The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2/5 Stars)

Uninspired is probably the best word for this movie. It was directed by Don Scardino a name you probably do not recognize. This is his first movie although according to IMDB he has done quite a lot of work directing all sorts of Television series, 30 Rock most notably.  His style is barely noticeable and I won’t mention him anymore in this review. The movie has four writers. They include Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chad Kultgen, Tyler Mitchell. I would not be surprised if there were even more writers than that as the movie has the feel of something put together by committee and by that it is overly broad story within a fill-in-the-blank structure and devoid of uniqueness or creativity. Here, I am going to describe the story very briefly: It is about the redemption of a once successful traditional Vegas magician, Steve Carell, who has fallen on hard times because of his egomania and the appearance of a new type of stuntman magician, a la David Blaine. The magician with the help of his beautiful assistant reconnects with his childhood inspiration and stages a comeback. There is a contest at the end where he out-magics the competition. The End.

Does that sound familiar to you? Well, it should. It is a marketing pitch for a movie you have already seen before, perhaps something starring Will Ferrell and concerning sports. I bet this movie was green-lit for production before it was even written.  The studio got a room of writers together, gave them that paragraph pitch, and ordered a PG-13 script written. The result is a movie that very much feels like it did not need to be made and in a way wasn’t made by anybody in particular. It’s nobody’s movie.

I think the telling clue here is the lack of any decent magic in the movie. None. The best tricks we see are some sleight of hand that barely conceal the fact that Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, his childhood inspiration and now ex-magician, did not even bother to learn sleight of hand in preparation for their roles. There are easy cuts that allow one to recognize it is not their hands much like the way one can tell people in movies hardly ever really play the piano. The movie has a cop out reason for this and that has to do with Burt Wonderstone, Carell, and his partner Anton Marvelton, played by Steve Buscemi, being worn out has been magicians that have not changed their act in ten years. Yeah, but even ten years ago they must have had a decent trick in order to get famous in the first place. You would think we would see something of interest at some point. It never happens.

Now consider the character of Burt Wonderstone himself. His main personality trait is being bored. He takes very little joy in his work, has lost all feelings of brotherhood for his long-time partner, and goes through the routine of seducing groupies as if it is something he feels his status requires even if he does not particularly enjoy it. Truly this is Steve Carell’s least inspired character so far. I would like to draw your attention to one particular failed joke. Burt Wonderstone has been fired from his big Vegas job because his act is terrible and has been informed by his agent that he has no money because he has made nothing but terrible choices. So he is now broke and living in a motel. His assistant, played by Olivia Wilde, comes over to check up on him out of the niceness of her heart. As they are talking, she mentions her own aspirations of becoming a magician in her own right. Burt thinks this notion is silly. Why she asks. “Because,” he states, “you are a woman.” Now true this is misogynistic, but it is also lazy and stupid and those qualities are what I really want to talk about. There is no particular reason for Burt Wonderstone to be misogynistic. I have never heard of a glass ceiling in the world of magic. This isn’t like Will Ferrell’s “Anchorman” where the story was about a news team boy’s club being invaded by a female news anchor. In this movie, it just seems to be there because this movie’s story structure is based off other casually misogynistic movies and so a casually misogynistic main character was just another box on the checklist. Nobody bothered to ask whether the character or plot required Burt Wonderstone to not respect women or put in any sort of effort to make the joke anything more than simply a demeaning comment about women in general. You can, I argue, make fun of a woman. I’m not saying you should not do that, but the joke should have some logical connection to the woman who is the object of ridicule. That brings us to another inexplicable problem.

This is a comedy and like so many other comedies has not hired a comedian for the main female role. The assistant is played by Olivia Wilde, who is not funny. At all. Does not even try. What is she doing in this movie? All she does is look like Olivia Wilde, sit there passively as Burt Wonderstone insults her, and make out with him at the end. Would it kill the makers to cast a comedian who could adlib a couple funny lines where the all male writers were limited in their imagination as to what a woman character could say? It would have been really easy. For instance they hired the very funny Gillian Jacobs from the TV show “Community” for a bit part in this movie. In that bit part she got more laughs than Wilde did in the entire movie. Let’s say 1 to 0. Why on earth couldn’t she be cast as the assistant? I mean she isn’t a supermodel like Olivia Wilde, but she sure isn’t ugly either. Did nobody think about this possibility?

