Jessica Biel is a neurotic, lonely-heart publicist for an ailing footballer (Eric Dane, another Grey’s Anatomy player); Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper are seatmates who get to know each other on a 14-hour flight; Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo are an elderly couple set to renew their vows; and Emma Roberts and Carter Jenkins are the horny teenagers who learn the error of their ways.
Contrary to the vast majority of the cast, there are some people of color in Marshall’s catch-all coterie of rom-com clichés, but Jamie Foxx (as a TV sports reporter), Queen Latifah (as a sports agent) and George Lopez (as Reed’s best friend, a cardboard stock character who still manages to out-act Kutcher in all of their scenes together) are all underutilized and underdeveloped.
No shocker here – the best actors in the cast seem to be the ones who get the least screen time, while the desperate comedic high jinks of Garner and Kutcher dominate the proceedings. Blink and you’ll miss Kathy Bates. Seriously.
But the most flaws, as in the majority of bad movies, fall on the writing. Marshall directs an insipid Katherine Fugate script, full of sappy, contrived hokum and saccharine “I learned something today” moments. There are lines so cringe-worthy, it’s a miracle they were ever approved by anybody – all that’s missing is “love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Obviously, Valentine’s Day is not a film designed to please critics, but Marshall and Fugate fail even at giving the mass public an entertaining diversion.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
VALENTINE’S DAY. Director: Garry Marshall; Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Patrick Dempsey, Jessica Alba, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Topher Grace, Jessica Biel, Hector Elizondo, Eric Dane, Bradley Cooper, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine. Distributor: Warner Brothers; Rating: PG-13; Opens: Friday; Venue: most commercial houses
| 02 February 2010
Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in Avatar.
The first results of the Academy Awards’ grand experiment to cheapen -- uh, I mean widen -- the Best Picture nominations were announced this morning, and predictably, there were a couple of films that made the cut that would not have come close in past years.
Let’s just call it the Blind Side Effect, named for the sentimental white-family-aids-the-illiterate-black-athlete movie that Academy members inexplicably consider one of the best 10 films of 2009.
The category inflation is not really about Oscar being more populist, but about a desperate attempt to boost the awards show’s broadcast ratings. The theory is that if some mainstream commercial pictures that did a lot of business get into the race, moviegoers are more likely to tune in and care about the outcome.
And you can sense the Academy has already drafted the press release claiming that their experiment worked. It is not hard to predict that this year’s Oscarcast’s ratings are going to soar, not because of the ten Best Picture nominees, but because of the existence of a little picture called Avatar. Say what you will about this Smurfs-in-outer-space movie, it just passed Titanic -- James Cameron’s previous feature film colossus -- for the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation).
Avatar was going to get a Best Picture nomination even if the field remained at five, and its presence at the Oscars were bound to generate the highest ratings since, yep, Titanic even without the 10-nominee gimmick. Chances are the real victor in the rules change is a trade paper such as Variety, which will now reap the benefit of 10 movies taking out vanity ads crowing about their nomination.
For the record, the ten Best Picture nominees are: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air.
It’s strictly a guess, but I would say that District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds and Up were among the likely also-rans that only made the cut in the enlarged category. Up is only the second animated film to be nominated for Best Picture and while it has no chance of winning, the added visibility and credibility of the nomination gives it a lock on the Best Animated Film Oscar.
With ten Best Picture nominations, it is harder for worthy films to get snubbed, but the Oscars still managed. The Academy loves whatever Clint Eastwood directs, so Invictus could easily be in this pack. But it isn’t. The same goes for Crazy Heart, this year’s rewrite of Tender Mercies, which did cop noms for its stars Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. And while I know I am in the minority on this one, I will still insist that Nine, the much-maligned movie musical based on the stage show based on Federico Fellini’s 8½, deserves to be among the year’s best.
When the 10 nominees ploy was first announced, the picture that was most often mentioned as being boosted into the inner circle was Star Trek, but cooler heads prevailed. Nor was the Academy willing to go so populist as to include The Hangover, which became the highest-grossing -- uh, in the sense of money earned -- comedy of all time.
It is usually interesting to see which director sneak in and got a nomination without his or her picture getting a Best Picture nod. With 10 nominations, that will be harder to do now. Sure enough, James Cameron (Avatar), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Lee Daniels (Precious) and Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) will be vying for the statuette. Left out, though their pictures are in the top award sweepstakes are John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side), Neill Blomkamp (District 9), Lone Scherfig (An Education), Joel and Ethan Coen (A Serious Man) and Pete Docter and Bob Peterson (Up).
