The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (5/5 Stars)

Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!

When Steven Spielberg’s action-adventure classic “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” opened in France way back in 1981, plenty of the reviews kept on repeating an obscure word, Tintin. Curious as to what the French word meant, Spielberg asked for a translator to find out. It turns out the French critics were consistently comparing Indiana Jones with a long cherished French series of comic books by Herge named “The Adventures of Tintin.” Indiana and Tintin had plenty in common. They were both intrepid adventurers (Indiana an archeologist and Tintin a journalist) whose exploits brought them to exotic locales in search of mysterious artifacts or ancient treasure. Both stories employed a break neck pace of action adventure and situational humor, not to mention some classic colorful characters met along the way.  So it is no wonder that Spielberg (with much help from Peter Jackson) would be the perfect choice to adapt Tintin into a movie and apparently has been working on this one off and on for more than twenty five years. As one who has read almost every single Tintin comic book (they are great!) I can say that this movie could not have been done better. It is Tintin and everything that was great about it. I hope they make many sequels. If you were one of those that were disappointed by the last Indiana Jones movie, than you must go and see this one. It is exactly what you want from that type of movie.

The plotline of this movie takes elements from several great Tintin books, most noticeably “The Crab with the Golden Claws,” “Red Rackham’s Treasure,” and especially “The Secret of the Unicorn.” Tintin notices a model ship of the pirate Red Rackham’s 17^th century galleon at a flea market and pays a pound for it. Almost immediately other interested parties ask to buy the ship from him. They give him dire warnings. Tintin takes the boat home with his journalistic curiosity fired up. He does research on Red Rackham at the library and comes home to find his apartment ransacked. There is something about that boat that people want! Could it hold the secret to Red Rackham’s lost treasure! What follows is a series of holdups, secret messages, code-breaking, marvelous coincidences that lead to strange far off adventures, espionage, intrigue, and the like. Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) is accompanied by his faithful dog Snowy. Along the way he meets an alcoholic skipper named Archibald Haddock who has a tendency for swearing colorful phrases like “Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!” and happens to be one of the two last descendants of an age old feud between two pirates, Captain Haddock and Red Rackham. Captain Haddock is played by Andy Serkis, the best motion capture actor in the business (he also did Gollum, King Kong, and the Ape in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”). The last descendant of Red Rackham is played by Daniel Craig. There are also plenty of thugs with guns that like to capture and kidnap Tintin and to be outwitted by an escaping Tintin. We are also treated to two bumbling police officers named Thomson and Thompson. They are identical twins that wear the same black suits and bowler hats so try not to get them mixed up. They are voiced by the comedic duo of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), an inspired choice of casting if there ever was one.

The Adventures of Tintin employs the best use of animated motion capture that I have ever seen. This is a particular type of animation that was pioneered by Peter Jackson for the character of Gollum in LOTR and made into entire movies by Robert Zemeckis. It is a poor substitute for live action in that the humans never quite escape the uncanny valley (this was one of my main dislikes with a movie such as Beowulf), but since Tintin is a comic strip, the characters make more sense inhabiting the uncanny valley than they would in the real live action world. The Tintin drawings themselves were rather simplistic. To search for an actor that looked exactly like Tintin would have resulted in finding a pretty weird looking actor. It is better this way.

Not to mention the control that animation gives the makers in constructing some ridiculously intricate action sequences. Take a look at the climatic chase scene that starts at a palatial villa and goes all the way down to the Oceanside through winding streetscapes while a tidal wave of water from the local dam gushes down right behind them. It is shown almost entirely in one shot without any edits or changes in camera angles. This is something that would be impossible to shoot in live action, but since it is animation we get to view a ridiculously intricate sequence that never cheats or confuses. The planning that must have gone into it was obviously extensive and the result is very good. Of course a movie that is live action like “Mission Impossible” will always be more effective thrills wise (you won’t get vertigo watching an animated film) but that doesn’t mean animation can’t be exciting or fun and Tintin is all of that.

The Adventures of Tintin should be a lock for the Oscar for Best Animated Picture. This should be the first time in many years that Pixar (Cars 2) does not come home with the trophy. 

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (5/5 Stars)

See Tom Run.

The plot of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is ludicrous. There is this rogue Russian ex-general who has gone insane. We see about a 30 second newsreel footage of him giving a speech in parliament about the necessary weeding out a thermonuclear war would play in furthering the course of human evolution. Given that logic he has been attempting to steal nuclear launch codes and to start a full out war between Russia and the United States. To this end he succeeds in framing special agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF for the bombing of the Kremlin in Moscow. The crazy man, played by Michael Nyqvist, spends most of his time running away from Tom Cruise who is running away from the Russian police. He is an undeveloped bad guy that functions less as a real person and more as a MacGuffin which enables the plot to go from high stakes scenario to high stakes scenario. Halfway through the movie I stopped caring. What became obvious to me halfway through the movie was that I was watching some of the best and well-made action sequences since “The Bourne Ultimatum.” I’m not even sure I wanted the guy to get caught because that would have ended the movie, which was ceaselessly thrilling. A critic may rationalize any viewpoint but cannot ignore involuntary bodily functions. For example, all laughter during a comedy no matter how low or stupid the jokes are must be admitted. In this movie, I can report that my stomach churned several times in the same way it would if I were on a roller coaster at Magic Mountain. This is a great action movie and worth watching just for the thrills. Do not wait to see it on video. See it in a theater and try to see it in IMAX.

It makes sense that the director of “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” does not have any previous action movies under his belt. In fact he doesn’t have any live action movies under his belt. Instead the director Brad Bird is an alumnus from Pixar. He directed such animated movies like “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille.” This becomes obvious because unlike so many action movie directors, he has put in the effort to competently storyboard, shoot, and edit his action sequences. Everything is super clear, the laws of physics are obeyed, and the action proceeds logically but not predictably. I hope that this movie makes a lot of money and inspires other action movie directors to try a bit harder at their craft. Or at least let it be shaming. They've been one-upped grandly by a cartoonist. 

The coup de grace sequence in this movie involves Tom Cruise (as special agent Ethan Hunt) scaling the side of the Burj Dubai (the tallest building in the world) with these special gloves that may or may not functionally work. I don’t know how they did it safely but what is on the screen is seriously freaky stuff. That of course, is only part of a movie that includes several car chases (one in a dust-storm), fistfights, and suspenseful spy stings replete with some seriously cool gadgetry and large explosions. All of this is done exceptionally well. 

In fact, it is shot in such a way, that it is obvious that the stars are doing actual stunts. For instance, Tom Cruise is clearly racking up some serious mileage running as fast as he can in plenty of scenes. And there he is doing the actual fight choreography in several fistfights. You can tell because the camera shots are far away enough and have long enough duration to tell. As far as the stunts on the Burj Dubai are concerned, well the producers made sure there were several featurettes online showing Tom Cruise on the outside of the building to quell any suspicions that it was some stuntman doing it or that it was shot in a green room and the outside added later. He really is there. I consider this as counting toward some top-notch acting. What's more is that Cruise and the other characters actually look scared, surprised, or concerned for their lives when really crazy shit starts to happen. I have seen too many movies where nobody seems to notice large explosions or machine gun fire. I find it far more effective (and dramatically correct) when characters notice just how dangerous something is. Case in point: Tom Cruise's face when he drives his car off a platform with a hundred 100 meter drop. Give that guy an Oscar Nomination. That's exactly the facial expression he should have. Let’s see Meryl Streep do that.