To be fair, there is one thing that transcends the rote nature of this movie and that is the performance of Jim Carrey as the David Blaine-ish magician named Steve Gray. Steve Gray is not really a magician as much as he is a performer of ridiculous acts of self-immolation. In one particular trick he doesn’t go to the bathroom for a straight week. That was pretty funny. Jim Carrey, now 50 years old, and no longer a box office draw (i.e. without studios developing entire movies devoted to his unique brand of comedy) has done the smart thing and started showing up in digital shorts, hosting Saturday Night Live, and taking supporting roles that allow him to still put in superior work. I mean he could be doing the Eddie Murphy thing and keep insisting on being the lead role in inferior movies, each one worse than the one before. This movie isn’t that good but Jim does turn his fifteen minutes of screen time into consistent laughs. I think what we really need is a movie based on or just with the cast of “In Living Color.” That would be something else. 

Where the Wild Things Are (5/5 Stars) October 31, 2009

I’ll Eat You Up!
Yells the nine-year-old Max (newcomer Max Records) to his mother (Catherine Keener) in the feature film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. That book had a measly ten sentences but plenty of good drawings. Director Spike Jonze has faithfully incorporated everything he could and like all great adaptors, has added on an incredible amount of depth, emotion, and cinematic scope. 
Max is a rambunctious little kid with the normal inclinations of a nine year old. By that I mean he’s impulsive, impotent, and often times stupid. (Too harsh? well imagine what you would think of Max's actions if he was forty.) In the first fifteen minutes, he tears up his sister’s room in revenge of a perceived slight; he rudely yells at his mother in the middle of her date, and he runs away from home in a fury. Then, like in the book, Max gets on a boat and sails to a far away island: the Land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things are a godless lot of beasties who have the emotional maturity of nine year olds. Max finds them in a familial crisis and arrogantly suggests that he can fix everything and keep the sadness away in the Wild Thing Kingdom. He even lies about having special powers like a sadness shield. The Wild Things crown Max as their king and Max declares the “wild rumpus to start!”

Jonze never expressly says anything but the Wild Things can be metaphorical on many levels. I took their current problem (One member has been spending more time with other things on the island) to mean any kind of familial strife. In this story it could pertain to Max’s sister abandoning him to play by himself, or it could refer to the divorce in Max’s family (He gets mad at his mother in the beginning because she has brought home Mark Ruffalo, a man who isn’t Max’s father). When the Wild Things entrust Max with the job of fixing everything, it is sort of like parents entrusting their own kid to fix their marriage. This is a job Max zealously accepts because he feels he knows best anyway. What makes this movie special is that the Wild Things take Max’s ideas seriously, carry them out, and expect them to work. And unlike any children’s movies I’ve ever seen, Max’s ideas are those a nine year old would come up with. What makes this movie especially sad is that they have the exact results they should have. 

For example, Max’s first idea is to build an awesome fort. The Wild Things eagerly start working on it. They build the best fort ever, just the sight of it is something to behold. But it doesn’t work in uniting the Wild Things family. All the same problems continue. Next Max comes up with the idea of having a giant dirt clod fight. It’s a great fight, but as what happens with all fights, people get hurt and the same problems become even worse. Eventually the Wild Things become disillusioned and angry with Max. They blame all their problems on him. There is an especially sad scene where they ask Max if he has any powers at all. Max gets up and does a robot dance (this dance was seen earlier when he tried to cheer up his mom after she had gotten bad news at work). It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. None of the Wild Things are impressed. This is the closest I’ve seen a movie get to portraying the helplessness a child must feel when their family is breaking up. Max knows something is wrong but can’t do anything about it because he’s only nine and all he is good at is building forts. 

The movie takes a dark turn near the end when the Wild Things, who are known to eat things up, turn on Max. This is probably the few scenes that left the children in the test audiences screaming and gave the producers enormous fits. Is it scary? You bet. Is this movie okay for children to watch? Let's just say I would take my kid to see it the day he turned nine. A movie isn’t great that doesn’t provoke its audience. What makes some movies better than others is how it does so. There are scary beasties in this movie, but they are handled responsibly. I doubt many kids will get nightmares. More likely they will get ideas for Halloween. 

