The Whale (4/5 Stars)

Director Darren Aronofsky is cinema’s equivalent of the phoenix. Every ten years or so he spontaneously combusts in a show of flames before rising again from the ashes. The first time around he started with a basic black & white low budget film called Pi (1998) caught fire with the brilliant and intense Requiem for a Dream (2000) and subsequently burst into flames with the over-ambitiously overly complicated box office disaster known as The Fountain (2006). From the ashes, he pulled himself together with a basic low budget film called The Wrestler (2008), caught fire with the brilliant and intense Black Swan (2010) and burst into flames with the overly ambitious and overly complicated box office disasters of Noah (2014) and Mother! (2017). 

Now in 2022, from another pile of ashes, there is The Whale, a stripped down low budget film based on a play. The whole thing takes place in one house over the course of a single week. Despite its back-to-basics feel, the tell-tale sign of Aronofsky are here, the extremes of the human experience. Our main character Charlie (played by Brendan Fraser) is a morbidly obese man. Like the kind of obese where you wonder what the decision making process was a few hundred pounds ago. The other main interest of Aronofsky (at least for the last decade) is religion and there is a fair portion of this movie dedicated to that as well.

I would expect morbid obesity to be a lonely state of affairs. We get a nominal sense of that here: Charlie teaches remote English and Writing community course classes with his laptop camera off. He orders pizza, but tells the delivery man to place it outside the door so he doesn’t have to show himself. Aside from these examples though, the movie is based on a play, so we get a lot of people barging into his house that normally would not be there. There is Charlie’s nurse Liz (played by Hong Chau) who tells him he has congestive heart failure and will be dead within a week if he doesn’t go to the hospital. There is Ellie (played by Sadie Sink), Charlie’s daughter, a cruel girl who is here to guilt her father into doing her homework. Finally, there is Thomas (played by Ty Simpkins) a door-to-door missionary who, upon seeing Charlie, believes that God sent him there to help. 

 The movie takes place in Idaho but has such a  hostility to organized religion you'd think it took place in Portland. Charlie is fine with the presence of Thomas. However, Liz tells him a few times to get out and never come back. Liz is interesting in this regard. She relates that she was adopted by the local sect, New Faith, but left because they were all self-righteous hypocrites (The local sect is against homosexuality). Liz is Chinese. It isn’t explicitly said but one may assume based on her age and gender that this local sect was adopting children, especially girls, from China because of the CCP’s one-child policy. It doesn’t seem to occur to Liz that she should be grateful to organized religion for having saved her from infanticide. Ellie is a bitch to Thomas, but then again she is a bitch to everyone. The local sect is against homosexualilty true, and Charlie is gay, but that doesn’t stop Thomas from trying to help. Could organized religion help someone in Charlie’s condition? I have no idea, but the problem seems to be large enough that it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.

Ultimately, Charlie is eating himself into an early grave because that seems to be the plan. Around ten years ago, he left his wife and child to pursue a romance with a younger man. This younger man committed suicide. It is posited that the local sect caused the suicide, although I am unaware of any christian denomination that promotes suicide for homosexuals. Then again, New Faith isn't Catholic. In any event, Charlie has been alone ever since and steadily gaining weight. There are other people in this world that go through similar experiences and they do not end up slowly eating themselves to death. It is not really clear then why Charlie in particular has decided to do it.

Charlie is played by Brendan Fraser. This is the type of role that is so unique it is award worthy simply by being handled competently. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fraser was nominated. I haven’t seen Brendan Fraser in a substantial role since 2004’s Crash. (I did see him in last year’s “Out of Sight” in a supporting role. )You could call it a comeback (and people are) but taking a look at IMDB, it would appear that Fraser hasn’t stopped working during this time. He just hasn’t done anything notable. Well, call it a comeback. 

I recognize Sadie Sink from Netflix’s Stranger Things. I didn’t like her character in that show either. It was nice for Samantha Morton to drop in for a scene. I look forward to seeing Aronofsky’s next film. He should be catching fire on that portion of the phoenix arc by that time which should mean a third masterpiece.

John Carter of Mars (2/5 Stars)

Really expensive nonsense

“Only enormously talented people could have made "Death to Smoochy." Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. To make a film this awful, you have to have enormous ambition and confidence, and dream big dreams.”

-       Roger Ebert

The explanation of why "John Carter of Mars" exists is better than the movie itself. It’s director Andrew Stanton is best known as one of the great creative forces behind the golden age of Pixar. He was a cowriter for all three Toy Story movies and directed both “Finding Nemo,” and “Wall-E.” To a movie lover like me he is arguably one of the greatest living directors and I would put “Wall-E” on a list of the 100 best movies ever made. To studios he represents enormous profits, both “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo” having broken box office records for animated movies. So when Andrew Stanton came to the producers at Disney with an idea for a science fiction/comic book movie with lots of violence and exotic locations, who in their right mind would say no. They granted Stanton full access to the Disney playground. $250 million dollars later in production value and $100 million dollars later in marketing produced the movie that last week grossed only $30 million and is destined to be one of the biggest flops of the year. What went wrong? Well, for one thing, the movie isn’t any good. But how could that happen? (See above). There are two main problems both of which could have been solved by a cigar-chomping asshole producer with only dollars for eyeballs. Those people are good for something.