The IMF team works very well both as an action ensemble and in another degree as a comedy team. Tom Cruise gets the plum action jobs but that doesn’t mean that Jeremy Renner (from “The Hurt Locker”) doesn’t have some good scenes as well (a particularly good one involves him infiltrating a super computer by jumping into an oven hoping that some magnets work (it makes sense in the movie)). Paula Patton for her part lands the starring role in the movie's best fistfight with a lady baddie played by Ley Seydoux. Rounding out the group is Simon Pegg providing computer tech savvy and his usual humorous self. Most of the situations are so tightly wound that the comedy pitches thrown to Pegg are routinely knocked out of the park like softballed lobs. One of the best moments in the movie has Pegg walking into a room and saying, “That was not easy, but I did it.” This gets a huge laugh. That sort of reaction can only be accomplished by having one of the most death-defying stunts in the movie happen right before that. Pegg's humor cashes in on the suspense consistently. I would go so far as to say that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie that has been made. I'm glad they made it. 

One thing that is noticeably absent in this particular installment of “Mission Impossible” is any hint of sex. In this, it follows the trend in American action movies in particular. There once was a time when James Bond had a pretty swinging lifestyle. You can’t say that about the Daniel Craig incarnation. And when did Jason Bourne have any time for that sort of thing. In this movie, Tom Cruise gets as close as a longing glance from several blocks away. Just saying. 

War Horse (4/5 Stars)

Have you ever noticed in war movies just how lucky the main character always seems? Like for instance, if the army is charging into impending doom, than the people on the left may get shot and the people on the right may get shot, but the hero always seems to go unscathed. Bombs go off nearby but they never seem to hit their mark. At the end, the hero is surrounded by a sea of corpses, but he always is not dead, or if he does die, it always happens in the final battle, you know the one right before the movie ends. This may not be realistic but it is a basic necessity of storytelling. If you killed off the main character in the middle, then well, where does the story go from there? We aren’t all geniuses like Hitchcock.

“War Horse,” is an ingenious solution to that problem. In this movie, we follow a horse, not a person through the mire of World War I. The horse impossibly survives (as it must for storytelling reasons) but the various people that own it are still subject to the dangers of the War. In effect, because a horse is not much of a main character even though the story follows it, we are introduced to and say goodbye to a series of main characters that are not required by the storyline to have blindingly good luck. When they should die, they do. Moreover since the horse is not a person, it has the ability to be captured and switch sides in the war. The warhorse here does exactly that, starting off with the British, than being captured by the Germans, and back and forth again. Since everybody the horse meets is neither too cruel nor vicious, the movie, even though it takes place in a war, does not have a bad guy or evil side. So unlike other war movies where you would root for the good side because you don’t want the good guy to die or the bad guy to live, in this one you just want the war to end. As anti-war movie structures go, this particular one is rather ingenious.

The emotion and dialogue of this movie remind me of very old movies. There was less cynicism in those movies (perhaps because of the time or perhaps because the movies weren't very good) and that lent them a certain unapologetic sappiness. For that reason, this movie is kind of hard to get into, particularly in the beginning when there isn’t a war going on. The movie makes a big deal about the horse being able to plow a rocky field. An actual crowd of neighbors turns out to yell inspirational things as if they were in a Disney movie about an underdog sports team while the surly landlord becomes disgruntled because the farmers may actually be able to pay the rent and keep living on the land. It’s a bit too much for peacetime. When the war starts to pick up, the forthrightness and sincerity of the characters feels a bit more comfortable. In a life and death situation, a certain level of sappiness can be forgiven and even be appealing. The ending is ridiculously beautiful or plainly ridiculous depending on how you feel about group hugs and glorious sunsets that tint the entire landscape a golden hue of sepia. I liked it. I also like how we have apparently gotten to the point in special effects where we can manipulate the rate of snowfall to that exact point where it looks the most beautiful and not the least bit cold. The cinematographer of the movie, Janusz Kiminski, should be a shoo-in for an Oscar Nomination.

There is something that is rather weird about this movie. Look at the posters and the commercials and the unapologetic sappiness. This is being sold as a family movie and it is rated PG-13. At the same time, the director Steven Spielberg (same guy who directed such very R historical masterpieces like “Schindler’s List,” and “Saving Private Ryan.”) has once again done his homework. We see the arc of World War I, from the first fights on horseback to the stalemate of trench warfare. We are also treated to the murder of deserters; the horror of waiting for the artillery to maybe hit your part of the trench; the suicidal nature of a trench assault against machine guns; and to top it all off, a nerve gas attack. This is a PG-13 movie. The way Spielberg pulls this off is by a conspicuous lack of blood. We may see a line of men run into machine gun fire, but when they are hit with bullets, they merely scream out, crumple, and collapse.  There is however no blood. Even when the camera zooms out over the battlefield for a crane shot, we may see a field littered with corpses, but the kids should be unaffected because the corpses aren't leaking blood. And when a 14 year-old-boy is executed by a firing squad for deserting, for the sake of the children, the camera is conveniently located behind a rotating windmill. So we see the boy standing there with a firing squad in front of him. The windmill rotates and obscures the boy for a moment, the firing squad shoots their guns, the windmill moves again, and reveals the now dead corpse of the boy on the ground. Thank God for the kids that there is no blood. PG-13.

This is disconcerting for a couple of reasons. First of all, are we really fooling the kids? They aren’t stupid. If someone gets shot with a gun and dies, they have obviously violently died no matter how much blood is actually seen. And if we hear guns going off and see the dead corpse of a boy that was one moment before still alive, isn’t it obvious what happened whether a windmill partially obscured our view of the event or not. Secondly, isn’t it a bit disrespectful to the people who died in the war by pussyfooting around what actually happened? (Deserters were indeed shot in WWI.) At least that is what I thought was the very point Spielberg was making when he bluntly showed how people died in “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.” There was something very noble about those movies. Spielberg made you look the characters in the eyes and recognize their humanity before they were brutally killed. It wasn’t glamorous and it wasn’t gratuitous. It just was. I’ve got nothing against family films and nothing against realistically violent war movies, but to combine the two harms both genres. This movie should have been rated R and there should have been blood. If you want to make a nice family movie, don't make it about the horrors World War I. 

One of the lasting legacies of Steven Spielberg is what he has done to the MPAA ratings system. No other single director has made such a big impression on it. The very reason we have a PG-13 at all is because Steven Spielberg somehow got “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” rated PG. Lots of parents took their little kids to see it and sort of thought that the whole tear-out-the-heart-for-a-human-sacrifice scene a bit too much. (By the way I love that movie.) Then with “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” he introduced the rule that no level of violence would ever make a movie NC-17. Now he has again raised the bar for violence in a PG-13 movie by killing an untold amount of people of all ages. In his defense, Spielberg gets away with this because all of these movies are very good and basically respectful. The problem is that our rating system is objective, so if a movie director wanted to do something really disgusting on the PG-13 level, all he would have to do is point to “War Horse,” and say, “See, if this has already been done before why aren't you letting me do it.”

Oh well, maybe if we split PG-13 into PG-10 and PG-15.


 

A Dangerous Method (4/5 Stars)

I wonder how Carl Jung would react to this movie if he were still around to see it. There are some very private moments portrayed here. At one point the movie goes so far as to follow Jung and one of his patients into the bedroom for that most basic ritual of sadomasochistic sexual behavior. Part of me would think that Jung would be mortified that this would be up on a huge screen for everybody to see. But then another part of me reminds the other part of what exactly Jung was involved in. There is a fine comic moment in the film when Professor Sigmund Freud has Carl Jung over for dinner and politely explains to him that he should feel absolutely free to discuss anything and everything at the table. And there sitting at the table are all of Freud’s children, the majority of which are at or near very impressionable ages. This is based on a true anecdote. Freud’s children did indeed sit through many a dinner conversation that focused explicitly on sex, psychotic compulsions, and all sorts of other taboo conversational topics. So that part of me would not be surprised if Carl Jung would, instead of being totally embarrassed, actually take the stage at the end of the movie and ask the audience point blank what exactly they thought about it and please feel free to focus in on the kinky stuff.