This movie has guts. It is perhaps the only kid’s movie I’ve ever seen that deals with childhood guilt. Most other movies won’t even dare of suggesting that a kid could be culpable of something. But in this one, Max wrongs people. It is true that kids can be cruel, but often times they are cruel on accident. They don’t know any better. When a child does something bad impulsively and then learns the evil in the actions the emotional consequences may cover a vast arc from fear, injustice, anger, doubt, realization, guilt, sadness, fear of reprimand, and finally fear of loss of love. The depth of this movie is very rare indeed. 

This is not just a story about a kid tromping around in fantasy land realizing cliche life lessons. The problems in this movie can't be solved by a bake sale or science fair experiment prize money. Like problems in real life, they can't be solved at all by a nine year old. That's precisely what every other kid's movie gets completely wrong. They all sidestep the fact that being a kid is a helpless, impotent existence. This movie understands that perfectly. And although it is a complete fantasy it still feels more real than any other movie that has ever been concerned with the nature of being a stupid little kid. The movie ends after Max exhausts all of his rebelliousness on the island with a version of the book’s classic scene of atonement. Max returns home and is greeted by his worried mom with a hug, forgiveness, and his dinner still hot. Perfect.

There are some reviews I’ve read that call this movie dull in parts. I can understand that, but one should also keep in mind this: Max is just a kid. What may seem trivial to adults can mean a whole lot to a nine year old. Since this movie refuses to cater to an adult viewpoint and keeps everything at a child’s level, enjoying it is sometimes a test of empathy. Surely most adults have grown up past the age where forts are exciting, but imagine Max’s wonder as he explores his. Or imagine a kid’s comfort and security of sleeping in a big pile of Wild Things. Or simply the coolness of being able to play dirt clods with big people on an equal level at that age. I got a great kick out of all of it.

This is Max Records first movie. This is an incredible performance that is sort of akin to Tom Hanks’ performance in Castaway. Max is in every frame of the movie and he spent most of the time on the set acting with inanimate objects. Keep in mind the facial expressions and voices of the Wild Things were added in later. He carries the entire film. Max, the actor, is especially good at communicating subtle emotion through facial expressions. (Think the opposite of Macauley Culkin) Just consider his expression when a teacher tells him the sun is going to die someday or the look on his face when he sees his mother with Mark Ruffalo. This is the best child performance since Haley Joel Osment’s in “The Sixth Sense.” Like Haley, Max Records deserves a nomination for Best Actor. 

If I am being honest I will have to admit that this movie moved me to the point where my eyes watered. Yes technically I cried during this movie. It doesn’t happen often. (The last time was while watching “The Sixth Sense.”) But when it does it is imperative to admit it and reflect upon it because it suggests that the movie (though obviously fictitious and in this case not even attempting to be in the realms of reality) struck a nerve by portraying something I felt was not only emotionally raw and enormously empathetic, but above all, true. In this movie there is truth. It deserves nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and especially best Costumes or Makeup depending on whatever the Wild Things qualify as. I don’t believe that Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It is the best movie I’ve seen this year. and I believe it is a movie that will last for years to come much like the book it was adapted from.

In the Loop (5/5 Stars) September 7, 2009

Climbing the Mountain of Conflict like a Nazi Julie Andrews! 


