The Killer (3/5 Stars)

I wonder who the narrator is speaking to in Director David Fincher’s latest movie The Killer. Usually a voiceover is directed towards the audience, but here the character involved, an assassin played by Michael Fassbender, is not the type of person who would choose to have an audience. Perhaps what we are witnessing is an internal monologue. Perhaps The Killer is talking to himself. 

Perhaps David Fincher is talking to himself here. The Killer is a competent and slick thriller, directed with competence and acted with proficiency, but it is not a crowd pleaser and doesn’t try to be. It follows an assassin whose philosophy does not inspire sympathy and whose outlook does not change in any distinct way. There is no character development in this movie. 

The plot is simple. The assassin botches an assignment. Then, because of his mistake, his agent attacks his hideout in order to “avoid blowback”. Presumably the agent, a lawyer played by Charles Parnell, wanted to kill the assassin, but the second set of killers never have a chance because they don’t attack the hideout while the assassin is home. Instead of waiting, they go ahead and ransack his place and beat up his girl. And then they leave for some reason. Maybe they all thought that the assassin would just go into hiding for the rest of his life.

The assassin doesn’t go into hiding. Instead, he methodically kills everyone involved one-by-one. Is this really necessary? It doesn’t appear that it is. It doesn’t even appear to be revenge. It is presumed in the movie that the attack on his hideout is to be expected since he screwed up the hit. Or if it is revenge, it is totally disproportionate. (What did the taxi driver ever do?) Then, after killing a lot of people, the assassin does not kill a particular character. That basically confirms this movie’s complete lack of any normal sense of justice. The happy ending was not satisfying to me.

 The Killer is well made as all David Fincher movies tend to be. There are colorful locations and at least one intense physical fight. But really, the movie is a lark. It exists but does not need to. I’m not sure it adds all that much to the crowded genre about professional assassins.

Three Thousand Years of Solitude (4/5 Stars)

 

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is a small movie with big trappings. Like George Miller’s last outing “Mad Max: Fury Road” it is a demonstration of the benefits of the last two decades revolution in cheaper digital movie-making. The plot is too alien for a mainstream audience: an aging scholar of ancient Mesopotamian culture (Tilda Swinton) comfortable in her solitary life, by happenchance and/or fate finds a bottle in Istanbul thrift shop which contains an ancient djinn (Idris Elba), or as you may have heard in a Disney movie, a genie. He grants her a wish, but she refuses to make one. She is well versed in myths and genies and believes that making wishes is not wise. Trickster genies abound and, well, she does not need anything. To convince her to make a wish, this djinn delves into its lives and loves of the past three thousand years. We meet King Solomon, spend time in the harem of the Ottoman sultan, and attain knowledge of the universe. Imagine if this movie had been made twenty years ago. First of all, it wouldn’t have been, at least not with this level of sophistication. It would have been far too expensive a gamble for a storyline that is inherently so niche. (I believe I called “Mad Max: Fury Road” a ‘niche blockbuster’. This is even more so). If it had been, I swear it would have been ugly. There would be no budget for the expanse required. All would be darkness, robes, and sandals.

As it is, we live now, and “Three Thousand Years of Longing” feels like the movie it should be. Much of it takes place in a hotel room in Istanbul in which Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba carry on a long debate amidst flashbacks of the djinn's long life and misfortunes. You could do much worse than spend a few hours listening to the back and forth between Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, two of our most talented actors. Tilda Swinton is perfectly cast as scholar of foreign and ancient knowledge. Idris Elba it can be noted, is Black. Really, an ancient djinn should be of the middle-eastern persuasion. No matter. He has been appropriately cast. He he has the body frame and the intelligence to pull of an ancient djinn (as opposed to say, a Will Smith) and I can’t really think of anybody else I would like to see in the part (honorable mention, Robin Williams for the parody).

Idris Elba tells three stories. The first takes place a long time ago and is pretty straightforward. The djinn is advisor to the Queen of Sheba that falls for King Solomon. I won’t get into it too deep but it ends with the genie being entrapped in a bottle and thrown into the ocean. The second story involves the genie being found by a young concubine in the harem of the Ottoman Sultan. What makes this story interesting is that the concubine actually wishes for something someone of her stature and education would wish for at that time period. Given her narrow view of the world, she wishes to carry the son of the prince as it would automatically catapult her in social standing. And with another dose of realism, she doesn’t fully understand why this might be a dangerous wish in a place where political power is directly related to bloodlines. After some palace intrigue, the genie finds himself in a bottle in at the bottom of the sea again. The third story is the best and legitimately interesting. The genie is found by the youngest wife of an aging merchant. He keeps her in a tower and doesn’t let her out of the house. What she wishes for is the knowledge of the universe. This is granted to her not by some Matrix mind-meld, but by the genie scouring the earth and bringing back to her the best scientific texts. This is the type of woman a djinn could fall in love with and he does. I won’t tell you how this one turns out.

The stories are engaging enough as they are being told, but the movie itself finishes with a bit of an anti-climax. You see Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba are actually quite reasonable people so ultimately there is not much of a conflict. Actually the largest controversy in our modern times involves her taking the djinn back to London where two of her nosy old lady neighbors take exception. Why they do this doesn’t make much sense. They make general xenophobic points about culture and what not. Actually, the old neighbors have a point given that the genie is from a place of polygamy and harems, (which might be offensive to the modern woman?). Except the old ladies don’t know that Idris Elba is a djinn, so they just come off as having a prejudice against black people. But the genie shouldn’t be played by a black guy and the movie works best if that fact is quietly ignored. In any event, the whole thing seems to resolve rather quickly once they get a good look at him and realize he's Idris Elba. I believe, yes I believe you could say that everyone lived happily ever after.

