Midnight in Paris (5/5 Stars)

How to be an intellectual without being annoying about it.

There are two men in this movie that know an awful lot about Paris. One is, Paul, played by Michael Sheen. He’s the type of guy who would interrupt a tour guide, played here by 1^st lady Carla Bruni of France, with the words, “If I’m not mistaken, Rodin’s the Thinker was influenced more by his mistress than his wife.” First of all, he does not think he is mistaken and so is already disingenuous. Second, he is a jerk for upstaging the tour guide just in order to show off. I don’t know who influenced Rodin, but if Paul is right than he needlessly embarrassed the tour guide by making such a scene. If he is wrong than he needlessly made a complete fool of himself. All present should be annoyed. Than there is Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson. He too is an intellectual, but his smarts show not by self-aggrandizing posturing but by a knowing wonder for the town. He keeps on bugging everyone to walk with him in the rain because as he says, “Paris is so beautiful in the rain!” The great thing about Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” is that it understands so well the difference between these two ways of being a know-it-all. There is a difference between an intellectual who goes, “Wow! I can’t believe we’re in the same bar that Hemingway drank at! Hemingway was so cool and he drank so much! We’re going to have an awesome time here drinking and talking about Hemingway!” As opposed to an intellectual who lectures, “If I’m not mistaken, this is where Hemingway drank. His “Farewell to Arms” was okay but I felt in “A Moveable Feast” he was not as sure of himself. Also he drank way too much. That’s why he killed himself. You people should revere me because I am so knowledgeable about where we are.” “Midnight in Paris,” shows a vast familiarity with the 1920’s Lost Generation of Paris. It name drops excessively both from the well-known and not so well known people and places of the time and even includes quite a bit of French and Spanish, none of it in subtitles. But the movie never feels or seems pretentious. This isn’t an Honors English lecture. It is an inclusive party with old friends and one of the most enjoyable movies of the year. 

Gil Pender is a Hollywood hack screenwriter. It is good money but spiritually unfulfilling. He has a dream of moving to Paris and working on his novel because, well, all his literary heroes hung out in Paris and wrote novels. He visits Paris with his materialistic fiancé Inez, played by Rachel McAdams. There they bump into her parents on a business trip. The father refuses to enjoy Paris for political reasons. They also meet the pseudo-intellectual, Paul, who likes to label everything as romantic/surrealists/pre-new wave/etc/etc. One night, Gil chooses to leave the group and walk around Paris for no real reason but to do it. At midnight, a 1920’s car filled to the brim with flappers from the Rolling Twenties pulls up next to him. Before he knows it, Gil finds himself at a party where Cole Porter is playing the piano. A woman named Zelda starts a conversation with him. She is the wife of a guy named Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda asks Gil what he thinks of the party. The bewildered/excited out of his mind/awestruck Gil doesn’t know what to say. “I know,” Zelda says, “this place is boring. We’re going to a better party. Want to come with us?”

What a trip! Not only is Gil meeting all his heroes, but also all his heroes are exactly as he thought they would be. Even better, they like him and are interested in the novel he is working on. Ernest Hemingway won’t read it himself because he is of the firm belief that a writer will either hate another's work or be envious of it and hate it all the more. But Hemingway will show Gil the manuscript to the only editor he trusts, one Gertrude Stein, played by Kathy Bates. As Gil enters the studio of Gertrude Stein she is critiquing one of Picasso’s new paintings with Picasso present and adamantly defending himself. “Gil,” Stein asks, “what do you think of Pablo’s new work?” Imagine that. Being asked to critique Picasso to his face. Having Stein read your novel. Drinking with Hemingway. Gil Pender spends a majority of the movie in a state of ecstasy. Owen Wilson, perfectly cast even at 40 years old, conveys a perfect sense of child-like wonder. There is a great shot with Gil back in the 21^st century, wide-awake in his bed and whispering to nobody, “I saw Hemingway. Gertrude Stein is reading my novel. I’m Gil Pender. I’m from Pasadena.” What is really amazing is that this is a Woody Allen movie. Allen has done over forty movies now and there has been such a consistent strain of pessimism and nihilism in his work. That has completely evaporated here and in its stead is gorgeous scenery, great larger-than-life characters, sharp and clever dialogue, and a protagonist who couldn’t possibly be enjoying himself more than he already is.