The “dangerous” method refers to such behavior. Instead of repressing thoughts and conversation about sex, taboo, psychotic compulsions and the like, go ahead and talk about it and try to be as specific as possible as to why you feel and think the way you do. Such a therapeutic method was first suggested by Freud, but according to the movie was never experimented by him. Carl Jung apparently was the first and the patient he first tried it on was a young Russian woman named Sabina who came to his hospital in fits of hysteria. Jung puts her in a chair, sits behind her (presumably so she can’t see his reactions to her craziness and feel to shamed to speak more of it), and quietly asks her questions that would be very impolite in any regular conversation. Does it work? Yes, it seems to, at least in the sense that it grants the sort of relief one may feel after solving a complex riddle. The problem is still there, but at least now we know what it is. This movie work on the audience in the same way. We are presented with a person that is crazy. The seemingly random shrieks and fits are confusing and frightening. But we observe and listen and slowly achieve an understanding. Suddenly the person makes sense, her actions become predictable, and the fear and uneasiness that accompanied us dissipates. We feel relief.  The best of movies like psychoanalysis strive for that ecstatic “Aha!” moment. There is one such moment in this movie and if Keira Knightley gets a nomination for her performance (which is not unlikely), it will probably be that moment people are recognizing her for. (It should be said that bad movies work in the exact opposite way. Think of movies where the basic laws of physics are ignored, the characters act like aliens, or the repetitive use of cliché is foisted upon the audience. A sense of unease fills the viewer. I sometimes find myself getting mad.) 

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud are played by Michael Fassbinder and Viggo Mortenson respectively. Now here are two actors with Presence. They are perfect choices for playing intellectual heavyweights. I’ve praised Mortenson before (see review of “Eastern Promises”) but I have yet had the chance of writing about Fassbinder as he has only this year started to take on starring roles. Most people probably know him as Magneto in this summer’s “X-Men: First Class.” I remember him being very striking in that as well. There is something very solid about his face/person/body. I think he would make a perfect Roman Emperor or at least a marble statue of one. The scenes with Freud and Jung talking, whether in agreement or in disagreement, are always stimulating and make the movies best scenes. In fact, some of the best lines are supposedly taken directly from the letters they wrote each other. Those two could really turn a phrase and when they meant the words to hurt, the phrases could be especially piercing. It is a disappointment then that this movie treats Freud as a truly supporting character. The main storyline is the affair between the married Jung and his patient Sabina. When Freud enters the picture, he serves that storyline. His character lacks his own conflict or overarching ambition. It is spoken by Freud that he has many enemies to himself, his profession, and psychology in general, but these enemies are not shown or battled with. Freud is seen either through Jung’s or Sabina’s experience or not at all.

There is plenty of psychological talk about egos and sex instincts and the death instincts and the like. Some of it you may find familiar. Other topics not so much. The movie does a commendable job of not holding discussions back to a standard level of education. This may make some of the conversations inaccessible to understanding but not unentertaining. All the characters are especially intelligent and the screenplay puts up no obstacles to them expressing themselves at the peak of their intelligence. If you are a huge psychology buff, this movie will not disappoint. If like me, you know some things and not others, and are not entirely sure of the accuracy or usefulness of the whole thing, it is at least never annoying. In some ways it is rather comic. Psychology then (and now) is very new. Freud admits as much and goes on to say that he is probably wrong about everything being about sex and surely theories will be revised when more research is done. In the meantime he is just describing his scientific experiences as he observes them. I especially liked a conversation in which Jung describes one of Sabina’s childhood recollections about a preferable way to defecate. Freud nods his head and diagnoses her as anal-retentive and predicts that she is probably also especially fastidious, clean, organized, and the like. No, says Jung, actually she is quite the opposite. Hmm, says Freud, oh well maybe it’s a Russian thing. (Freud is very subtly funny in this movie. In real life he apparently was subtly funny as well. I am a huge fan of his book on jokes. When I write of comedy on this blog, it is mainly his ideas that I am espousing.)

Of course the basic problem with psychology is not that it is incorrect but that it has a tendency to be too vague and broad to be incorrect. It is not hard to find sexual motives or childhood neuroses as a part of any action we take. They are there. But that doesn't mean that it is the only reason why people do things. Really there are probably a thousand reasons why people do things and those only include the reasons we can think of. And that still ignores the possibility that people may indeed not have a reason for doing things. I am reminded of an anecdote from the comedian Louis C.K. about how he loaded the dishwasher one night and then didn’t turn on the wash. His wife scolded him and asked, “Why did you do that?” Louis relates to the audience, “Why did I do that? Do you understand what that question assumes? That I had a reason for not putting on the wash, like I had a thought process about it. Like I didn’t because I wanted to be a total dick and piss her off, which would really be the only reason not to run the dishwasher. Why can’t I just be stupid? Why didn’t I put the wash on? Because I am a total dumbass, that’s why.” I think this possibility is something rather thoughtful people like Jung, Freud, or Sabina tend to not think about, and I think it is because they spend so much time thinking about why people do things that they forget that most people do not think as much as they do about why they do things. They probably don't get laid enough either. 

The Descendants (3/5 Stars)

Good Grief.

 I fear that my recent cycle of poverty is hurting my ability to empathize with the problems of the super rich. And this is something that is brought up right away in director Alexander Payne's new movie "The Descendants." The main character, a man named Matt King, confides to us in voiceover that people think his life is paradise simply because he lives in Hawaii. But he says that he has the same screwed up family problems as anybody else and they hurt all the same. True, this is true, I guess. Matt King's wife has just been in a boating accident and now lies in a coma in the hospital. The doctor tells him that she is not going to make it. His daughters aren't taking it very well. His father-in-law blames him. He finds out that she was having an affair. Screwed up stuff. But Matt King, unlike regular people, is also the descendant of Hawaiian royalty and is the sole trustee of a some of the last pristine area of Hawaiian real estate. When it is sold, it will be sold for many millions. He has a successful law practice and has the ability to send his daughters to private schools. He looks like George Clooney. So the whole wife thing, that sucks, it does. But I figure this guy will do just fine.

There's a fine amount of drama here floating about in vague meandering directions. It turns out that the wife has not been the best of people. So we have several scenes here where people get mad at a lifeless body. In one example, Matt King storms about the hospital room saying rather hurtful things at her. It is a frustrating thing to watch of course because the main impetus for the scene can't respond or defend herself in any way. So we don't really get both sides and don't really know what is going on. It is obvious that it is important though because people are wailing and yelling. But without explanations this feels more weird than dramatic. Perhaps flashbacks would have helped. A good deal of the rest of the movie involves Matt King telling family and friends that his wife will not wake up. It may seem cold of me to say that there were too many of these scenes, but I don't know anything about this person. There is no connection here. Things need to be explained a little bit more. (I have seen a movie which had a scene that worked involving a guy getting mad at his dead wife who had been cheating on him. That was Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris," and it was one of the best and saddest scenes I have ever seen. The parallels in these two scenes make George Clooney's outburst pale in comparison. Watch both of them and compare the acting styles. I prefer Brando's. It is more intimate. It starts off softer. It builds. There is a crescendo of anger with denouement of true sadness. It has a rhythm to it like great music. Clooney is dramatically correct but all over the place.)

The humor in the movie basically consists of Matt King's daughters acting out and him telling them to watch their mouths and not do weird things. Along for the ride is Sid (played by Nick Krause) who says dumb surfer things. I've seen Alexander Payne movies that were much funnier. Something like "Sideways" for instance much more brilliantly blended intelligent drama with true action and true hilarity. We have here a lot of dramatic grief but very little comic relief. Even Shakespeare knew to throw in some ribald jokes here and there. The movie has moments yes, and some rather good scenes where Matt and his daughters track down and confront the guy his wife was having an affair with, but overall the movie lacks that extra nerve or zest that makes a great movie. I will be disappointed if this gets a lot of Oscar Nominations and something like Bridesmaids blanks. A wife in a coma and people crying about it does not automatically a great movie make.