The French Dispatch (5/5 Stars)

 

The masterpiece train keeps on rolling. That makes four in a row from Wes Anderson and the machine, an ever expanding cast of remarkable actors, production designers led by Adam Stockhausen, musicians led by Alexandre Desplat, costumes by Milena Canonero, etc etc. This time, Mr. Anderson, writer/director, spins an appetizer and three course meal of the fictional Ennui-sur-Blase, France in the form of a travelogue and three stories of the French Dispatch, a fictional satellite production of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.

This movie is delightful. I came to that conclusion about two minutes into the feature when the movie takes about a twenty seconds to film a French waiter stocking a tray with an assortment of apertifs, confections, and hors-d’oeurvres for delivery to Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (played by Bill Murray), editor of the title production. Like Wes Anderson’s best work, there is a loving attention to the detail here that most movies lack the ability to attempt.

The French Dispatch is in a newspaper but is not really news. It tells offbeat stories about curious people. It is a pleasant diversion about a small corner of the world that nobody in Kansas would likely visit. I believe that would be the whole point. There are many small things in life that lack formal importance, but as an antidote to the daily grind, are essential to living well. This idea is voiced with beautiful particularity in the third story by writer Roebuck Wright (played by Jeffrey Wright) when he is asked why he devotes so much space in his articles to the experience of dining. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would you choose? You could do much worse than a curated evening with Wes Anderson. (Actually you can choose this, but without the Wes, he curated a version of pullman dining on a British Train. https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/uk/belmond-british-pullman/search-results. Tickets are around $600, give or take).

The danger of the Wes Anderson experience, as evident in his first fifteen years of making movies, is that his upper class tastes can come off as tone deaf or snooty. He has by and large avoided this pitfall in his last four great movies by focusing not on the rich people, but the servants, artisans, (dogs) that cater to them. It is a delicate balancing act to be sure. Since Wes Anderson is so very much rich himself (I highly suspect), to speak for the poor could easily come off as presumptuous and contrived. He avoids this by showing an unsurpassed appreciation for the artistry, whether it be a lobby boy attending to his duties in a hotel, a boy scout troupe leader searching for his charges, or a dog looking out for his master. Wes Anderson merely supposes, rightly I believe, that the people who curate his experiences care about their art in a manner that is separate and apart from the status of the ultimate consumer. Do such people like the celebrated police chef Nescaffier (played by Steve Park, yes that Steve Park from Coen Brothers’ movies like Fargo and A Serious Man), exist. They must. If they didn’t, how could there be so much beauty in the world?

To consider Wes Anderson’s movies chronologically, is to witness a writer-director become increasingly competent and confident in not only his distinct cinematic voice but the very tools of cinema. The French Dispatch is notable in its sheer amount of sets and cinematography techniques. To take one example, the first story, is a news article by J.K.L Berenson (played by Tilda Swinton) that turns into a lecture, which narrates a story of a psychotic inmate named Moses Rosenthaler (played by Benicio Del Toro) who might be a genius of modern art. The lecture is in color, but the story with Moses is in black and white, until of course, it isn’t. That is, Wes Anderson is not just using black and white because he wants to be artsy, he is doing it to make important scenes in the story “pop” with color. There are several of these moments in this movie whether it be a first glimpse of a fresco, the taste of a delicious apertif, or the blue eyes of Saorise Ronan, and the effect is undeniable. The realm of moviedom has not seen an artist with such innovative control of film, as a medium, since Oliver Stone was at the height of his creative powers in the early nineties (see JFK and Natural Born Killers). Add to this is Wes Anderson’s interesting use of foreign languages (In the second story, that concerns itself with insufferably woke university students, all the boys speak English, and the girls speak French with subtitles. To be clear, they are all speaking French, Wes is just being interesting) and his absolute refusal to shoot anything resembling a conventional action scene (a prison riot is shown in freeze frame, a car chase turns into a cartoon).

But more than anything, what is particularly impressive about The French Dispatch is the writing. The movie’s screenplay, which Wes Anderson wrote by himself, is based on four fictional articles by four fictional writers with four different styles. Each story, though all written by Wes, leaves a distinct impression of a unique artistic voice, each one a very good writer in their own regard. I ask you, could there possibly be a movie this year that is more “written” than the The French Dispatch. Have you ever seen a movie, more “literary”. Can we just give him his first Oscar ever for Best Original Screenplay right now?

If there is a criticism to be directed at this movie, it is that there is too much of it, at least in one sitting. I think this movie, or something like it, would make a very good TV show. That is, since each story could stand on its own, you could split the movie up into 30 minutes segments like say Documentary Now, thereby giving the audience a chance to catch its breath between stories. The French Dispatch is an appetizer and three entrees in a row. We need more time to comfortably digest. After all, I haven’t even mentioned Adrian Brody’s brilliant dissection of the economics of modern art, or Timothee Chalamet’s hair, or the fact that I got to see Lea Seydoux naked (worth the ticket price by itself).

The Personal History of David Copperfield (4/5 Stars)

 

Writer/Director Armando Iannucci is one of my favorites. He is responsible for the early career of the British comedian Steve Coogan (David Partridge) and the best TV show about British politics (The Thick of It). Thereafter, he made a great movie that crossed over his British political show into American politics (In the Loop) and then seamlessly transferred his skills to one of the best shows about American politics (Veep). Since leaving Veep, he made a masterpiece, The Death of Stalin, which I called in my review a perfect marriage of artist and subject matter. His work, a worthy successor of Monty Python, is defined by that very British and very cruel sense of humor (a worthy American successor of Monty Python along the same lines is South Park). 

In the spirit of Monty Python then, And Now for Something Completely Different! For the first time in Iannucci’s career, he has expended money on set design and costumes. The Personal History of David Copperfield is a lark to look at it. It adapts the 19^th century Charles Dickens' novel with color and flair. The stolid realism of his political films is completely gone. Moreover, the movie's storyline zips and churns through scenery and characters in a frenetic and fantastic pace. It is a giant leap in style for Iannucci and he accomplishes it like a natural.