The first big problem is way too much faithfulness to the source material. This movie is based on more than a century old comic book series. In this book we are introduced to made up weapons, made up languages, made up peoples, made up places, made up cultural customs, made up powers, made up gods and goddesses. Everything is nothing I had ever heard of before. When a character dramatically intones that they have to find the ninth ring of iths from the gates of Barsoon before the tharks release the giant white ape and the thurns shapeshift for the red man blue man widget marraige at Helium, my reaction is like, “Huh? What?” And this sort of thing goes on for much of the movie. They keep throwing in new shit, giving no explanation or time for it to sink in, and then expecting big dramatic payoffs. A very big problem has to do with the story’s technology. People in flying warships are fighting with swords while big green men on the ground have calvary and guns. Then there are these other dudes that have the ability to shapeshift and vaporize anything within a few seconds using a blue widget thingy. I haven’t the slightest idea what that thingy is or why nobody else has it or why it was not used in the battles far more often. This movie could have been a lot shorter if the blue vaporizer thingy had not been used so sparingly. Then there is John Carter himself, a civil war veteran from Earth, transported to Mars via a little thingy, to find that his Earth muscles provide him with superior abilities on Mars’ lower gravity. Basically, he is super strong and can jump really high. But how high can he jump? The movie is very very unclear about that. At points it is just a few meters, but at other times it could very well be a football field. It is this critics opinion that for action sequences to be effective, the laws of physics must be followed, even when it is on Mars, or if they are to be bent they are bent in a clear and predictable manner (See “The Matrix.” Do not see “Matrix Reloaded” or “Matrix Revolutions.”) Otherwise nothing makes sense and the story’s momentum and suspense deflates. The suspension of disbelief gone we are merely witnessing an actor in a weird costume skipping around a room with a green screen.

That actor would be Taylor Kitsch a remarkably bad choice in casting whose responsibility for the failure of the movie is only somewhat alleviated by the even worse choice of Lynn Collins, as the Martian princess. Put these two together and you have some of the most horribly acted scenes I have seen in a long time. And you cannot merely just say that the material was arcane and stilted. Sure they are speaking about weird lore and strange happenings but that still doesn’t forgive the utter lack of excitement or range in the performances. Let’s say a horde of green Martian barbarians was descending upon you for the express purpose of killing you. Perhaps your facial expression and body language should suggest you were doing anything other than posing for the Mars version of GQ magazine. Or consider John Carter’s reaction to learning that he is on Mars for the first time. That Taylor Kitsch reminded me of a young Keanu Reeves, and that is about the worst compliment you can give an actor. One of the producers of this movie should have required that Andrew Stanton cast a well-known action star as the lead in his $250 million dollar epic. This is not simply a cynical attempt at more dollars via a better marketing platform. “John Carter of Mars,” is Stanton’s first live-action movie. He had never worked with actors before. If the director casts unknowns who do not know what they are doing, guess who has the responsibility to teach them what to do: the director. And if the director does not know how to direct actors and the actors do not know how to act, what you get is this silly drivel, made even sillier as it is being performed against a backdrop of a ridiculously expensive, intricate, and extensive amount of costume, makeup, CGI work, set design, and production value. What a colossal fuck-up this was.

I keep thinking back to that other live action foray by an acclaimed Pixar director, Brad Bird’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” Whatever similar problems Bird may have had were alleviated by a familiar and franchised story that took place in present day and was anchored by Tom Cruise, who is, private weirdness aside, quite frankly one of the best actors in the business, and may very well be the best action actor. For future studio reference, the next time a great director wants to spend an extremely large amount of money on something he has never done before with a bunch of inexperienced collaborators, it might be a good idea to sign him up for two movies and make the first one a much less expensive test run.  