 One more thing, the voiceover this movie employs. It is there for the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then it disappears for the last three fourths of it. Why? Is the narrator no longer speaking to us anymore? Have the rules of the storytelling changed a quarter of the way through the story? There are certain rules about voiceover that should be followed. For one, it should never be used to tell us what is going on. This is generally redundant and often lazy. Two, voiceovers should be consistent. Good examples of this are "Amadeus" which is voiceover via real time confession; "Forrest Gump" which is voiceover via real time storytelling. "Fight Club," which is voiceover via a brain thought process. A master of voiceover is Director Terrance Malick. See his movies "The Thin Red Line," "The New World," and "The Tree of Life." Voiceover there is used as poetry which floats over a scene in meditation. All of these examples have consistent voiceover. They are entwined into the very structure of the story. We know who is speaking and who they are speaking to if they are speaking to anybody. They don't simply cease happening or seem like they are switching from narration to private thoughts and back again. All of these rules are broken in "The Descendants," and then the voiceover disappears entirely. This is shoddy writing and again I hope it does not get nominated for Best Writing. There really is better stuff out there.

 

Hugo 3D (3/5 Stars)

I love movies that much is for sure. But my love is a love with certain limits. A good movie may change a man, it may mold the way he empathizes, teach him something new, or inspire him to his own adventures, but there is no truly special quality within a man that gives him the ability to make movies. In other words, the Academy Awards are nice to have because movies are culturally important, but the nominees and even winners do not deserve the heaps and heaps and heaps of idolatry and praise that they receive. The difference in importance between a world famous great actor and an obscure great accountant is negligible. They both require natural talent and learned skill. The difference is that one is on a big screen that lots and lots of people will see see while the other sits in an office and has but a few clients. Thus the actor’s importance is distorted to an obscene degree while the accountant goes shamelessly unnoticed. Actually, I take that back. It probably takes far more to be a great accountant. (I would also argue that people recognize the greatness of actors and athletes far more readily than scientists and doctors because the greatest of an actor or athlete is very easy to understand. You may need a PHD before you understand just why a particular doctor is great.) That’s why I am sad to say, I was not overwhelmed and enraptured as Martin Scorsese probably felt I should be by the presence of Director Georges Meliere on the screen of this movie, even though he did make some of the best movies at the dawn of cinema. There should be a rule that stops directors of movies from making movies about movie directors. (The same goes for writers that write books and screenplays about writers.) I say you are sipping the poison fame cocktail that distorts your importance and inflames your ego to an insufferably pretentious degree.

Not that this movie is too insufferably pretentious. It is directed by Martin Scorsese with that subversively excessive amount of brilliant flair. It stars Asa Butterfield as a young boy named Hugo Cabret. Hugo’s father (Jude Law) dies in a fire one day and his uncle claude (Ray Winstone) adopts him into his work apartment at the Paris Grand Central Station and teaches him his job of winding all the clocks in the station. Then Uncle Claude goes AWOL on a drunken bender, leaving Hugo in the station alone. As long as he keeps the clocks in order though, nobody will check to see who is occupying his uncle’s apartment amongst the machines. When he needs food, he steals it. When he needs mechanical parts for the secret ??? he is building in his apartment, he steals it from the toy store run by a crusty old man (Ben Kingsley) who may just be the forgotten father of cinema Georges Meliere. Chasing the young thief in hope to catch him and send him to an orphanage is the imposing station inspector played wonderfully by Sacha Baron Cohen. Playing Meliere’s granddaughter is none other than Chole Grace Moretz, that girl of fourteen with such maturity her face could pass for twenty-five.  

The story is simple like all children’s stories and basically consists of Hugo's quest of fixing the secret ???? and getting old cranky Meliere to appreciate his past greatness all while outrunning the station inspector. The movie looks great, but don’t all movies nowadays. The camera moves deftly and in great long shots like other Scorsese movies, but these ones are obviously helped with special effects and other types of cheating so they do not have the same type of impact. The kids when going off on an adventures find themselves in libraries reading books or in movie theaters watching new movies (by that I mean very old movies. This is the twenties.)  Is that exciting? Uh, well, let’s get back to that a little bit later.

There needs first to be said something about the acting chops of children. I find that children act much better in movies opposite adults in scenes. Think of such great child acting movies like “The Road,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Sixth Sense.” They all have kids interacting with adults.  When children act with each other it yields less fruitful results (because let’s face it, acting is reacting and children do not know what they are doing (perhaps we can make an exception of Jodie Foster and Dakota Fanning)). Chloe Grace Moretz in particular is not a very good actor. I can picture somebody on YouTube doing something rather funny with her line, “Don’t you just Love Books?!?” Asa Butterfield is forgettable. I wonder if Kodi Smit-McPhee was busy or something. I feel he could have done much better. Not to mention Kodi and Chole had already successfully worked together in “Let Me In.” Perhaps that might have helped.

The one that steals the show quite consistently is Sacha Baron Cohen. He has the vast majority of the movies laughs and delivers his scenes with that peculiar quality only a comically tall man can apply. Ben Kingsley as George Meliere for his part spends far too much time crying. He may have good reasons for it or not. All of this, and whether libraries and movie theaters are adventurous, hinges on whether one would think that Melieres is just the greatest thing since sliced bread. I would think only a couple of people in the audience (and most likely none) would have even heard of the guy. Well, I have heard of him. And I have seen his masterpiece: A Trip to the Moon. In fact, I have seen almost all of the old movies that are sampled in this movie from Harold Lloyd’s "Safety Last," to Buster Keaton’s “The General” to Louie Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” to Charlie Chaplin. It is so common for critics to fawn all over these movies and say they are the best ever and that movies were never so good since. My opinion: These movies are generally okay but not great movies. The exception would be the average Buster Keaton movie, which I find works astonishingly well in the 21^st century. But overall, we make better movies today. We have a better idea of what we are doing, we have a century worth of trial and error knowledge, and we are armed with technology that makes what we want to create much more easier to accomplish with tightened budgets. George Meliere’s was a pioneer no doubt, but his sci-fi epics come off rather amateurish by today's standards. "A Trip to the Moon" had only one long distance camera shot. There was no acting or dialogue to speak of and absolutely no character development. The totally super famous shot in “A Trip to the Moon,” where the rocket lands into the moon’s face is well, iconic to say the very very most. It is worth seeing this movie like it is worth knowing who won WWI, but it does not a great movie make. And if like me, you think it isn’t all that worth hooting about, you will feel rather detached during “Hugo,” which treats that movie like it is so totally all that. It isn’t. Take my word for it. You wouldn’t want it too last much more than its running time of ten minutes.

By the way, this will be the last 3D movie I ever see. Not once did I feel I would be missing something if I paid five dollars less and saw the movie in 2D. If Scorsese can’t pull this technology off than nobody can. It doesn’t deserve to exist. Too dim, too distracting, too disturbing. Please stop.

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (4/5 Stars)

The weird thing about the duo of Harold and Kumar is that the two actors playing them, John Cho and Kal Penn respectively, haven’t really found greater success outside of the “White Castle,” movies. If these trio of stoner road-trip movies prove anything it is that these two can carry a movie with just enough warmth and gravity to allow an audience to forgive an absolutely ridiculous plot and plenty of material that should be offensive but somehow comes off as normal good fun. That should put them in demand one would think. Perhaps it really has to do with their ethnicity (John Cho is Korean and Kal Penn is Indian) even though these movies are a sort of debunking of whatever theory that belongs too. It couldn’t be more plain that the pair are 100% American. They have no accents, enjoy fast food and getting high, and constantly find themselves in road-trip movies, that most American of movie genres. But great success in movies these two have not had (actually Kal Penn now works for the White House. Success? Yes. In movies? No) so I suppose it was inevitable that they answered the call for another “Harold & Kumar” movie, this time in 3D because well, why not.