The screenplay which Iannucci co-wrote with longtime collaborator Simon Blackwell. I have not read this particular Dickens work novel, but having read other of his books, I expect the screenwriters put in excellent work, omitting much extraneous details were successfully edited out while successfully retaining the emotional core and finding room for plenty of jokes. This does not feel like the usual Dickens adaptation, which is all the better because I have never felt Dickens to be especially adaptable.

In fact, I’m not sure I particularly like Dickens. I'm not sure I approve of the way he gave characters names that automatically signaled how you are supposed to feel about them, as if a book could be judged by its cover. Anyhow, if one were to adapt a Dickens book, what with all its contrivances, this would be the movie to show it is to be done. The unabashedly caricatures of personality are here. David Copperfield is as earnest as earnest comes. Mr. Murdstone is a mean monster. Uriah Heep is a total piece of shit. It is an unfair story told in an unrealistic abstract way as if to signal to the audience like a B movie would, hey this is not real life, have fun and enjoy yourself.

This brings me to the most noticeable part of the movie, what the movie has termed “color blind casting”. As you may suspect, this 19^th century British novel about British people ought to be entirely populated by British people. However, Iannucci has cast an Indian in the title role (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame), and several black people, some other Indians, and a Chinese man (Benedict Wong) in several of the supporting roles. 

Does this work? I am reminded of one of the stupider conversations I ever had with someone, a former roommate that attended the same college as Lena Dunham. He believed that Leonardo DiCaprio’s role in The Revenant could have been played just as well as a black man. (This role is based on the real-life personage of a fur trapper in 1820s America in the Louisiana Territory). I thought that point of view was idiotic. The movie was attempting to be as realistic as possible. It went so far as to shoot only with natural light. An undisguised black man as the protagonist would have been absolutely weird. I still stand by this sentiment, but at the same time, as a resident of New York City, I have seen many productions of Shakespeare plays which rely on color-blind casting. And for Shakespeare plays, color-blind casting works very well. After all, Shakespeare never had production value so there is very little realism in his works. The merits of his plays rely almost exclusively on the poetry of his words and acting, which can be done by anyone who can master the correct accent and style of performance. The color blind casting here works in the same way. There are many different ethnicities represented by the actors, but every single one of them speaks their lines in perfect 19th century English accents. (Not coincidentally I suppose, but the actors, if not British, come from places that have ties to the British Empire, in particular India, Africa, and Hong Kong. There are no Latin or Arab cast members).

The way the movie is presented is itself more abstract then realistic. Within this environment it makes sense to simply find the best actors around. Dev Patel, who has a very Tom Hanksian earnest everyman quality to him, is well cast in the lead role of David Copperfield. And I always like seeing Benedict Wong in anything. It would have been awesome if that was Chloe Sevigny in blackface, but apparently there is a black woman who looks just like her with the name of Rosalind Eleazar. The rest of the cast that is white is a who’s who of interesting actors: Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, and Peter Capaldi amongst them. Then there is Ben Whishaw who plays Dickens’ classic creep Uriah Heep. He does a particularly good job at making one’s skin crawl as soon as he shows up on screen. I am reminded once more by how much Dickens hated lawyers.

The movie moves swiftly from interesting caricature to interesting caricature and through comedic interludes and dramatic pratfalls. It ends with a artistic cop-out that is becoming as cliched as a story ending in marriage or death. The main character aspires to be writer. He writes a book about the people within the story. This story is published and becomes wildly successful. And The End, Happily Ever After.

I have seen this sort of ending perhaps a dozen times. What does it mean? Does it not say that all the hardships we endure in our lives can be automatically validated if the general populace pays attention to it and bestow upon the writer fame and fortune? Is that true? If two people have an argument, and only one is famous, and as a result only one side of the argument is told, is there then only one side of the story, and the argument won. Perhaps I am being a little cynical. However, it has been postulated that David Copperfield is a veiled autobiography of Dickens. If it supposed to be at all objective, is it fair to give your step-father the surname of Murdstone or to name anyone you once knew Uriah Heep. Apart from that, I really did like this movie.

Dr. Strange (4/5 Stars)

I read somewhere that Marvel had just made the 13^th successful blockbuster in a row. It speaks to the strength of the brand. True, it has a tremendous advantage in having a backlog of sixty years of story and the built-in audience to boot over other great brands such as Pixar, but that shouldn’t take away from the great franchise craft that can be found in these movies. “Dr. Strange” is one of my favorites already. It was so good that I saw it twice in a theater and took my family to see it over Thanksgiving.

Blockbusters are mainly to be seen for Spectacle. Spectacle should be big but also unique as should convey a sense of awe on the viewer. Given the consistent multitude of Spectacles that all look alike it is hard for any single one to have a great deal of their impact. A city being blown up hardly excites me anymore. I’ve already seen it many times.“Dr. Stange” to its great credit, showed me Spectacle I had never seen before. It was awesome.

To explain how, here is a character from the movie: “The Avengers protect the world from more physical dangers. We protect the world from supernatural forces from other worldly dimensions.” Like many comic books, “Dr. Strange” melds modern science with ancient bullshit. Dr. Strange practices magic but this magic comes in the form of 21^st century mathematical babbel about relativity, the multiverse, and particle physics. The audience hardly understands either so I guess it makes sense to put them together. Anyway during certain fight scenes, the magic works less on the participants of the fight than on their surroundings. Spells are casts and buildings fold up and down, the axis of the world tilts, gravity goes every which way, and then everything splits up in a crazy fantastical kaleidoscopic effect. You really have to see it to believe it. I was blown away a couple of times by what was going on.