Standing at about 90 minutes, this movie is also a great example of story efficiency. It takes about two minutes to introduce all the real-life people and their different attitudes towards Paris. It takes another five to introduce the idea of nostalgia and the cynical view that it is an erroneous romanticization of the past to assume that it was a better time than it is now (This theme comes up again ironically when one of the 1920’s artists suggests that the real golden age of Paris was in the 1890s.) The literary figures show up at all the right places in all the right times. I especially liked who Gil explains his perplexing situation as a man who spends the night in the 1920s and wakes up in 2010. He says this to some 1920s surrealists and they see nothing strange about his situation. Salvador Dali, played nicely by Adrien Brody, seems far more interested with his new favorite word “Rhinocerous!” There is also room for a budding romance between Gil and one of the art groupies named Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard. Overall the movie, like all good comedies, is not too long but contains quite a lot. It moves fast, is consistently funny, and very romantic. And don’t forget Paris. It looks as good as ever. 

TRON: Legacy (3/5 Stars)

If Sam doesn’t care why should I?

Tron is above all other things a visually stunning movie. The artists behind this movie have created an entire new universe stacked with digital skyscrapers, innovative sports arenas, and fantastical vehicles. Clearly, a lot of love, thought, and money went into the design of this movie. The huge problem is that nobody in the movie notices it. The characters walk around nonplussed and unimpressed with their surroundings and that unenthusiasm trickles right through to the audience. If the people in the story don’t care, why should we?

TRON: Legacy has been put in the hands of a first time director named Joseph Kosinski. It brings back Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, from the original movie (which I haven’t seen) and also introduces his son Sam Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund. The story setup is thus: Kevin Flynn is a game designer working on something big that will change everything about technology, philosophy, and theology. It will ‘change the world,’ he tells his nine year old son as leaves the house to make the latest breakthrough at the office. He never comes back. Twenty-one years later, Sam Flynn is all grown up and living the life of the down-to-earth very rich. His apartment is made out of storage containers but is located on the riverfront and has an awesome view. He also has really cool gadgets and a great bike but this is balanced out by having a cute dog. And even though he apparently doesn’t have a job nor has worked a day in his life, that doesn’t mean he’s not smart or ambitious. He’s just not a fan of the big bad corporate men who have taken over his father’s company. So he’s biding his time till I don’t know, he steps into his father’s shoes and “changes the world,” or something.

That is until his godfather gets a page from his father Kevin, asking him to go down to the shop. So after the usual protest that he doesn’t want to, he goes to the office, quickly finds the secret passageway behind the TRON video game, accidentally activates a computer thingamajig, and is warped/digitally rendered into the confines of an infinite universe contained in a computer chip. The universe is bathed in a cool digital blue, everything seems to run on tracks, and you kind of have to see it to sort of get it (see above trailer). Almost immediately he is picked up by this weird “m” shaped ship full of dangerous red robots. They take him straight to a sports arena where he is forced to duel to the death other robots with Killer Frisbees. 

Sam takes all of this remarkably in stride. I wouldn’t say Garrett is a bad actor because he is not much different than your ordinary absurdly stoic male action star. Extraordinary things only slightly perturb him from time to time. (If the above had happened to me, my reaction would be probably be along the lines of: “OMG What the Hell Is Going ON? What is this Place! Don’t kill me! AAHHH!!!” or something like that.) And yes he has never seen a Killer Frisbee before but that doesn’t mean he isn’t confident that he is better at the sport than robots supposedly programmed to know what they are doing.