The beginning of “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas in 3D,” begins the duo split up. Harold has become a well-to-do wall street worker newly married to Maria from the 1^st movie. Kumar still lives in the same apartment as before and gets just as high as before. His girlfriend just left him over two months ago and the place looks like he hasn’t bothered to clean it since. Impending maturity knocks on the door when his girlfriend comes over to tell him that she is pregnant. There is also a slight problem in that Harold is throwing a Christmas party and has not invited Kumar. It is to the movie’s credit that it takes these problems semi-seriously because it adds some realistic weight to another completely ridiculous plot involving guys now in their thirties.

The humor in this movie is all over the place and though not all of the jokes hit home, there are enough of them for the movie to be truly funny. In addition, the road trip plot is segmented in such a way that new characters and situations easily come in, have their moment, and exit. New to the series is Danny Trejo, perhaps a name you don’t recall but a face you have definitely seen somewhere, who plays Harold’s father-in-law. Here is a guy on the level of a Christopher Walken or a Sam Rockwell that makes me smile simply by showing up. He sets the plot in motion by letting Harold know that it is a crime against Christmas to decorate a faux tree instead of a real one and sharing how his mother was killed by a Korean street gang while walking home with Christmas tree decorations. Harold better have a real tree to decorate by the time everybody gets back from midnight mass, or else! For the record, we get to see all of Danny Trejo’s tattoos and they are still super bad-ass. Then, of course, stopping in for a musical number and to save the day is the actor Neil Patrick Harris as Neil Patrick Harris, the actor. This calls for an explanation because as you may recall NPH was shotgunned to death while escaping from a Texan whorehouse in the second movie. If he can be believed, he is back on Earth via some sort of divine cockblock. I’m not explaining that any further as it might spoil the outrageous of it all, but will mention that it is hilarious.

There is something rather special about NPH’s performances in these movies. The big joke is that he is playing “himself.” So when we see him snorting cocaine and employing hookers, he is basically winking at the camera and saying that he, NPH of Doogie Houser M.D. fame, does all of that in “real life.” It is his “reputation” that he is bravely throwing under the bus for our amusement, sort of. One of the more outrageous things about NPH is that he is simply pretending to be a homosexual in public in order to sexually harass women. He does this by inviting the actresses he works with into his dressing room to rehearse scenes, remarking how tense they look, offering a massage to loosen them up, and innocently remarking that he is just one of the “girls” when things start getting weird. According to him, most publicly “gay” guys do this and Clay Aiken is the worst. All of this is done with such a gleeful and brazen smugness that it somehow completely obliterates the line of what should probably be very offensive. The sexual harassment is funny not because sexual harassment is funny. It’s funny because the “real” NPH would never do that, and we “know” that he is only “pretending” to be a sex fiend even though up on the screen is NPH is playing NPH, “himself,” as a sex fiend. It is a brilliant piece of comic misdirection, which makes NPH’s entire performance feel like it is getting away with something (which he is!). It’s on the level with Robert Downey Jr. getting away with wearing blackface in “Tropic Thunder.” As Mel Brooks would say, “It rises below vulgarity.” It’s a great character and performance and NPH should get an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Other jokes that perhaps they only sort of get away with are all the ethnic stereotypes. I say sort of because the variety of stereotypes make them okay simply because everybody (White, Asian, Indian, Jewish, Russian, Black) is being targeted. However, there are still plenty of these jokes that fall flat because they are just old. A general rule of humor is that jokes should never be told twice. I have heard the “All Asians look alike,” joke about a thousand times. The one in this movie I saw coming miles away. Saying Asians all look the same is a lazy joke nowadays. It’s time we came up with a new way to make fun of Asian people.

Finally the 3D employed in the movie is probably how 3D should be used: and by that I mean, as a joke. 3D generally speaking is more distracting than engrossing and as such should be used to break the 4^th wall, not to simply supplement a story. There are plenty of 3D jokes in this movie. Some are better than others. On the whole though, it is not worth the extra money to see a 3D movie in a theater. You would have as much fun with this one if you saw it streaming on Netflix.

Tower Heist (4/5 Stars)

Beautifully orchestrated if not especially funny

What is most impressive about “Tower Heist” is the obvious superlative aspects of its production. The story takes place mainly in the Central Park West Trump Tower, herein referred only as the “Tower.” It is a beautiful building in a beautiful part of New York City and the cinematographer, not to mention, the location scouts, have milked the opportunities for all its worth. We see really gorgeous vistas of the Manhattan skyline, we witness the opulence of the tower itself and especially its spectacular penthouse apartment, and in a rather convenient move, the title “heist” takes place during the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade when all those gigantic floats of Snoopy and Kermit the Frog are making their way down the skyscraper-laden avenue. The professionalism shown by Ben Stiller and company is perhaps the tops of any comedy production team around. Notice how they have put in special care to develop the vast array of characters, from the building manager Josh Kovacs played by Ben Stiller himself, the concierge Charlie played by Casey Affleck, the doorman Lester played by Stephen Henderson, the new elevator operator enrique played by Michael Pena, the maid Odessa played by Gabourney Sidibe, etc. etc. The story sets up that this is a well-oiled team of superior service professionals and then actually puts in the effort to prove it by throwing in the requisite vocabulary, routines, and details needed to establish such a claim. The team of writers, Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson, Adam Cooper, and Bill Collage seem to know what they are talking about. But above all else, notice how clean and clear the editing, directing, and score is in moving the story along. Ben Stiller’s last movie “Tropic Thunder,” was especially impressive to me in the exact same way. It did something very hard in that it kept up a breakneck pace that never confused the storyline. To help accomplish this, they seamlessly edited hardcore rap into many of the scenes. In "Tower Heist," the story's action is perfectly complemented by a brilliant "heist" score composed by Cristophe Beck. I was humming the main tune as I left the theater. Beck deserves an Oscar nomination. And I would, if I felt I had more technical expertise, also claim that the editors, sound editors, and director, Brett Ratner, also should deserve some recognition. Having said that, there is something missing here that “Tropic Thunder,” one of the best movies of 2009, had that “Tower Heist” does not: consistent laughs. “Tower Heist,” is a well-made beautifully orchestrated movie but it is not especially funny.

One of the main reasons for this has to do with the actual storyline. Whereas “Tropic Thunder” dealt with ridiculous characters making a serious Vietnam movie for the purpose of baiting the Oscars, something that is far more pretentious than actually important, the heroes of this movie are hardworking honest working men who have been defrauded of all of their pension and retirement money by the penthouse billionaire Arthur Shaw, played with just the right amount of sociopathic tendencies by Alan Alda. One of the workers, Lester the doorman was just about to retire and travel the world with the 73K he had responsibly saved up during the last three decades he had been opening doors for people. It is shown that Arthur Shaw knew his ponzi scheme was going to go up in smoke in a few months when he took all of Lester's money in order to “invest” it. When the fraud is found out and the doorman learns the fate of his life savings, he attempts suicide. This is not funny. It’s more enraging than anything else, especially because of all the real world parallels involved. Such a story line is definitely effective. We love the heroes who are trying to steal their money back. We dislike with special venom the dishonest and disrespectful billionaire. We care about the outcome of this story, but we aren’t laughing all that much during it. The fate of the doorman’s pension is not a joke.

“Tropic Thunder,” had the almost uncanny ability to get laughs from every single character in the movie. Even the straight man, Jay Baruchel, was funny. Here only a few characters can be described as comic. Gabourney Sidibe, Michael Pena, and Matthew Broderick tend to say funny things from time to time. Eddie Murphy is the funniest although his part is hardly large enough to make the movie a full blown comedy especially when the two main characters, Ben Stiller and Alan Alda, don't get any laughs at all. What they are involved in is a dramatic game of life chess with rather big stakes attached to the outcome. Like I said, it is effective, but it isn’t all that funny.