What makes it great of course is not necessarily that things are crazy, but that these things are explained, have rules, and follow them. The biggest laugh in the movie contains a fight between two ghosts of two physically comatose people in a hospital emergency room. How the movie gets there is just superb story-telling. It is a very nice ‘aha!’ moment.

Dr. Stephen Strange of course believes none of this in the beginning. He is a famous and successful brain surgeon dedicated to science. Like many Marvel Superheroes, his main flaw is arrogance (an all too common flaw for superheroes I still believe) and after an accident that ruins his hands, he humbles himself and seeks help from The Ancient One who lives in a monastery in Tibet. The background of these training scenes are perhaps more interesting than what takes place during them as it illustrates the benefits and limitations of corporate marketing.

This Tibetan monastary is an exceptionally diverse Tibetan monastary. The three main wizards are a Black Man named Mordo (Chiwetal Ejiofor), a Chinese man (Benedict Wong), and a Woman (Tilda Swinton). There are a multitude of others in the background. I spotted a Japanase guy somewhere at some point. White men are represented by our main protagonist, Dr. Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch playing another snarky genius) and our main antagonist, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson). Everybody seems to be here except, well, Tibetans. Now the Tilda Swinton character, The Ancient One, used to be Tibetan in the comic book. But she was changed to a Celtic sorceress in the movie. Why? Well, one of the main markets for Marvel movies is China and the Chinese don’t like it when you say good things about Tibetan monks. Also notice that the three main sanctuaries for the wizards are located in New York, London, and Hong Kong. Now why would these three locations be all that special in terms of magic. The answer is they aren’t. What these three places happen to have in common is that they are major financial hubs, the three biggest in the world actually.

You can take a look at this and see crass manipulation of character and location for marketing reasons and corporate gain as well as craven capitulation in the face of a corrupt Chinese government. But you can look at the glass half-full as well. For instance, when corporations try to make as money as possible, they follow a strategy of inclusion. So these stories contain as many different and diverse people as possible. And really its the Chinese government, not Marvel, that are jerks at the end of the day. If Marvel wasn’t being pressured (i.e. the market was more free in China) The Ancient one would have remained Tibetan and we would have all enjoyed a movie that would have been even more cosmopolitan.

p.s. Conveniently, I can date back the start of the Marvel Universe (I put that at 2008’s Iron Man) with my arrival in New York. Yes, every time the Avengers and their enemies destroyed New York City, I was living there.

Hail, Caesar! (4/5 Stars)

The new Coen Brothers movie “Hail, Caesar!” is not so much a satire of the big studio soulless entertainment of film’s first half-century as much as it is a celebration of it. After all, the big all encompassing studio has long since been a ripe satirical target. However the type of entertainment it would produce, as if art were something that could be manufactured en masse in a factory, did have its admirable attributes, lots of which are on display in this movie. Here we have five “types” of movies that the producers churned out: a western with trick horse play, a Busby Berkeley dance number, a high society melodrama, sailors tap-dancing a la “On the Town” and finally a biblical epic starring the biggest movie star of them all, Baird Whitlock (played by George Clooney). The Coen Brothers put on fine displays of them all. It is entertaining though it hardly means anything. But if that is all you want in a movie, than this is a very good one. It delivers just that.

Ostensibly the movie is about Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a producer. He is not the boss of the movie studio (that guy is in New York) but he is the highest-ranking person on the lot. His job is all sorts of things and takes day and night to do it. To over simplify things, he keeps the productions running and the stars (who are full-time employees of the studio) out of trouble. He solves problems. Take for instance the case of DeeAnna Morgan (Scarlett Johannsson) the mermaid in the synchronized swimming number. She is pregnant and unwed. Eddie, conscious of what it looks like to the moral movie-going public of family friendly pictures, helps her as only the representative of a huge corporation could. He plans to keep the pregnancy a secret, hire a professional person (Jonah Hill as Joseph Silverman) to adopt the newborn, and have this person give the child up for adoption back to DeeAnna a few days later. The professional person is just that. Whenever a star does something stupid, he is keen to be framed for the crime. It is let on that he spent six months in jail for a drunk driving incident.

On one of the last days of shooting the big biblical epic "Hail, Caesar" Baird Whitlock is kidnapped from the set. The kidnappers ask for $100,000. Eddie does some math and is content to pay it after realizing it will cost more to delay shooting a week (not to mention the bad press). The kidnappers happen to be a study group of communist screenwriters. They are not so rough on Baird. After slipping him a mickey and spiriting him to an isolated beach house, he is let in on the study group. They calmly and professorially explain Communism to him. He is receptive although that may be only his dim nature.

Mirroring this is the studios treatment of Jesus in “Hail, Caesar” which seems to look a lot like Ben Hur. The studio wants to give the people what they want (Jesus!) but do not want to offend anyone (an opinion on Jesus!). To that end, Eddie invites three priests from three Christian denominations and one rabbi to his office. He shows them the script and asks their opinion. There is nothing to object to as Jesus is seen only once in one scene with his back towards the camera (like “Ben Hur”). Nobody agrees on Jesus but nobody objects to the script because nothing is actually said about Jesus. Hollywood has pulled this fast one from time immemorial and for good reason too. Whenever an artist has something to say (take for instance Scorsese’s “Last Temptation of Christ,”) they are met with protests. Jesus remains hidden from big studio mass-market films to this day. 

Not that the Coens do the communists any favors. It turns out, through a lot of intellectual rigamarole and bandying about, the Communists want the ransom money because they are greedy. That claim it as payback for their services because they have been blackballed but are still working. The fact that they care about money does not bother them. An old venerable man explains that history is a science and that the Communist Revolution will come so it does not matter whether the study group acts selfishly. In fact to act selfishly will hasten the revolution so acting in their self-interest is in furtherance of their cause anyway. I dislike communists and though I have sympathy for anyone who is unfairly kept unemployed (what kind of good capitalist would I be if I were not) I love the fact that Hollywood Communists are being made fun in this movie for their stupid political beliefs. I have seen nothing but tragedies about them so far (thanks a lot McCarthy for turning them into noble sufferrors) so I consider this as a relief on the subject. The only thing worse than letting the Communists write screenplays was not letting them write screenplays. At least that way people could have a demonstration of how dumb is the philosophy.  