After several games, which look like they should be much more dangerous than they actually are, Sam is rescued by a beautiful mystery girl, played by Olivia Wilde, who takes him “off the grid” to his long-lost father’s secret lair. There he meets his Dad for the first time in twenty years and is mercifully allowed by the writers of the movie to have a single tear run down his cheek. They don’t have much to say to each other though. Over a dinner of weird digital food filled with awkward pauses, the father finally asks, “I would guess that you have many questions?” To which Sam responds, “I only have one.” And then I finally had to laugh because the situation had gotten too absurd. Here’s a list of questions that I would have asked: Ahem, What the fuck is this place? How did you build it? How long did it take you to build it? What did you use to build it with? Who designed all of it? Who was the weird evil guy that looked like you? Why have you aged and he hasn’t? How does a stick turn into a motorcycle? Why can’t the motorcycles go ‘off the grid?’ What would happen to if I met with a Killer Frisbee? Do these robots have feelings or personalities? How did they get those personalities? And of course the most glaringly obvious question of all: Who the hell is the girl sitting at this table eating dinner with us? Earlier she had taken Sam on a tour of the lair and showed him the library. She especially likes Jules Verne. Okay, so she just saved your life, is smoking hot, AND she reads books. Now would be the perfect time to ask if she’s a robot. The question Sam asks instead is, “Why didn’t you come home that night?” That’s an okay question I guess, but seriously, is that really the only one? This kid is severely lacking in the area of imagination.

Some of those questions are eventually answered but only until the movie’s second half, and that is where things slow down considerably. Or that they ramp up. Or both in the sense that the movie’s stakes ramp up, but are so off-the-wall that it bored me considerably. In this movie, we are presented with an evil twin villain named CLUE who at one point goes so far as to hold a Nazi-style mass rally. What exactly is he planning to do? Invade the real world and take it over maybe, although how is never explained. Should anyone be worried? Given CLUE’s utter incompetence in using his army of baddies to stop three good guys, not really. Let me make a little contrast here. Last week I saw “Jackass 3D.” In that movie there was a segment called “TeeBall” where Ryan Dunn hits a TeeBall stand that then twirls around and strikes Steve-O in the balls. That segment was more effective than most of the drama in “TRON.” I can definitively say that I know what getting hit in the balls is all about. I haven’t a clue what’s going on here. My point is that it is better to have a villain that does little things that make sense than one who does big things in some vague pseudo-alarming way. If you’re going to make an epic about genocide and world domination, you better know enough about the subject to allow the audience to take it seriously. Otherwise it’s exactly what it is: Hollow and Absurd. And if the movie is like that, all those quiet melodramatic scenes where the actors talk seriously about their feelings just don’t work and take forever. What this movie should have done is gotten rid of the whole “Hitler” thing and just had the stakes tied to the games in the arena. Have a tournament or something with the ultimate prize being a father-son-hot girl ticket home to reality. The heavy drama would be gone, the action would still be packed, and the story would much more effective because it made sense.

This movie looks like it cost a hell of a lot of money to make. There’s nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong however in putting little to no effort into the dialogue or the characters. Jeff Bridges seems to be improvising lines from the Big Lebowski. Garret Hedlund is blank slate. Olivia Wilde looks great but doesn’t do much else. CLUE is creeping around the uncanny valley. The only actor that seems to be enjoying himself is Michael Sheen. I was tempted to wonder why a robot would be British and gay but overall I’m just glad he was there. Too bad he’s the last character introduced and the first one killed off.  And for some reason Cillian Murphy, one of the most accomplished actors of the cast, was hired for only one scene. Perhaps thirty years from now somebody will finally get this story right.

Alice in Wonderland (4/5 Stars) March 15, 2010

Gorgeous Overpriced Nonsense

It goes without saying that having Tim Burton adapt a version of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ is a fantastic idea. I was very excited when I first heard about it. Even more so when the first pictures of it came out with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Once I learned that he had managed to get a Jabberwock into the story (something that had not been done in any previous adaptation) my anticipation was truly piqued. Having said that the movie is sort of a let down. I say it is a let down because it completely betrays the tone, theme, and characters of Lewis Carroll. But only ‘sort of’ because Tim Burton outdoes himself with an incredibly detailed and fantastic vision of Wonderland. 