Of course in the end, a heist movie, whether it is comedic or not, will always be judged by how well done the heist is. In other words, would it have worked in real life? That’s a good question here. There are a few moments when I was like, well that shouldn’t have worked that way, but overall there were enough intelligent parts of the heist (like for instance how they got Arthur Shaw out of the apartment, how they snuck into the tower, how they cased the place, how they knew where the safe was) that the few moments that are a bit ridiculous could be swept under the movie rug we call the “suspension of disbelief.” At times the direction of the movie was so clear that I was vaguely reminded of how it felt to watch "Die Hard," the landmark movie that all skyscraper thrillers should be judged by. "Tower Heist," does not rise to the heights of "Die Hard," but I will say this; I hope you are not afraid of heights. There are some moments in this movie where you will definitely be feeling the vertigo. It was sort of unrealistic how Matthew Broderick didn’t die but hey, I can forgive the movie for not killing him.

The Rum Diary (3/5 Stars)

Weak story. Needs more rum.

Before making a movie, it helps perhaps to make sure that the recurring themes that drive the storyline do not contradict and undercut each other. What we have here are two tales. One is a comedy about an alcoholic journalist (i.e. Hunters S. Thompson before he got into hard drugs) played by Johnny Depp that has just landed a shit job working for what seems to be the only newspaper in Puerto Rico. His exploits include being kicked out of a hotel for drinking 162 miniature rums from the hotel room mini bar in a week, stumbling through his workdays with a perpetual hangover, and taking a healthy dose of that magic CIA interrogation serum that later on in the sixties (this takes place in the fifties) would be known as LSD. The second story is one of heroic journalism. The young and naïve journalist played by Johnny Depp is taken on by the rich corporate executives of Union Carbide (an inspired name choice for the more or less fictional corporation here) who want him to write "journalism" that basically subs as advertising for rich land developers and plays down the detriment done by said developments to the poor indigenous population.  Apparently taken aback by the injustice done between the classes, Depp puts on the righteous journalist hat and talks about fighting back. But this journalist isn’t very effective you know because he is a complete drunk. So therein lies the problem. You have a comedy about an unapologetic drunk that isn’t very funny because we’ve introduced the serious business of class warfare and you have a drama about the plight of the poor that isn’t very dramatic because the hero of the story spends more time drunk than actually solving the problem.

It is unmistakable that Johnny Depp and the makers of this movie admire Hunter S. Thompson a great deal. The subtitles at the end of the movie claim that out of the ashes of this particular failure one of the best journalists of like ever was born (that is somewhat paraphrased but you get the idea.) I guess, maybe. I haven’t read “The Rum Diary,” but I have read Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” That book is arguably a masterpiece. A masterpiece of what is another story. A masterpiece of fiction? Sure. A masterpiece of journalism, umm...no. Thompson was a journalist in, I suppose, the loosest sense of the word. He did not care about the facts, never met a deadline, was drunk or high most of the time, and never bothered to try for objectivity. The great thing about “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” for me at least, was the audacity of it all. Here you had a story about a couple of guys that were doing massive amounts of drugs, spending vast quantities of money they didn’t have, completely destroying the property of others everywhere they went, harassing (even raping) women, openly flaunting almost every law of public decorum sometimes to the face of police officers, and most of all, getting away with it all, completely and unapologetically. It is an unflinchingly awesome story and I bet would make a great movie. Its just that every time a Thompson book becomes a film the makers (Terry Gilliam with “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Bruce Robinson with “The Rum Diary.” Both star Johnny Depp) have not been able to match the wildness of the book. In this particular film, there is way too much concern for the Puerto Ricans. Hunter S. Thompson wouldn’t give a shit about dirty disheveled children with raggedy clothing. It is true that Thompson excelled at satirizing nasty, indulgent, and overweight American consumers and there is a brief scene in this movie at a bowling alley that gets that exactly right, but just because somebody hates the ruling class doesn’t mean that they sympathize with the downtrodden. Hunter S. Thompson was a well-written sociopath, not robin hood. To portray him as the latter has the detrimental effect of dampening and diluting the trademark style that make his books such incredible reads. 

If I had the choice, I wish this movie would have spent a lot less time with the rich people (Aaron Eckhardt and his pretty wife Amber Heard) and a lot more time with the other drunk journalists. I was pleasantly surprised by a turn here by Giovanni Ribisi, as the nastiest of the nasty drunks. He is almost completely unrecognizable from his role as the insufferable corporate boss in “Avatar.” Michael Rispoli has the Dr. Gonzo role minus the law degree. Johnny Depp does a very good Hunter S. Thompson impression, but unfortunately is about 30 years to old for this particular role. The book was written by Thompson during his very first stint as a journalist. He was in his young 20s. Johnny Depp is almost 50. He looks out of place in all the job interviews, introductory rum drinking, and flirtations with Amber Heard (who is my age). It must be said that Johnny Depp looks good for his age, but he still looks his age. We young people don’t have such fat faces.

All in all, this is an okay movie. There are no bad scenes. It is well acted and well told. But apart from several inspired lines of vocabulary uttered by Johnny Depp, it is not all that memorable. It would have been stronger if they added more rum.

The Ides of March (3/5 Stars)

Coach Clooney benches his star athlete.

 I remember this coach from my youth. He taught our 8th grade basketball team. His son was the star of the team. The father seemed to go out of his way to limit the son’s playing time or to scold him for subpar performances. Nobody had a harder time on the team than the best player on it. It was almost if the father was going the extra distance to not play favorites and in the end probably hurt the team by shortchanging the best player on it. The director of the “Ides of March,” is none other than George Clooney and and Coach Clooney has cast himself in a very important role, the candidate in a presidential election. However, the movie is not so interested in the candidate. It is more interested in the Machiavellian machinations of the people behind the candidates: their chiefs of staff, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, and a young press secretary, played by Ryan Gosling. Now these other actors are very capable, but the story never sticks because the candidate is not put to good use. What did Machiavelli say? The Ends Justify the Means. Now, both campaigns in this story are playing dirty politics. The question should be for which candidate are the dirty tricks justified.  In other words, would Clooney the candidate make a better president than the other guy. Personally, I didn’t really care whether Clooney was elected or not. He exists in the background of the script giving stereotypical liberal platitudes and talking points. His opponent doesn't have more than a couple lines. They are both unformed characters and not up to the task of caring about. In effect, neither is worth what the other characters would do to help or harm them. Who cares what the means are if the ends aren’t justified? Coach Clooney should have given himself a bigger part.

 The story centers on the Ryan Gosling character, a young upcoming press specialist. Whether he is idealistic is not really established as he is very good at his job of saying things and at the same time not saying them. The movie is concerned not with Republicans or Democrats. It is limited only to the Democratic primary in Ohio. In this way, the movie sidesteps real political debate. Since everyone sort of agrees, the focus is on the dirty tricks that will have one candidate gain an advantage over the other. There is a senator who has about 300 pledged delegates in his pocket and is willing to sell them for a choice cabinet position. There is also shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who want to impose Operation Chaos upon Ohio. This is a stunt that urges Republicans to vote for the inferior Democratic candidate in hopes that it will help the democrats during the real presidential election. Finally there is the Paul Giamatti character, the chief of staff for the opposing campaign, who asks young Ryan Gosling for a drink in a bar. Ryan knows he shouldn’t go but does anyway. Giamatti asks Gosling to leave the one campaign and join his. This sets off the main storyline about loyalty and idealism and all those good things that will be shattered by the time the movie ends. Of course none of this should take anyone by surprise. Who looks at politics today or anytime before and doesn’t think of men in backroom smoking cigars and hatching schemes. Well, maybe today they don’t smoke cigars anymore.

 This is all done rather competently, but lately I have found that so many of the dramatic movies I see have been sort of ruined by watching HBO. The political scenes in “The Wire,” are far more detailed and involving than what is seen here. That is the difference between a story of a campaign briefly and competently told in two hours and one brilliantly and comprehensively told in twenty. The “Ides of March” Ohio primary is chump change when compared to the Baltimore politics of “The Wire.” 