But I get carried away. The point of the movie is the studio fun. On great display is Alden Enrenreich (as Hobie Doyle) who is the cowboy of the film. He actually can do all sorts of tricks with a lasso. In fact, on a dinner date he takes a noodle of spaghetti, makes a lasso out of it, and hooks his dates thumb from across the table. Amazing! Now that’s entertainment. Also Channing Tatum does a great tap dancing number as a sailor who is not gay among a bunch of other sailors who are also not gay. The song is called “No Dames” and is about how when they are all at sea together there will be no dames. It is not gay. It is sad. Do not be tricked by the smiles and tap dancing.

Trainwreck (4/5 Stars)

The first scene illustrates the delights and detriments of this movie aptly enough. It is a flashback from the 1980s (you can tell by the video camera film stock) in which a father explains to his two daughters why mommy and daddy are getting divorced. The father explains that monogamy is unrealistic and gives an example of a daughter’s favorite doll. “Now imagine,” he explains, “you can play with that and only that doll for the rest of your life. Would you like that?” His daughter shakes her head. The point is struck home but the father continues with a list of scenarios in which other dolls may be preferable to play with. First of all it should be noted that Colin Quinn plays the father. Colin Quinn is not an actor. He is a tried and true standup comedian that always plays himself. That is to say he employs no impersonations in his act. In fact this might be his first film role ever. 2^nd: His delivery in this scene is funny in a standup comedian way. It gets a lot of laughs. It also however is not a realistic scene. Any other father if he had the balls to explain the unrealism of monogamy at all would not have gone on to illustrate an absurd amount of examples to get the point across. Such is “Trainwreck,” a movie full of standup comedians telling a lot of jokes that are very funny but take away in some parts the reality of the scenes. This is not a good movie in several ways but I feel I must give it four stars on priniciple given how much I laughed during it. It is a comedy.

Judd Apatow directed it. Amy Schumer wrote and stars as the titular trainwreck, a woman that drinks too much and sleeps with way too many men. The cast is composed of a lot of people who probably would not have done a movie but for this particular writer and director. In a small role as a homeless man outside her apartment is Dave Attell, another veteran stand up comedian. The aforementioned Colin Quinn plays her nursing home bound cantankerous father. Mike Birbiglia (another stand up) plays the fiancé of her non-trainwreck sister. And there are a couple of cameos by John Cena and Lebron James that aren’t really cameos. That is to say Lebron James is playing himself yes but in the best friend role to the romantic lead (Bill Hader), his surgeon. It is very funny but also odd because there is the standard cameo joke: Hey there’s Lebron James! And then he just stays around for many scenes and has thoughts and feelings as if he were a real person or something. The movie tries to have it both ways and since it is mainly funny and this is a comedy it works. But it also does not work because if Lebron James is a real character than the cameo joke should not be there. In a way I am arguing for less funny right now for more slow burn impact later. It should be noted that Amy Schumer does not regularly make movies. She makes sketch comedy and before that was a stand up comedian. That explains that.

Amy (the character’s name is Amy because why not?) works for a dumb lad mag. Her strange and boorish boss, played by Tilda Swinton, assigns her to a piece about a sports surgeon because Amy has absolutely no interest in sports and thinks that they are dumb and Swinton thinks that this dynamic will lend the piece conflict and suspense. Bill Hader plays the surgeon. Over a couple of interviews they get into bed in an absurdly quick time (not really his idea). The couple does not so much have chemistry together as the scenes they are in are just consistently funny. Judd Apatow has always tried to insert an emotional center to his movie and generally succeeds in doing so (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People). But here it any sort of emotional catharsis generally falls flat. Let me elaborate on that a little more in a theoretical sense.

A counterintuitive side effect of the ever-expanding role of women in cinema is the ever-brighter portrayal of men. What greater paragons of masculinity can be found then in Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaughy of Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” or (especially) Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson of Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation.” And when Kristen Wiig wrote her masterpiece “Bridesmaids,” her romantic foil played by Andy O’Dowd was a nice, smart, and mature guy. And when this year Amy Schumer wrote “Trainwreck,” she too created a romantic foil played by Bill Hader who is also a nice, smart, and mature guy. In fact, he’s a surgeon, physically attractive (read tall), and rich. And I suspect if I bothered to watch more stuff written by women there would be more examples than these four.

What does this mean? Well it is practical. As a writer it is not atypical to write the love story from the point of view of your own gender. Really, it would feel weird not to. And given that the character is generally informed by one’s own experiences it is not unusual that the main character is more complex than the romantic opposite. Given that most stories follow a hero’s journey type of format where the main character starts one way, goes through a crisis, learns something or doesn’t, and changes for better or worse, it makes sense for most of the personality defects to be on the side of the main character. It can also be said that we tend to idealize the people we are in love with playing down whatever bad traits they have and focusing on the good ones or at least the ones that make us a better person (which would also be useful to the plot).