It goes without saying that Tim Burton should never try any story that is completely original (in fact besides Frankenweenie I don’t think he ever has.) The guy is just terrible at narrative cohesion and character development. This is perhaps why his best movies are adaptations of already complete stories like Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd while some of his not very good movies are adaptations of shorter stories that he unsuccessfully tries to elaborate a larger story on like Sleepy Hollow or invent an entirely new plot for like Planet of the Apes. This movie is of the former category. The original books are very episodic in nature and don’t easily translate into a movie already (saying this Walt Disney did an awesome job doing just that in the 1951 film). But this isn’t a straight adaptation. It is a sequel that takes place after the original books in which an adult Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole in an attempt to escape an awkward marriage proposal. Once in Wonderland she is confronted with a White Rabbit, a pair of not quite human twins named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, a Dodo, and a mouse. All of them can speak. They inform her that she is part of a prophecy that foretells the frabjous day when she will slay the Jabberwock. All of a sudden a bunch of armored red cards and a Bandersnatch rush out of the jungle and try to capture all of them. Apparently the Red Queen has been terrorizing the countryside for no particular reason. The White Queen can’t do anything about it because she’s like Ghandi. The Mad Hatter, well for his part, he’s completely insane. If you have trouble making sense of this then that’s probably because it doesn’t make any because like all nonsense it can’t.

The great thing about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (and the reason that it is one of my favorite books) is not its flights of fancy or imagination. It’s the brilliancy of its logic and wordplay. Here’s a pretty good example, which is not in the movie: 

‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
‘I’ve had nothing yet, ‘ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’
‘You mean you can’t take LESS,’ said the Hatter: ‘It’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.’

All good logical nonsense has three levels to it. The first is a flat statement of nonsense (Have more tea). The second is the reasoned response (I can’t take more). The third is the explanation of the earlier nonsense and the logical refutation of the reasoned response (take MORE than nothing). Carroll’s books are entirely full of this sort of thing. He is a brilliant wordsmith and probably impossible to have a normal conversation with. He has the ability to flip conversations onto their back and tickle them to death. The unifying theme in his book was always little Alice’s reaction to this nonsense. By nature she is an imaginative girl (Won’t read a book without pictures) who follows her curiosity without thinking (why not go down a rabbit hole? Curious and curiouser). But the new world she finds isn’t very kind to her. In fact, almost across the board everyone she meets is incredibly rude. Alice being good mannered tries to humor the odd creatures she meets but is bandied about with illogic and contemptuous behavior. The Red Queen tops them all by insisting on good manners while indecently shouting “Off With His Head!” at everyone. Finally Alice gets angry herself and ultimately rejects the nonsense and the dream (Who cares for you? You’re just a pack of cards!) This is not the embrace of imagination. It is quite the opposite. Alice’s arc is one of greater maturation. She is shedding childish silly things. It is fitting that Carroll was the tutor of the real Alice. The story is a perfect revenge of a schoolteacher. Take the uninterested daydreaming pupil and insert her into a world filled with even more childish, inattentive, rebellious, and ADD prone creatures. See how she likes it. 

At least that’s what I got out of it. Tim Burton gets the exact opposite. In his movie, all the characters were apparently friends of Alice when she was there the first time. What’s more Alice never objects to the silly things that go on around her in this world. In fact, the whole moral of the story is to exalt your imagination. Alice needs to embrace her muchness and think impossible thoughts. This is okay a moral as any but it really hurts Carroll’s much strived for logical nonsense. Without the reasonable objections the movie never gets past the first level of simple stated nonsense. The effect of this is a movie completely deprived of laughs and any logical explanation of the silliness. At one point Johnny Depp recites the first stanza of Carroll’s famous poem ‘Jabberwocky.’ It goes something like this:

Twas brillig and the slithy toves 
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves 
and the momewraths outgrabe.

Now since Alice doesn’t object or ask him what the hell he’s talking about, this stanza is never explained. If you haven’t read the book I feel sorry for you. I only truly appreciated it in the book after Humpty Dumpty explained all the portmanteaus contained within it. That stanza makes sense take my word for it.