Writer/Director Armando Ianucci should be crowned the British King of insult comedy for his new political satire “In the Loop.” This is Iannucci’s feature film debut. He is best known for his TV Show “In the Thick of It,” which contains many of the same actors playing the same characters. That show and this movie are about the same thing: A no holds barred, hysterical, unsympathetic, and way too realistic feel of how a bureaucratic democracy works. They say that policy is like sausage: good to eat but you probably wouldn’t want to see how it is made. Well, welcome to the Sausage Factory, I sure hope this isn’t really what it looks like. “In the Loop” concerns the buildup to an American invasion into some Middle Eastern country based on faulty intelligence provided by the British Government. We get to witness the ground war of this bureaucratic obstacle course as the many ministers, senators, and office aides battle it out over the course of committees, lunch meetings, cocktail parties, and what not. It’s like as if ‘The Office’ was not about paper but weapons of mass destruction and everybody cursed like a sailor. The expletives and insults contained within this movie flow so freely and creatively and nonstop that sometimes I simply was astounded by the incivility of some of it (especially when the characters wouldn’t hesitate to direct their profanity at women). I was astounded that is when I wasn’t laughing my ass off. I haven’t laughed so hard and so often in a movie since I watched ‘The Hangover’ earlier this year. Before that I would have to go as far back as ‘Tropic Thunder.’ What I’m trying to say is that this movie is hysterical. At times I was literally rolling in my seat. And It Is nothing but laughs despite the serious subject matter. There is not a single dramatic scene and only one dramatic pause in the entire movie (I will talk about that later). The rest of the movie is simply nonstop clever insults and witty dialogue. I will now quote several lines courtesy of IMDB as there is no way I could possibly give the movie any justice by only describing the scenes. 

Simon Foster: Tobes, I don't want to have to read you the riot act but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act, like section one, paragraph one: don't leave your boss twisting in the wind and then burst in late, smelling like a pissed seaside donkey. 
Toby Wright: Look, alright, I was late for the meeting, Simon, I am sorry, but it's not like I threw up in there, is it? 
Simon Foster: No, you're right, I'm being unfair. I should be thanking you for not throwing up. Well done, you're a star. You didn't wet yourself, did you? You're in the right city. You didn't say anything overtly racist. You didn't pull your cock out and start plucking it and shouting "Willy Banjo". No, I'm being really unfair. You'd got so much right, without actually being there in the beginning of one of the most important moments of my career. Thanks, you're a legend.

Or:

Lt. Gen. George Miller: 12:30. 
Bob Adriano: Hold on. General? Yeah... Secretary Linton Barwick asked me to let you know that his last meeting looks like it's overrunning, he sends his apologies. 
Lt. Gen. George Miller: When will he be here? 
Bob Adriano: I don't have that information at this moment. 
Lt. Gen. George Miller: What the fuck? Huh? Did he stand me up? 
Bob Adriano: No, no, sir. You're more than welcome to wait. 
Lt. Gen. George Miller: Do you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to take a nice big shit on his desk, just to let him know that I was here. Is that OK with you? 
Bob Adriano: I don't think he'd like that too much, sir.

Or:

Linton Barwick: My golly, I can't see why anyone would choose to work in a glass office, huh? Glass offices, in my opinion, are for perverts. 
Bob Adriano: I could request the glass be frosted. 
Linton Barwick: Frosting is on cakes, Bob. Now, what else happened in London?
Bob Adriano: Ah, generally positive, two glitches... 
Linton Barwick: Really, what? 
Bob Adriano: Karen flagged a report by one of her staffers. She's obviously trying to use it as some kind of roadblock. It's called PWIP PIP. 
Linton Barwick: PWIP what? 
Bob Adriano: PWIP PIP. 
Linton Barwick: What is it, a report on bird calls? What does it even stand for? 
Bob Adriano: I can't recall. It's factish. Intel for and against intervention. 
Linton Barwick: We have all the facts on this we need. We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king. You said there was something else, what is that? 
Bob Adriano: In the meeting with the Foreign Office, the committee was accidentally and briefly alluded to. 
Linton Barwick: Which committee? 
Bob Adriano: The... 
[quietly] 
Bob Adriano: The war committee, sir. 
Linton Barwick: All right, Karen is not to know about this, huh? She is an excitable, yapping she-dog. Get a hold of those minutes. I have to correct the record. 
Bob Adriano: We can do that? 
Linton Barwick: Yes, we can. Those minutes are an aide-memoire for us. They should not be a reductive record of what happened to have been said, but they should be more a full record of what was intended to have been said. I think that's the more accurate version, don't you?