But I have also heard many charges of sexism when this dynamic is played out in the typical Adam Sandler comedy or the the like wherein a fashionable, smart, mature woman who spends several hours in the gym everyday is interested in a fat immature slob with a fear of commitment. This speaks to a sense of masculine entitlement. Now I wouldn’t rule sexism out entirely (especially in the employment ratio of writers and directors) but am far more willing to believe that this more about many cases of individual incompetence as opposed to a conspiracy. In other words, most people are just mediocre and most romantic comedies have this dynamic because most writers are men. There is not a vast Hollywood conspiracy dictating that guys who lack amibition in business and/or health deserve perfect women. Exhibit A for this is Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck,” in which a chubby, immature, and too promiscuous woman becomes the object of affection for a smart, successful, and talented surgeon. He’s a nice guy and not stupid so there is no particular reason for him to like the main character other than the old “Adam Sandler” reason: this is her movie. See it works both ways and we will probably see more and more of it. Perhaps it will be so equal someday that women will start to appreciate being portrayed so well the way I happen to like Fey’s, Poehler’s, Wiig’s, and Schumer’s idealistic view of guys (mainly because it is so very rare to see them that way).

The Zero Theorem (2/5 Stars)

‘The Zero Theorem,’ is a much bigger movie in its advertisements. The production design provided by the endlessly inventive mind of its director, Terry Gilliam, after being crammed into a two minute commercial gives off the impression of a visual epic on the scale of his previous works Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Manchusen, and most recently The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus. In actuality much of the movie takes place within the main room of a decaying cathedral now inhabited by a recluse named Qohen Loeth (Christoph Waltz). There are a few other set pieces like a workplace and a street and a virtual reality beach, but other than that the locations are quite limited. It is a rather dramatic exercise in how to get as many visually inventive designs within the smallest amount of budget possible. Terry Gilliam is at the forefront of stretching the digital buck to its breaking point.

Unfortunately besides the production design, “The Zero Theorem” is not a particularly enjoyable film and given the absurdity of the production design in relation to the main metaphor of the film, it cannot be considered a good film either.

The film is supposedly set in a futuristic dystopia that mixes the cynicism of Blade Runner with the color palette of Speed Racer. It is a weird futuristic dystopia in that the technology is new and unfamiliar but also far worse than what we currently have today. Everything is way more complicated and far more annoying to use than it has to be. Take the computer/video game console that Qohen Loeth works on at his job. Not only does he have to manually pedal the thing with his feet, but the controller he uses looks like the worst idea Nintendo ever had went and ate all their other controllers. The good people at Apple who have dedicated their lives to making technology non–threatening for the general public should look on this movie with a sense of horror.

Gilliam did something similar to this in Brazil when he used warped technology (airducts to be exact) to actively demonstrate the oppression of a totalitarian government. But ‘The Zero Theorem’ is not a totalitarian dystopia but a consumerist dystopia run by a business named ‘Management.’ It is not at all clear why this business would want to actively oppress its customers with a terrible user experience. For all of this movie’s preachiness about the diminishment of the individual in a corporatized landscape, the most culpable villain here is problem Gilliam himself. He is the one that came up with all these profoundly annoying contraptions and he has a long history of treating human beings as cannon fodder for whims and jokes (see Monty Python).

His main character in this movie is especially pathetic. Played hairless and socially castrated by Christoph Waltz. What he wants is to be a recluse sitting next to a phone in his cathedral where someday he may get a call that will explain to him the meaning of his life. (Movies that dwell on the meaning of life generally give unsatisfactory answers and this one does not disappoint in its disappointment. Management has an answer to why they have assigned Qohen to work on the Zero Theorem, a theory that proves that there is no meaning of life, but again the production design of the movie argues against that explanation.) Qohen refers to himself in the royal first person and claims he is dying. It is a metaphor to be sure, but the metaphor is so obvious that it swallows up the viewer’s ability to think it deep. It is just there and might as well not be because the movie is not persuasive in its arguments.

A lot of things are here that might not as well be. Qohen attends a party with a host that is dressed in a fat tiger costume. There is no particular reason for the fat tiger costume. It is just another in a long list of visual gags that make the viewer titter in a ‘hey what is that doing there?’ vibe but in context are meaningless artistic choices. The character might have well been dressed up as a walrus or a unicorn or not dressed up at all. It does not lend anything to the story. Critics complain all the time about the arbitrariness of huge blockbusters but then give leeway to smaller independent films like this. Well, in my opinion the standards should apply to both. What we see on the screen should not merely be whimsical indulgences? They need to add or complement what the story is about. If this were a bigger film it would be bad. Being a small independent film does not make it any less bad.

There also must be noted that there is a female character (played by Melanie Thierry) that has the sad and far too common fate of having to somehow someway fall in love with an utterly unattractive and much older man. I suppose when you are in charge of a movie’s budget, one of the perks is that you can hire women willing to portray this sort of thing. The honest thing to do though is to make the character mainly interested in money too. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (5/5 Stars)

A love poem to Civilization

There is a moment in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” that stands out to me. Our hero, M. Gustave (played by Ralph Fiennes) the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel has been unjustly imprisoned for the murder of his frequent hotel guest and late lover played by Tilda Swinton. His loyal lobby boy, Zero (introducing Tony Revolori) conspires to help him escape. He engages his fiancé/baker’s apprentice played by Saorise Ronan to hide metal tools in the pastries he regularly sends to his mentor. Unfortunately every gift from outside must pass the rigorous inspection of the prison, i.e. a big man with a big butcher’s knife who unceremoniously cuts up everything that comes his way. But behold when this big man with this big knife sees these pastries so elegantly crafted with grace and artistry his heart grows and melts. He cannot bear to destroy them and lets the pastries (and the escape tools) pass onto our hero. And if this one scene was all you saw you should know from experience by now that you are in a Wes Anderson movie.