So the story doesn’t make any sense, isn’t funny, and completely misinterprets the original masterpiece, why then am I giving it four stars. Well, because the movie is goddamn gorgeous that’s why. Say what you want about Burton’s storytelling skills but he is a consummate visual artist. Every setting, set decoration, and character in the movie has been lovingly crafted into his unique visionary style. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen is angelic. Mia Wasikowska, as Alice, looks fantastic in her suit of armor. Helena Bonham Carter and Crispin Glover make great rotten hearts. Johnny Depp looked…interesting? The White and Red Armies of chess pieces/cards are sights to behold. And the Jabberwock was everything I hoped it could be and more. None of the actors give very good performances because of the complete lack of motivation the characters have for anything they do, but hey they look great doing it. For the love of God, will somebody get Tim Burton a good screenwriter!

I must complain about one more thing, and that is the 3D ticket price and the vast hypocrisy that is behind. The ticket cost is now $16.50, four dollars more than the very high normal ticket price of $12.50. The extra four dollars are there to pay for the glasses. The theater will not let you bring in previously purchased glasses. You must buy them new every single time. At the end of the showing the theater has the audacity to ask us to “Go Green” and recycle the glasses, presumably so they can sell them once again for $4 to another unwitting customer. If the theater really cared a wit about the environment they would allow us to reuse the glasses ourselves. Then they wouldn’t have to make so many unnecessary copies of them. Go Green? Bullshit I say! Shame, movie industry, Shame!

Frost/Nixon (3/5 Stars) 01/23/09

Frost/Nixon is the name of a award-winning play that recreated the famous post-presidential interview of Richard Nixon and English talk show host David Frost. This movie is an adaptation of that play. So what we have is an adaptation of an adaptation. It’s weird than that this movie has an odd mockumentary vibe to it. By that I mean certain characters that witnessed the interviews interrupt the movie to speak of the events unfolding on the screen as if they already happened. It is used in the beginning and the end, but not during the middle. It’s weird because it throws the whole genre into question. Am I watching a straight up biopic, or a mockumentary of that biopic? And why isn’t it consistent?
I had the opportunity to watch some of the Frost/Nixon interview clips on YouTube before somebody was a real jerk and took them down because of a copyright. Watching those and then watching this movie I witnessed a real difference especially in the final supposedly most dramatic scenes. In the real interviews Frost seems like a perfectly capable interviewer. This is at odds with Michael Sheen’s portrayal of a complete boob. The real Richard Nixon is equally not so dramatic. In the movie the big line is “No I’m saying when the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Frank Langella milks this line for all its worth and it comes as if it some sort of Freudian slip. In the real interviews Richard Frost asks a completely different question (and a better one too) about wiretapping unsuspecting American citizens (In the movie the question is about Watergate.) It is sober and Nixon’s famous answer although still incredible seems at least somewhat thought out. This playing with the dialogue I found a little irresponsible especially when were dealing with an ex-president. Of course you may say, hey it’s just a movie. I would counter that the thing is up for a best picture nomination and people watching it will assume that the dialogue is actually verbatim. Therefore the filmmakers, Ron Howard, should have exercised a little more responsibility in keeping the record straight. I’m somewhat surprised by this because Ron Howard is usually very good at these biopic stories (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man). Anyway it still is an entertaining film. Just give the real interviews a look while you’re at it, just to be objective.
Frank Langella just got a best actor nomination for his portrayal of Richard Nixon. Not really knowing Richard Nixon I don’t know if it is good impression. I know he doesn’t look a thing like the man. If there is a great performance in this movie it doesn’t belong to Langella though. It belongs to Sam Rockwell, who brings a real vitality to his role as one of Frost’s leading investigator of Nixon. He does a very good job of representing the nation’s outrage against Richard Nixon. I looked him up on imdb and found out that I had already seen him in several other movies. (He was that dude in ‘The Green Mile?’) This is the first time I really noticed him though and thought ‘hey I think I’ll look that guy up.’ On the other side of fence is Kevin Bacon who plays the assistant of Richard Nixon. He’s a stalwart army guy. Its kind of nice to see Bacon playing supporting bits in movies with good casts again. Maybe a couple of years of this and we will be able to play his game again. It’s been getting kind of hard since he became a headliner around 1996 and stopped doing those sort of films.