Clear Eyes, Full Hearts

Undefeated  

Sunshine, February 21, 2012

Movie #9 for 2012

Holy crap, you guys, “Friday Night Lights” is real.  So is The Blind Side.  That’s a weird thing to say, since they were both based on non-fiction books, but I assumed much was embellished via the television/movie machine.  Undefeated is “Friday Night Lights: The Documentary”.

Set in North Memphis, Tennessee, Undefeated is the story of a high school football team of poor black kids coached by a dedicated volunteer named Bill.  Bill is a real life Coach Taylor - he communicates primarily in earnest, intense speeches - although he is even more interested in building up boys than his FNL counterpart.  Which is lucky, because these kids are no Smash Williams and the program at Manassas High is more East Dillon than Dillon.

Film-makers DANIEL LINDSAY and T.J. MARTIN follow three boys - Money is a senior, smart but too small to have a hope of playing football past college, who sinks into despair after an injury; O.C. is the perfect left tackle (the position made famous by The Blind Side), he’s big, he’s strong and he’s fast, but unless he gets his grades up he'll be stuck in North Memphis too; and then there’s Chavin, the anger-management-free zone who has just returned to school and the football team after a year in juvie.  Bill is determined that this team can do what none other has in the hundred-plus-year history of the school: win a play-off game.   More than a story about football, though, it's actually about crushing poverty and young men in desperate circumstances.

It’s an incredibly powerful story and – despite the handheld camera and intense close-ups – it’s actually really well shot.  The characters (seems strange to call them that since they are so plainly real people) are all flawed and likeable and have tragedies and triumphs and journeys.  Plus, there’s genuinely tension-filled sport.

There’s not a single thing that I look for in a film that Undefeated doesn't deliver. 

Different valley. Just as uncanny.

The Adventures of Tintin  

Village East Cinema, January 30, 2012

Movie #8 for 2012

Despite the awesomeness of the crew who wrote The Adventures of Tintin (STEVEN MOFFAT, EDGAR WRIGHT and JOE CORNISH), I did not have high hopes for it.

Folks talk about the uncanny valley in animation where that fiction between realistic and cartoonish features becomes uncomfortable to watch.  Tintin had that, but for me it was not about the appearance of the characters (although that was fairly awkward at times - Bianca Castefiori is so photoreal that she looks, for all the world, like a person wearing hideously bad face prosthetics.), but rather about the narrative and storytelling. 

Speilberg went for realistic over cartoony - in both the animation style and the action - and it sheds a new - and slightly shocking - light on familiar content.  Tintin looked so wrong carrying a gun, that it took a minute to remember that he gets shot at all the time in the books.   And then there’s the climactic crane fight.  It’s so silly that I can believe that’s something Herge would have written, but Speilberg makes the movement and sound of the cranes so real that it makes it not so much silly as stupid and, oddly, highlights how unrealistic it is.

I think, in general, there was one too many books wrapped into the story; one too many ridiculous plot devices; one too many absurd action scenes; one too many drawn out expositionary flashbacks and one too many self-referential nudge-nudges.  What there was instead was pretty awesome animation; great acting by JAMIE BELL and ANDY SERKIS (both pictured); one jawdroppingly awesome shot of a ship sailing through the desert; one genuinely thrilling action sequence and a nice - if short - funny Thompson and Thomson moment.

My hopes were not high, but they were met.

Coulda been okay. Wasn't.

One for the Money  

AMC Loews Village 7, January 29, 2012

Movie #7 for 2012

Stephanie Plum (KATHERINE HEIGL), Jersey girl, is out of work.  The bills mount up so she takes what she can get: bringing in bail jumpers for her bondman cousin Vinny.  In between the easy gets (like a flasher who lives in her building), Stephanie is hunting a big fish: her ex-might-have-been boyfriend Morelli (JASON O'MARA, pictured with Heigl), a good cop hiding out from a bum rap.  On the side, she gets bounty-hunting tips from a serious bad ass named Ranger (DANIEL SUNJATA).  Oh hey, look at that, a love triangle.

I am being very kind to One For the Money for two very good reasons:

1. I have a deep fondness for Stephanie Plum - I read a bunch of the Janet Evanovich novels when they first came out, like, fifteen years ago (before they got tiresome and silly after about book five).  She’s a character with a lot to like about her, and I couldn’t separate the film character, who everyone told me was bland and spark-less, from the book character who I remember really enjoying (when I was sixteen and had no taste whatsoever).  I guess that means they got something about the film a bit right?

2. I was drunk when I saw it.

Objectively, I can see that it’s not a very good film - the male/female relationships are offensively throwback-y and the violence (especially after Haywire) is shockingly cavalier.  The cast - all tremendously good-looking - really can’t fake chemistry at all, the script is nonsensical and the direction is plodding.  But, I’m not ashamed to say it, I - and my beers - had quite a good time.

Out of control in all the right ways.

Haywire  

AMC Loews Village 7, January 29, 2012

Movie #6 for 2012

Not so long go I thought espionage action movies had been destroyed forever by Tom Cruise, whip-panning and editors that won’t quit.  And then came Haywire.   