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is another masterpiece. That makes two in a row for Wes Anderson who is absolutely flaming red hot right now. Arguably it is his best film. When I reviewed ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ I outlined Anderson’s improvements in his style over his first six movies. Namely that he had cast actors in sufficiently dramatic roles with enough stage presence to burst through his overly saturated and inevitably stifling style. Second that he had provided his film with an actual climax and not an existential sigh of an ending. Third: that he had switched from telling the stories of rich people with bullshit problems to poor people with actual problems. All of that is here in this story. We have Wes Anderson’s best villain to date, an evil Adrian Brody, intent on usurping justice, stealing his inheritance, and killing those who get in his way. He employs a hit man played by Willem Defoe. In addition almost everyone employs colorful language. This is a must in a Wes Anderson film. It shocks one out of the sublime contemplation of the art direction and refocuses attention on the characters. The climax of the story involves not only a sled race down a snowy mountain but also a shootout in the hotel. Also there is the aforementioned break out from the prison, which involves some ingenious sight gags. And the story is about the servants of a hotel, in particular a refugee lobby boy whose entire family was killed during World War I.

On On top of all of this Wes Anderson has added something extra special that has never before graced his movies. He has added reason and purpose to his overly stylized approach. In this movie it is called for from the story itself, not simply because this is a movie made by Wes Anderson. First, the story is told in several flashbacks. The movie starts off with a girl in present day reading a book by the statue of its author, a hero of the Eastern European Country she is resident. The movie moves into a flashback of the elderly author played by Tom Wilkinson who starts telling us the story of how he came upon the story as a young man. The movie flashbacks to Jude Law, the younger version of the author, who is staying at the now decript communist version of the hotel when he meets the now elderly lobby boy played by F. Murray Abraham. The two have a catered dinner in the ballroom of the hotel and F. Murray Abraham narrates his story. All throughout these several flashbacks the production design of the movie gets more and more fanciful till it becomes clear when we get to the lobby boy’s story that we are witnessing a visual game of telephone. The story is real but the telling of it has become overly stylized as it has been passed on from generation to generation. Obviously the invading force is made up of Nazis although they are not named so in the movie. And surely the Grand Budapest Hotel did not look so pink and red or so much like a minature model in real life. It’s costuming has been the work of several permutations of the same tale over the course of time.

Second and more importantly the movie has a philosophy on why such costuming is important even noble. The little niceties of civilized life, the grandeur of the lobby, the manners and rituals of a many course meal, the way the hotel staff righteously guards the privacy of their guests, all are contrasted with the barbaric cruelties presented in this time period of epic slaughter. At a particularly dark time in the story, the tale is interrupted by the serving of a dessert and a special desert wine. And it is a relief. The comforting ritual is an escape from the random slaughter of the outside world. Somewhere someone cares about your experience. That is what the ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ means. It is a precious love poem to civilization. It is the prison guard that can’t bring himself to destroy something so beautiful.

We live in a world that so often takes the most cynical route possible because it is the easiest and perhaps the most truthful. But Wes Anderson cares about your movie going experience. He has made this extra special gem just for you as a brief escape from all the nihilistic meanness out there. This movie has love poured into every detail of the story and production.

What enormous amount of respect Wes Anderson commands in the Hollywood community now! Just take a look at this cast most of which are in very bit parts. Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Ed Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Mathieu Amalric, Harvey Keitel, Willem Defoe, Jeff Goldblum, Lea Seydoux, Tom Wilkinson, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes, Saorise Ronan, and introducing Tony Revolori. Apparently most of them just wanted to hang out on the set because the atmosphere excited them. I’ve heard that Wes Anderson employs a friend chef of his who cooks a great meal for dinner for everybody in the production every night of shooting. If tickets were sold to these dinners they would be priceless.

One more thing: Tom Wilkinson’s character speaks about writing not as a solo art but as the result of merely being open to the ideas and stories of those around you. Well, Wes Anderson may deflect admiration all he wants but one thing is for certain. He can be credited with recruiting an incredible team around him. The production design of this movie was led by Adam Stockhausen (also worked on Moonrise Kingdom). The art direction was led by Stephan O. Gessler, Gerald Sullivan, and Steve Summersgill. The set decoration was led by Anna Pinnock. The costumes were made by Milena Canonero. If they aren’t remembered come Oscar time next year, it isn’t my bad taste; everybody else are uncivilized barbarians. 

Moonrise Kingdom (5/5 Stars)

“Let’s make an inventory”

Says Sam Schukusky to Suzy Bishop, once the two twelve year olds have successfully run away from their respective adults (parents for Suzy, a junior khaki troop for Sam) to elope on the New England island of Penzance. And make an inventory they do. Suzy is carrying her brother’s record player with extra batteries, her favorite LP, her pet kitten, several of her favorite science fiction books, her lucky left-handed scissors, and her much-loved set of binoculars. She carefully explains why each item is important. And if you haven’t guessed already, this scene is taking place in a movie written/directed by Wes Anderson, because, really, who else would have characters take the time to do an inventory of the things they are carrying. I mean, if it isn’t a war movie and the characters aren’t talking strategy and weapons, an inventory is almost unheard of in movies. This is just one particular touch, along with absurdly detailed set designs and costumes, obsessively neat and tidy dialogue, and super-controlled camera shots, that scream out that you are in that most distinctive of styles, Wes Anderson cinema. No other movie looks or works quite the way his do.

Now this does not automatically mean that his movies are good, in fact it has been a decade since he made a movie that needed seeing. The distinctive style that makes his films stand out also tend to undermine the story and move it toward the unfortunate territory of boredom. But, I’ve always felt there was a great movie just waiting to be made by the guy, and I’m glad to say he has finally made it. “Moonrise Kingdom,” is one of the best movies of the year. It succeeds in all the places his earlier movies have failed without sacrificing any of the trademark idiosyncrasies that make Anderson films such unique experiences. 