Kathryn Bigelow on the set of The Hurt Locker.
With the exception of Lee Daniels, the Academy seemed to go with the more established directors, leaving out those without much track record -- except for the Coen brothers. In any event, the Directors Guild has an amazing history of predicting the Oscar-winning director and it anointed Bigelow with its award, making it likely that the director Oscar could go to a woman for the first time ever.
The Best Actor nominations were pretty predictable, going to Bridges (Crazy Heart), George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man) Morgan Freeman (Invictus) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker). Bridges is well-liked by the film community, gives a solid performance, has been racking up wins (Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild) and has to be considered the front runner. I would argue that Michael Sturbarg (A Serious Man) and Daniel Day-Lewis (yeah, Nine) deserve to be in this field.
A lot harder to fathom than Bridges’ wins are the similar victories in the preliminary awards for Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) for Best Actress. But think of her like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich. If ever Bullock was going to win an Oscar, this is what she would win for, and sentiment for her is running high. So what if all four of her competitors are more worthy -- Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Gabourney Sidibe (Precious) and Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia).
My personal favorite film of 2009 is Up in the Air, so I am delighted that both Vera Fermiga and Anna Kendrick got Supporting Actress nominations today. Unfortunately, they will probably cancel each other out. Penelope Cruz got a nomination for her fleshy phone sex song in Nine, the only performer from that movie -- Did I mention that I liked the film? -- to do so. But look for Mo’Nique to pick up another statuette for her performance as an abusive mother in Precious.
Of course, the campaigning and arm-twisting has just begun and it is a long time between now and March 7, when the awards are handed out. But get your office pool ballots ready and, if you need a good tie-breaker question, guess how many people on the stage of the Kodak Theatre will appear in blue make-up in tribute to -- or parody of -- Avatar.
| 18 January 2010
Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford in Extraordinary Measures.
The film’s vague, punchy, two-word title suggests a middling actioner/thriller (Extreme Measures, Executive Decision, Under Suspicion) but don’t let Extraordinary Measures fool you. This is a movie for Mom, not Dad.
If you’ve seen any of the flood of TV spots for this first film from CBS’ new distribution wing, you’ll know that Extraordinary Measures is another multi-hanky, dying-kid medical drama following in the tear-stained footsteps of My Sister’s Keeper.
It’s based on Geeta Anand’s book The Cure, which tells the genuinely inspiring true story of John Crowley (played in the film by Brendan Fraser), a father who abandoned a cushy job in corporate America to team up with an eccentric researcher and develop a cure for Pompe disease, his two children's deadly form of muscular dystrophy.
A fact-checker would likely have a lengthy job with the movie version. Extraordinary Measures reduces Crowley’s life and work to bullet-pointed Hollywood clichés, beginning with his opening, frantic rush to make it to his wheelchair-bound, disease-suffering daughter Megan’s eighth birthday party (“But he promised he’d be here!”), continuing with his dramatic exit, mid-presentation, from a corporate lecture in one of those life-changing movie epiphanies, and reaching a silly dramatic low with his ostensibly suspenseful attempt to break all medical rules and steal a vial of potentially life-saving medicine.
Crowley realizes his new life’s course after a meeting with Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford, who brought the film to fruition as executive producer), a bitchy biochemist at the University of Nebraska whose enzyme research is leaps and bounds past his competition. If only he could get the funding to realize his ideas.
Enter Crowley, who launches a charity for Pompe-afflicted children, vowing to raise the necessary funds. Synergizing Crowley’s business acumen with Stonehill’s scientific expertise, this newly minted Odd Couple takes its proposals for enzyme research to top financiers, resulting in a series of gives and takes, advances and sacrifices. While Crowley is locked in fiduciary hell, his children’s conditions continue to decline, with doctors giving them a year – or less.
The plot becomes a kind of endurance test for Crowley – a series of dramatic hurdles, caused most chiefly the stock character of Jared Harris’ callous, obstructionist bean-counter, that Crowley has to topple like so many bowling pins in his daughter’s favorite Wii game.
Directed by Tom Vaughn (What Happens in Vegas) with less ambition than a soap opera, Extraordinary Measures is an unashamedly manipulative melodrama, pushing more buttons than a kid at an Xbox tournament.
Compositionally dull and musically unadventurous, it’s such a milquetoast film that when Stonehill uses the word bullshit, it’s practically subversive.