Or: 

A.J. Brown: So, you made it in OK, right? 
Malcolm Tucker: Yeah, hunky-dory, thanks. Can I get a coffee? 
A.J. Brown: Sure, sure. If we just get started, my assistant should be bringing in coffee shortly. 
Malcolm Tucker: Your assistant? 
A.J. Brown: Yeah. So, item. We need to have a conversation about the mood of the British Parliament, the bumps in the road ahead and what not. 
Malcolm Tucker: I'm sorry, I don't... This situation here is... Is this it? No offence, son, but you look like you should still be at school with your head down a fucking toilet. 
A.J. Brown: Your first point there, the offence? I'm afraid I'm going to have to take it. Your second point, I'm 22, but item, it's my birthday in nine days, so... if it will make you feel more comfortable, we could wait. 
Malcolm Tucker: Don't get sarcastic with me, son. We burned this tight-arsed city to the ground in 1814. And I'm all for doing it again, starting with you, you frat fuck. You get sarcastic with me again and I will stuff so much cotton wool down your fucking throat it'll come out your arse like the tail on a Playboy bunny. I was led to believe I was attending the war committee. 

These quotes are simply a taste of what is in this movie. Every conversation, every line of dialogue is at par with what you have just read. “In the Loop” more than deserves a nomination for best Original Screenplay.
As far as the performances go, the movie goes the extra effort to make sure each actor has some sure-fire great lines and great scenes. Ianucci seems to have brought along the entire cast of “In the Thick of It,” including Peter Capaldi (Malcolm Tucker), Chris Addison (Toby Wright), Enzo Cilenti (Bob Adriano), Paul Higgins (Jamie MacDonald, the crossest man in Scotland) and others. I hadn’t heard of them before seeing them in this, but they are some very talented cursers and I can only imagine that Britain has much more lenient censors than we do as they have obviously had an awful lot of practice. On the other side of the pond are the Americans David Rasche (Linton Barwick), Mimi Kennedy (Karen Clark), and Anna Chlumsky (Liza Weld). I’ve never heard of them either (but still very funny). The only actors that I recognized were James Gandolfini (Lt. Gen. George Miller), Zach Woods (Chad) from the UCB, and Tom Hollander (Simon Foster) who you might remember as the bad guy in Pirates of the Carribean. Every part in this movie is basically equal making this the best ensemble I have seen in a movie this year. 
As I mentioned before this movie has only one pause in it and it belongs to Peter Capaldi. He has just been cursed out by David Rasche and basically ordered to cook up some intelligence so that the Americans can have something to show the UN Security Council. The camera focuses on Capaldi’s face for a couple of seconds. That’s it and then he swears at the rest of the people in the room and leaves. The movie picks up the breakneck speed of jokes and curses once again. What I noticed is that this sort of running-by-the-seat-of-your-pants pacing not only helps the comedy by keeping the jokes coming but it also explains the characters so much. It is evident that the crisis that takes place is actually quite ordinary. The characters aren’t speeding up to take care of it. They are always this fast, desperate, uncivil and angry. That explains why the only people who keep these jobs are incredible assholes like Malcolm Tucker. The job draws these people because they are the only people who can survive in this environment. Nicer or shall I say less manic men like Simon Foster don’t have a chance. That’s as far as I will get in describing philosophy. I probably went farther than the writer/director wanted me too. His main purpose is definitely not to have us debate politics afterwards but to make us laugh until we have a heart attack. Mission Accomplished.

All the King's Men 01/09/07

Boy they really screwed up with this one. I've never seen a two and a half hour movie that really should have been longer. It seemed to me that they got scared people would be bored so they went out and took thirty minutes out of the movie. Unfortunately what they took out were all the moments that would make anyone care about the movie. Moments that explained who Willie Stark was, who he was fighting against, why we care about the girl, why we care about the guy. What exactly was corrupt about the governnor, why does Law care whether Winslett slept with Penn or not. Who the hell is the Ruffalo character. There's no backstory on this story. There isn't even a bad guy or antagonist. It's as if the director assumed we had read the book and only wanted to see the good scenes. This movie is like a puzzle with half the pieces missing. It should have been good. It was great on paper, but it isn't a complete movie and at two and a half hours that's pretty shameful.

By the way, this movie claimed to be about the Sean Penn character Willie Stark. It isn't. It's about a sad sack reporter who's name I can't remember played by Jude Law. He doesn't like Willie because Willie once went to a strip club. My God the horror. This movie probably made sense to anyone who thought Clinton really deserved to be impeached. It didn't make much sense to me.