GINA CARANO (pictured) is the kind of tough guy Cruise wishes he could pull off.  She has the kind of physicality that comes from being actually physical  - she’s a mixed martial arts champion - and, like Zoe Bell in Deathproof, has the kind of stunt skill that you can’t fake.

She’s also easy on the eye and a not-awful actress, so wins all over the shop.  Diretor STEPHEN SODERBERGH is clearly a bit besotted with her and directs her with a kind of wary love - the camera is almost always wide to capture the stunts and action in all their (mostly) wireless, real-life glory, but the eye is always firmly fixed on her as she beats her way through numerous men (including CHANNING TATUM, EWAN McGREGOR and MICHAEL FASSBENDER) who have set her up for a fall.

Soderbergh sticks with his regular look of flat, slightly saturated colors and some kooky camera angles to keep things interesting for himself.  The screenplay (by Lem Dobbs) is a little over the top and without the brief running time and Soderbergh’s cool yet awed approach, it could have been a disaster.  But here, it’s turned into some kind of straight-up lady-badass gold.

There’s not a whipp-pan in sight and no-one, neither Soderbergh nor Carano, are pulling their punches.

Death and destruction

Carnage  

Lincoln Plaza Cinema, January 25, 2012

Movie #5 for 2012

Just like The Artist, the hook for this film is also its major constraint. 

Two couples meet in a New York apartment to discuss a playground incident where one couple’s son hit the other couple’s son with a stick, breaking some teeth.  The couples politely skirt around blame and then, eventually, inevitably, lay it on thick.

The film runs in real time and the action - and the actors - never leave the apartment.  Adapted from a stage play where this sense of anchoring in a space had a kind of Sartre “hell is other people” claustrophobia and the dialogue had a biting theatricality to it, the film loses everything engaging about the play by trying to hold onto it too tight.  Roman Polanski is unable to recreate the trapped feeling, the setting just feels forced, the dialogue is labored and unnatural.  The artificialness of the situation is further highlighted by some serious arch camera-work and by the films bookends - two scenes of the two boys out in the playground (which makes the 90 minutes we spend inside the apartment seem absurd, and not in a good way).

Actors of this caliber (JODIE FOSTER, JOHN C. REILLY, KATE WINSLET and CHRISTOPH WALTZ, all pictured) do alright with what they've got, but Polanski'd direction seems to actively avoid the empathy of the play or any sense of journey for the characters (they rarely surprise). The kick seems to be overwrought actors playing ugly characters devouring themselves and each other.

Constrained by art

The Artist  

Angelika, January 8, 2012

Movie #4 for 2012

A 1920s silent film star (JEAN DUJARDIN) lives in a world that is pretty much a 1920s silent film.  He is as dashing off screen as he is on.  In this world women (PENELOPE ANN MILLER, BERENICE BEJO, pictured with Dujardin), bosses (JOHN GOODMAN) and well-trained dogs all behave like they would in a silent movie.  This is a conceit with plenty to mine as writer –director MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS manipulates the world he’s created in inventive, self-reflexive and at times breathtakingly brilliant ways.  But the cleverness of the conceit is also its main constraint. 

Although it makes for a beautiful looking and clever film, the narrative and character development really suffers. The love story is old-fashioned and creaky as the girl starts with lots of pluck but is stayed in her agency by a pining unrequited love for the leading man (who turns from charismatic to wallowing in self-absorption).  Her initial crush is easy to understand – he’s a star, she’s an aspiring starlet - but that it lingers beyond her ambitious ascension and his pig-headed decline may be faithful to 1920s storytelling, but is anachronistic now.

The actors are extraordinary though - Bejo’s physicality is particularly impressive and Dujardin smiles like a movie star.  There’s a lot of fun to be had with the Artist, just not much of a story to be engaged by.

The amazing descending family

The Descendants  

Regal, January 7, 2012

Movie #3 for 2012

I got a little bit confused about who directed The Descendants.  Because:

a. it has GEORGE CLOONEY in it,

b. it has a similar tone to Up in the Air (and is of the same caliber); and

c. I saw it right after Young Adult

I thought it was directed by Jason Reitman (Young Adult, Up in the Air).  But no, it’s an ALEXANDER PAYNE (Sideways) movie, and his best to date.

Elizabeth lies in hospital room, in a coma she will not recover from.  She seems to have been the lynchpin (albeit a rotten one) of the King family, and now husband Matt (Clooney) and daughters Scotty and Alex have to figure out how to get along without her, and how to fight with her when she can’t fight back.  At the same time, Matt is struggling with selling the last piece of untouched land on a Hawaiian Island to developers - land that has been in his family for hundreds of years - and the legacy and impact he will have on his own children (all pictured).

In black and white, the situation is fairly bleak, but the tone of the film is kept (almost entirely) clear from the saccharine or overwrought with choice moments of lightness and humanity.  The direction, writing, performances - the whole film - strikes a balance between emotional and funny, sad and charming.  It’s a pretty spectacular movie, even if it wasn’t directed by Jason Reitman.