Synecdoche, New York 10/26/08

It struck me as odd that I walked out of this movie wondering whether it was just good or one of the best movies ever made. The problem, like all of Charlie Kaufman's stories, is that there is nothing to compare it to. So I can't say that it is like this movie or that one. I can't say if you liked this movie, than you're bound to like Synecdoche, or if you disliked such and such then you will really hate it. Reviews are at their best comparative. I watch a film and decide whether it fits, shorthands, or supersedes its genres and rules. I pass on that knowledge to help others decide whether they want to spend $12 and two hours of their time watching it. But what can I do when a movie stands alone? I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it. That even Kaufman's previous incredibly original works (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) are only vaguely similar, and still only in matters that are coincidental. (i.e. They all take place in New York). I can say this, I cannot imagine the movie being any better. I cannot conceive of any wrong choices. Each scene was something I had never seen before. I can describe what I felt. I laughed at many parts. I wore a grin through many supposedly depressing scenes. I felt a terrible sadness at certain points. And during the final scenes my mouth was held open by awe at what I was witnessing. I have no idea how long the movie was. I completely lost track of time. 
I suppose now I should try to explain it, although I fear the entire point of the movie was to present something beyond explaining. Synecdoche is defined as "a part representing the whole or the whole representing a part." The movie is about the ambitious folly of a play director named Caden, played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Caden deals with synecdoche's as a career. A stage is a synecdoche of a life just like a movie based on actual events is a synecdoche of those events. Caden may be a synecdoche of Kaufman. The women in this movie may be synecdoche's of women in Kaufman's life. This review is a synecdoche of the movie. It may be argued that no matter how hard I try I will not be able to capture the true essence of the movie in this review. Much like how Caden will not be able to capture the true essence of life in his plays. Even if, like in this movie, he built a life-size version of New York inside a warehouse, had tens of thousands of extras, and a budget that apparently has no bounds. 
At the same time, Caden is dying. He doesn't know how but he is. Organs fail on him mysteriously. He suffers a seizure. His body revolts in humiliating and painful ways. He wants to do something of significance. Something that is true and right before he leaves this world.
Moreover, Caden has trouble with his 1st marriage (Catherine Keener). He has trouble with his second marriage (Michelle Williams). He has an unrequited love affair with a third woman (Samantha Morton). And he loses his daughter, who he forever remembers as a four year old, to devious people in a faraway land. Everything is slowly slipping away. He's waging several losing wars on several different fronts. The film is mired in depression and there is much talk about death. We witness no less than four or five funeral scenes. Years evaporate between scenes. Slowly everybody Caden knows dies. 
The film starts off in reality but somewhere near the middle the line starts getting blurry. About two thirds of the way through we can no longer tell what's going on. Scenes repeat themselves once, then get played again in the warehouse. They never seem exactly right. Caden throws great effort around. He has an endless sea of post-it notes. At one point he muses 'I don't know why I make it so complicated.' In the end he no longer has the ability to keep the play alive on his own. He casts somebody to be him and then goes off and takes the role of an extra. A war somehow breaks out on the set. Caden walks down the New York streets he built. Bodies are strewn everywhere. All the extras have died. My God what have I done?
Why on earth would anyone like a film described like this? Because every scene, every exchange, every line of dialogue, every performance belies the somber mood and depressing atmosphere. Caden can't seem to make a perfect play, but Charlie Kaufman can make a perfect movie. I have never seen a more ambitious, epic, or original film about failure. It is hard to tell how people will take this movie. I picture everyone exiting the theater stunned, not knowing what they have just witnessed. Maybe they will nitpick about certain degrading elements that are true to every life. Maybe they will give up and say 'that can't happen. What am I watching?' These are good questions and totally defensible arguments. I myself am at a loss of what to think at times. Even Charlie Kaufman has refused to discuss what the movie 'means.' 
This movie should get nods for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Take your pick from Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, etc.) Best Production Design, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, etc. Having said that, I would not be surprised, and I wouldn't blame anyone, if it received no nominations at all. I can only assume it is going to take ten to fifteen years for this movie to sink into mass consciousness. Somebody out there is going to have to write a synecdoche that describes concisely what the movie means and put forth an argument that allows it to gain mass appeal. That might take awhile. It might never happen.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age 12/18/07

Cate Blanchett is, of course, so totally awesome. She is one of the best actresses of our time not to mention one of my favorites. (Right now it's a tie between her and Renee Zellweger) The First Royal Elizabeth was the role she was born to play. She knocked it out of the park in the first movie, earning an oscar nomination and breaking out into the front ranks of cinematic actresses.
She returns to form in this sequel as an older Elizabeth. She very much looks the part, the costumes and makeup are stunning, the set decorecations command authenticity, and she speaks in a very regal tone of voice. If only she had something to say. This is without a doubt one of the biggest letdowns of the year.
It may even be one of the biggest letdowns ever. I had some seriously high expectations for this movie. On paper it looked fantastic. It had the same director of the first movie, the same stunning actress, and the addition of Clive Owen. And its not like this project would run afoul in the usual problems with sequels. Since this is a historical biopic, the plot is already taken care of. And what a plot: The Spanish Armada. There's enough here for an epic tale. How could anyone possibly screw this up. 
For one thing, the idiotic writers brought into central focus the one aspect of Elizabeth that was the least interesting, her love life. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when I realized I was witnessing a love triangle between Elizabeth, her lady in waiting, and Clive Owen. This is a travesty. What were they thinking? Elizabeth is a righteous babe, and Cate Blanchett is a terrific actress. There is one scene in this movie where she shouts fury at a Spanish ambassador. The line is, "I too can command the wind sir! I have a hurricane inside me that will strip Spain bare if you dare to try me!!!" This is incredibly cool, but then the next scene she is fretting over Mr. Owen and the Armada is completely forgotten. It isn't even really explained actually and the final battle isn't
really climatic because I didn't understand who was where and what the stakes actually were. Blanchett makes a speech to an infantry army, but those soldiers didn't actually fight in the battle for you see it was a naval battle. What is going on here? They really screwed the pooch. It's a super shame since this story deserves to be retold and this movie needs to be remade, except next time they probably won't be fortunate enough to get Cate Blanchett to play Elizabeth.