Another not so great part of “The Ides of March” is perhaps the obligatory young intern who sleeps with people she shouldn’t be sleeping with. Or is it the other way around and she is a victim. It isn’t very clear the way Evan Rachel Wood, a 24-year-old, plays the teenage character. She looks and acts much more older than she is supposed to. In fact, her relationship with the Ryan Gosling character is mainly comprised of her seducing him not the other way around. When things happen, and something rather dramatic does happen to her at the end, it doesn’t seem like something that would really happen to the strong willed and confident character we've seen for most of the movie. Not that I’m an expert on women or anything.

 Overall the movie is good enough and certainly not crap. You’ve got nice familiar faces doing well jobs with decent material. Is the movie all that memorable? Well, no. You’ve probably seen it before and wouldn’t consider storyline all that shocking or new. Is it probably better than most of everything in theaters right now? Sure, but I think that speaks more to the weakness of this years movies. “Take Shelter” was good. You should see that movie, especially for Halloween.
 

Take Shelter (5/5 Stars)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Have you ever noticed that the easiest way to get a person to talk/confess/give up secrets in a movie is not to beat them up or threaten them? It is instead to bring into the room a loved one and threaten to hurt them instead. The scene usually goes like this.

Bad Guy: You will tell me what the secret code?

Good Guy: What are you going to do, kill me? Go ahead and do it. I’m not afraid of death.

Bad Guy: Oh I’m not that naïve. That’s why I don’t plan on killing you. I plan on killing her.

(Bad guy henchmen bring in abnormally attractive love interest bound and wailing)

Hot Girl: Don’t do it, don’t tell them the secret!

Bad Guy: I will count to three

(He points a gun at the hot girl)

Bad Guy: One….Two… (cocks pistol)

Mr. Bond: Okay okay, I’ll talk, I’ll talk!

Bad Guy: I thought you would, hahaha!

This is a cliché, but as with every cliché, it rubs up against a fundamental truth. Good people (i.e. the heroes of movies) don’t want to see the innocent get hurt. Such a concept scares them even more than themselves getting hurt or even being killed. And it is this truth that “Take Shelter” takes advantage of to great effect. Where most horror movies mine their scares from anatomical dissections, this movie simply presents an ordinary good person and imposes upon him terrible dreams of poison rain, mysterious bad men, vicious animals, and other forces that would harm, perhaps even kill, his loving family. This is a very scary movie and one of the best of the year. 

Curtis, played by Michael Shannon, has a loving family, a beautiful wife, played by Jessica Chastain, and a little daughter. He has a good job in construction. It provides him with a decent enough salary to afford a nice house, a vacation to Myrtle Beach every year, and a medical plan. And then one day Curtis has a vivid nightmare. There are gigantic storm clouds on the horizon. It starts raining a brownish kind of poison water. The family dog goes insane and attacks him. When he wakes up in horror the next morning, he can still feel the bite marks in his arm. What’s more is the sense of dread he feels in his bones. Something bad is coming.

Curtis has reason to worry. His family has had a history of mental illness. His mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was ten. She left him in the car at a supermarket and never came back. Such a thing happening to Curtis reasonably frightens the hell out of him. His family needs him. His daughter needs the medical plan. They still have loans on the house. Gas prices are through the roof. Either his dreams are portentous and a huge storm is indeed coming or he is going crazy. Curtis decides to prepare for both. He becomes obsessed with rebuilding the tornado shelter in the backyard and seeks help from a counselor about his nightmares and day delusions. There is a great scene where he walks into the counselor’s office, and calmly explains that he took the quiz in the back of their clinical magazine, and has found that he has 5 of the 12 symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. All he needs is two more to be diagnosed. Please doctor, what do I need to do to stop this before his wife, his daughter, all his friends, and the whole town figures out what is going on. He doesn’t want his wife to leave him and take his daughter. That would be a reasonable thing to do if they found out he was crazy. Curtis has so much to lose and the coming storm is threatening it all. It is hard to think of anybody conveying this more effectively than Michael Shannon does here. Shannon is not an attractive leading man. He has the height, face, and demeanor of a bouncer, elite soldier, or killer assassin character. To see this type of stoicism fall apart at the seams makes the journey that much more frightening. I’ve said before that it is rare when movies allow men to be brave because being brave requires an acknowledgement of vulnerability and that sort of thing is not considered masculine. This movie is the exception. What a brave man this Curtis is trying to be. Michael Shannon deserves an Oscar Nomination for the performance. 

This movie is the second feature of a young director named Jeff Nichols. Nichols’ first feature, Shotgun Stories, also starred Michael Shannon. It is a very good partnership. “Shotgun Stories” was an impressive movie, like most first movies of great directors, for what it accomplished with a budget of almost nothing. In “Take Shelter,” Nichols is aided with a little bit more funding and it has allowed him to add the special effects necessary for some serious storm clouds. They are threatening but never in an over the top distracting way. This movie is put together with such simplicity in theme, camera style, and plot that it is almost surprising how effective it is. Like a Hemingway novel, its effectiveness comes from the inherent truth within the frame. The fears are universal and the dread is real. We know that gas prices will never go down to what they once were. We worry about our risky home loans. We don’t want to lose our jobs. We need our health and our health care desperately. Freakish weather, due to climate change, is here to stay and only going to get worse. The sense that everything is getting worse and that times may never be as good as they once were is a palpable feeling in the air. If people one hundred years from now wanted to know what it felt like to live in 2011, they could do a lot worse then, “Take Shelter.” It is a movie of our time, told perfectly. It should be nominated for Best Picture.

Try to go and see it in a theater if you can. It should be perfect for Halloween.

Moneyball (4/5 Stars)

The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

One of the main arguments I hear batted around for keeping steroids out of sports is that it makes the game unfair. And the usual retort I always bring up to everyone’s bafflement is that sports aren’t fair anyways, so what’s the difference? And they aren’t fair. They really aren’t. One of the hardest things to do in life is to distance oneself from mass delusions and the idea that sports are somehow fair is one of the most broadly accepted and thankfully rather benign fallacies around. Genetic differences (for instance height in basketball) between opponents are not fair. And neither is a system that allows one professional sports team to have a much bigger budget than others. That difference allows the richer team an unfair advantage in attracting top talent. That is what Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics in this movie based on a true story, must come to grips with. The movie starts with the Athletics coming off one of their best seasons and subsequently losing their three best players in free agency to richer teams like the Yankees. The experienced scouts around the back-room table are talking about rebuilding the team from the ground up with old baseball knowledge and old baseball customs, the same way they did it the last time. No, No, No, Billy says, we cannot do the same thing. More importantly, we cannot do the same old thing because the Yankees are doing the same out thing. If we scout the way the Yankees scout than we will lose because the Yankees will outbid us no matter how well we scout. The game is rigged. We either find a way to play the game differently or we lose. That is Billy Beane’s problem.

How Billy attempts to solve the problem is the main focus of “Moneyball.” Billy Beane, played here by Brad Pitt, essentially disregards most or all of the advice of his experienced scouts and starts listening to a young recent economics major from Yale named Peter Brand, played here by Jonah Hill. The chubby bespectacled Peter Brand is not an athlete, but he does know math and  can use it to spot trends. He tells Beane in confidence his hunch that scouts completely overlook certain things and place way to much emphasis on others. For instance, Peter suggests that a manager’s job shouldn’t be to buy players, but to buy wins, and to buy wins he needs to buy runs. Billy Beane follows this advice. This leads to some rather unorthodox moves, one of the more outrageous things being hiring a life-long catcher to play first base because the guy has a very good getting on first base percentage. Hopefully the runs he will score will offset the plenty of mistakes he will make on defense. The scouts think Beane is crazy. The team manager Art Shaw, played here by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, goes further and refuses to follow the directions. As he explains, he wants to play the team in a way that is defendable in job interviews next October. The A’s start the season with an 11 game losing streak. Beane’s job is on the line. If things don’t turn around he may never be hired as a general manager again.