All of that said, I will confess to laughing at a few of the more humorous one-liners and even tearing up on a few occasions at the inherently moving subject matter. The development of a Pompe cure snails along at a pace that makes congressional bill-passing look speedy, and we never forget the fact that Crowley is racing against a clock that could stop, tragically, at any time.
Fraser delivers a warm, humanistic performance (Ford is not bad, either, in a role that thankfully doesn’t require a stuntman), and Keri Russell provides affecting support as Crowley’s wife, Aileen. The movie even (minimally) addresses problems that extend beyond Crowley’s family, such as health-care costs and job safety, which ground the narrative squarely in today’s economic climate.
Vaughn’s audience-friendly film will almost certainly move you, but its telegraphed poignancy is not well-earned. It represents a Faustian pact toward commercial acceptance: subordinating brains and truth for the all-too-easy weep scene.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES. Director: Tom Vaughn; Cast: Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, Keri Russell, Meredith Droeger, Jared Harris, David Clennon; Distributor: CBS Films; Rating: PG; Opens: Friday; Venue: Most commercial houses
| 13 January 2010
Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in The Messenger.
It continues to appear as if The Hurt Locker is 2009’s sleeper candidate for top awards stardom, and I couldn’t be happier for director Kathryn Bigelow – not just because she made such a great, deserving film but because she helped reorient the war drama into more intensely personal, less ideologically pandering terrain (Avatar notwithstanding).
Just a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom on war films was that they were box-office suicide, and certainly the poor receipts of Rendition, Redacted, Grace is Gone and In the Valley of Elah attest to this. But the collective shrug they garnered from moviegoers has less to do with the failure of a time-honored cinematic tradition than it does their inability to rise above politically simplistic screeds.
When war films are done right – as with the current spate of them, including The Hurt Locker, Brothers and now The Messenger – the broad strokes of anti-war politics are tangential to the individual, personally felt experiences of death, grief, outrage and sorrow, both “over there” and at home.
The Messenger, which belatedly opens Friday in South Florida, centers on young sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), just returning from a tour in Iraq and assigned to Casualty Notification service, despite having no experience in grief counseling. It’s not necessary, so he superiors say: It’s just a matter of memorizing a script. To help him learn the craft, he’s trained under the wing of hardened officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a recovering alcoholic and Desert Storm vet.
The dynamic is not unlike the central one in Up in the Air, albeit on a much more tragic scale: Seasoned veteran teaches young protégé how to deliver life-altering news to people at their most vulnerable times, and in turn is subjected to all manner of unpredictable reaction, from retaliatory violence to cool dispassion.
The scenes in which Will and Tony report the deaths of fellow servicemen to their new widows and parents back home are shattering to watch, collectively conveying an honest swath of war families (notice the high number of poor and minority families). Director and co-screenwriter Oren Moverman demonstrates how the mere shadow of two solemn soldiers on a suburban doorstep can turn the bitter domestic dispute inside into a universal grief session.
The scenes also prove, as in Up in the Air, that it’s nearly impossible to remain a mechanical, detached automaton when delivering the news. There is absolutely no physical contact with the next of kin permitted, Tony warns Will in the film’s opening moments, forecasting the ethical dilemma that will soon envelop Will when he forms a personal relationship with Olivia, Samantha Morton’s emotionally bruised war widow and now-single mother.
If the final third of The Messenger isn’t quite as moving as the opening two-thirds, it’s due mainly to the narrative’s more scattershot nature, which confuses the developing relationship between Will and Olivia and takes the story on a more rambling, less structured route.
The Messenger is Moverman’s first film as director, but he’s been an accomplished screenwriter on such diverse projects as the cult indie drama Jesus’ Son, the ‘50s-style melodrama Married Life and the schizophrenic Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There. His latest film proves he belongs behind the lens, running the show.
A wonderful director of actors, Moverman excels at lingering on tragedy in painstaking, attention-draining long takes as both his tortured notifiers and their assigned cases unload their grief, current and past. He never lets us get comfortable. This is the cost of war, and he doesn’t permit us to look away, even to another shot within a scene. This noble, uncompromising film deserves a bigger audience than it’s likely to receive.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
THE MESSENGER. Director: Oren Moverman; Cast: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone, Steve Buscemi, Lisa Joyce; Studio: Oscilloscope; Rating: R;
Opens: Friday at Sunrise Gateway, Fort Lauderdale and Jan. 22 at Regal Delray Beach 18.