All of this is very succinctly told with brevity and humor by a great screenplay written by Steve Zaillian and rewritten by Aaron Sorkin. It is impossible to tell which lines are whose but there are several scenes that come off just as well as all those scenes between computer nerds in last year’s “The Social Network.” In fact it can be said that the movies performs much better off the baseball diamond than on it. The backroom dialogue is filled to the brim with smart dialogue that explains things as if it knows what it is talking about. When Brand takes Beane aside and shows him videos of his “hero,” a pudgy little known baseball player who happens to get more walks than anybody but Barry Bonds, we understand exactly why that player is drastically underrated. We also understand why Billy Beane would be willing to take such chances. Through flashbacks we see a young Billy Beane being talked up by scouts who thought he would be the next big thing. They flashed him a huge paycheck and told Billy to skip college and go straight into the big leagues. Billy did and didn’t turn into anything big. The scouts didn’t know what they were talking about and in one of the best scenes in the movie; an older and wiser Billy takes on an especially irate veteran scout. “You don’t know. You say you know, but you don’t,” he tells him. No more of the confidence bullshit for Billy. He is going to trust math from now on. You know, that thing they tried teaching us in school.

This movie is especially satisfying for someone of my generation because we all grew up in the golden age of bullshit sports movies. All that “Just believe in yourself,” horseshit that adults think is okay to foist upon unsuspecting children were heaped onto us in movies like “The Mighty Ducks” and its many ripoff copies. But this movie tells it like it is. Confidence, such a cherished virtue, is shown to be the most useless and overrated of all skill sets. What really counts is doing actual work, crunching numbers, and using deductive reasoning. To show this is not an easy thing for a movie to accomplish. We are after all, an emotional species. But, by and large, “Moneyball,” accomplishes this task. Unfortunately it ultimately falls short due to the same pitfalls that beset everything it is trying to debunk. The last half of the movie veers into melodrama and misplaces an ending that should have been revelatory instead of muted.

What do I mean by that? Well, for one thing, the director Bennet Miller (last movie of his was “Capote,” way back when btw) uses way too much soft focus and slow motion in the climatic scenes. The idea of statistics is to cast clarity on a muddled world. A man like Beane, who has crunched the numbers, should be seeing things more clearly (think Neo finally seeing the matrix at the end of “The Matrix”). Instead, there is a five-ten minute scene near the end of the movie about a very meaningful game in which we see Beane in the weight room, fixed on the television, hoping to all hope that things turn out well on the field. This is not correct. A man who believes in math does not hope or pray for anything. They know what the probabilities are. When so-and-so comes up to the plate they know there is a certain percentage of chance that they will either hit the ball or not. They also know that there is a certain percentage of chance that the game will be won or lost. A man of math is not surprised. They are not brought to disbelieving elation or despair by the occasional impossible miracle. They knew it was possible actually, just unlikely.  Thus, we shouldn’t have out-of-focused shots. We instead should have full-focus shots. The movie should be set in a setting of hyper-awareness. This is not done to the movie’s detriment.

Now, take for instance the ending. It speaks boatloads of the very problem Beane was up against (i.e. human intuition against mathematical reality), but does not exploit it to dramatic effect. Billy Beane ends up turning down a very high offer to manage the Boston Red Sox. Now, if he were using his own philosophy, he would probably determine that access to the Red Sox would mean a greater budget, better players, and thus a better chance to win the World Series Title. In fact, the Red Sox would win the World Series just two years later having adopted some of Billy Beane’s methodology. But Billy didn’t join the Red Sox. He turned down the offer and stayed with the A’s….and he still hasn’t won the World Series. I’m sure the decision felt right though.

Contagion (3/5 Stars)

Setting a record for the number of Oscar Winners killed in throwaway cameos.

The potential of a worldwide epidemic has been a great time-waster/audience scarer in the news for the past couple years. The virus will come from China (SARS, Birdflu) and just might be comparable to the 1917 influenza epidemic that killed about 1% of the world’s population. That was 1917, so the number of dead was only in the millions. Still, what if a virus like that came along again. Hundreds of millions might die.

“Contagion,” tells the story of such a virus in an oddly responsible way. There are no gruesome death scenes, over-dramatic wailing, or contagious zombies roaming the earth. Instead we are treated to plenty of scientists and doctors saying scientific things with patience and composure. These scientists are played by such acting heavyweights like Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslett, and Marion Cotillard. The first victim of the virus is Gwyneth Paltrow. Matt Damon plays her grieving husband. There are several other small parts played by well known actors. Jude Law plays a sensationalist blogger intent on dispensing government conspiracies. John Hawkes plays a janitor in Laurence Fishburne’s office. Jennifer Ehle and Demetri Martin are two other scientists working on the vaccine. Finally there is Bryan Cranston who plays some sort of military officer. Obviously, this is a very impressive cast. There are four Oscar winners, two Oscar nominees, and a two time Emmy winner in it. But none of this really matters except in marketing. You can put all the famous great actors on a screen and it still does not guarantee a great movie. This is especially true if the story is trying to be realistic.  

What’s the point of a Great Actor if the story does not allow for Great Acting? The Oscar winners here are supposed to be playing normal people going about exactly what they would do in this situation. This calls for understated performances, which they all do quite well. But really, it probably would have made more sense if the movie didn’t have any big name stars at all. Celebrity has a way of overshadowing underdeveloped characters. I rarely felt I was observing actual people. More often I was like, well, look that’s Kate Winslett and now she is in Chicago. Furthermore, if the movie wanted to take a realistic take on a subject that involves the entire world and a hyperlink network of characters, then perhaps the movie would have been better if it weren’t a movie. Two hours is not long enough to tell this story the way they want to tell it.  It should have been a 10-hour HBO mini-series.

The fact that the movie has such a huge scope but is only two hours long gives the story a sense of being in fast-forward most of the time. The vaccine apparently takes several months to create and distribute in the movie, but has a screen time of about 15 minutes. The great heroine of the story, Jennifer Ehle, is barely in the movie at all. Character back-story and motivation is hinted at but never developed in a satisfying way. Most of the problems set out are solved off-screen or dissipate in large jumps in time. Weirdly enough, the most dramatic conflict in the storyline is not the virus at all. It deals with the sensationalist blogger played by Jude Law who I think was selling a fake cure online. He gets arrested at the end, or maybe not. I’m not sure what was going on there in that park or even who he was talking to. It all happened so fast.

We’ve all seen catastrophe movies before. Well, remember that scene where the people are running wild in the streets and the looters raid the supermarket. That scene is in this movie too. Now, I’m sure that such a situation can be told in a realistic way that is just as exciting and dramatic as these scenes are in the best of zombie movies. But when a movie does not add anything to the set up the scene will not escape cliche. Time and details are needed for a realistic movies to be exciting. Otherwise they lack credibility. Now they obviously were pressed for time in this case, but whittling away those details makes what is left rather humdrum. Without the credibility the scene actually comes off worse than the same scene would be in a not so serious movie. You take the supermarket scene in a movie like “Zombieland.” Not only do they raid the supermarket, but they also kill zombies. Here they just raid the supermarket. It's boring.  

Having said all this, the movie is well put together considering that it is telling a story about a worldwide catastrophe in such a short running time. The director is none other than Steven Soderbergh, who was the Oscar winning director of one of the best hyperlink movies ever made, Traffic. But, really, you can just sense all the talent in the direction and the cast here going to waste. One wonders why Soderbergh decided to make this movie at all. The man is capable of great things. Why is he wasting his time with mediocre projects? Actually you can say this about Soderbergh’s career in general. Did we really need an Ocean’s 13? Come on Steven, you’re better than this.