First the two kids are genuinely likable and may have some actual problems. I would like to emphasize the word “actual” here because so many of Anderson’s characters don’t have actual problems. They are generally well-to-do good-looking people afflicted with a type of depressing boredom or something. Like for instance, the three brothers in “the Darjeeling Limited” had unexplained father "issues" so they went on a long train ride in India to bond. Being able to afford to go on a long train ride in India to bond with family isn’t exactly evidence of a real world problem. I would guess that’s why so many of these characters tend to suffer quietly in whispers. They seem to be some acknowledgement that it is kind of pathetic to be unhappy while blessed by their relative circumstances. Anyway, this isn’t something to worry about in this story. Sam Shukusky is an orphan recently dumped by his latest foster parents and Suzy Bishop is emotionally disturbed. Or at least she has good reason to think she might be. She found a pamphlet entitled, “Coping with the Very Troubled Child,” on the top of her refrigerator, which is admittedly a kind of a freaky thing to find in your house. Neither have any friends, but they do like each other, and their love story is sweet and touching.

It takes a certain kind of skill to act effectively in a Wes Anderson movie. There is always a temptation to softly speak in long pauses. Take for instance Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” This however is a boring mistake. Instead the exact opposite needs to be done. An actor needs to fit in as many yells as possible within the tight framework of stilted dialogue. This is essentially the only way to break through the gorgeous/suffocating style to achieve some sort of catharsis and why an action blockbuster star like Bruce Willis, playing the island police officer, is a much better casting choice than a mellow guy like Owen Wilson. Otherwise an actor needs the jujitsu comedy skills of a guy like Bill Murray, also present playing Suzy's father, who has the unique ability to take the style and subtly play it against itself by under-under-playing his performance, see the scene with the axe and the little kids. We’ve got some passionate speakers here. Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel, as scoutmasters, put in a ridiculous degree of professionalism in directing boy scouts. Frances McDormand doesn’t yell but carries around a bullhorn and uses it whenever she speaks. 

It's all done very well. Someone here between Murray, Willis, Norton, and Schwartzman deserves an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actor but I can’t really decide who deserves it more than the others. A safe choice is Bruce Willis, who in his very long career has amazingly never received any real recognition for anything. Given his perfect performances in great movies such as “Die Hard,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Sixth Sense,” and "Sin City" he is a bit overdue. For all his machoness, he has done some of his best work with children, and there is a scene here with the orphan Sam after he has been caught, separated from his love, and notified that his foster parents do not want him back that contains every correct thing you can say said in all the correct ways in such a situation.

Lastly, Wes Anderson has finally figured out how to end his movies on a high note. This movie has an exciting third act with an honest to god action sequence that doesn’t have some winking existential sigh of a conclusion. (Contrast this with “The Life Aquatic,” and his weird decision not to blow up the tiger shark with dynamite as planned.) In other words, the movie like so many other Wes Anderson previous efforts doesn’t run out of steam before the end. This is probably his crowning achievement and what makes this movie his best movie yet. (I will forever love “Rushmore” more yes, but that is strictly for personal not critical reasons, like say, the main character’s name being Max)

When you have a style that is especially distinctive (like say Altman or Kubrick) it is especially hard to judge your movie because they are so unlike anything else. So it would not come as a surprise to me if “Moonrise Kingdom” was completely ignored come Oscar time. It shouldn’t be though. Among the more obvious things it should be acknowledged for are the original score by Alexandre Desplat (you may remember him from “The Tree of Life”), and the art direction by Gerald Sullivan. The not so obvious things would be a nomination for best director for Wes Anderson and best original screenplay for Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. And why not, nods for cinematography, editing, and Bruce Willis. It should go without saying that a Best Picture nod is called for as this is one of the best movies of the year.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (3/5 Stars)

What fresh hell is this?

It is hard to talk about “We Need to Talk about Kevin,” because it is not really a movie about something. It has a fragmented structure that jumps freely around a pivotal event at a local high school in which a teenager named Kevin takes his favorite bow and arrow and lets loose quite a few notches into his fellow classmates. We see Kevin as a little child showing many warning signs of his coming infamy. And we see him in jail afterwards but only when visited by family. And we never really see the massacre as it is happening because the movie is not about Kevin. It is about his mother.

Kevin is seen entirely through his mother’s eyes, and in those eyes, he is and has been an evil bastard ever since the day he was born. He wouldn’t stop crying as a baby, he was defiantly opposed to potty training as a toddler, and was prone to sadistic pranks on his mother and little sister up until he finally murdered a bunch of people. This movie is absorbing and unsettling in its moments, but as a whole lacks an arc. There is plenty here that a student of film can learn about composing memorable shots or creating unspoken tension in a scene, but I can’t recommend the movie as a story. Enjoy it in the moment is all I can say.

Tilda Swinton plays Kevin’s mother, Eva, in a state of almost continual mental exhaustion. Several different actors at various states play Kevin, Ezra Miller most memorably as the teenager. It is anybody’s guess whom is to blame for Kevin’s sociopathic tendencies, but it is clear that Eva is more than ambivalent about being a mother, not that even she deserved a kid like Kevin. The kid seemed to hate her even before he should have known of her dislike.

As I said, this movie exists entirely in the moment, and there are some great ones here. There is a nice scene when baby Kevin won’t stop his infernal wailing and Eva actually pauses near a jackhammer on the street just so she can get some respite from the sound. Then there is this almost uncanny ability of the director, Lynne Ramsey, to make food look and sound really disgusting. Behold how Kevin makes a jelly sandwich or the consistency of the oatmeal poured into the sink. And I suggest waiting a day before eating scrambled eggs after seeing this movie. Finally Ramsey has composed some really nice shots that would look great as posters. Take the look of Tilda Swinton after she has given birth, or hiding in the supermarket, or staring at her vandalized home smeared in red paint. It is a memorable performance made pretty special by the way Swinton is framed and edited. Should Tilda have gotten an Oscar Nomination? Yes, I think she probably should have.

But as I said, the movie though unpredictable in chronological structure is predictable in the sense that the characters do not change. Kevin is always a little sociopath and the movie is just one scene after another in which he is inconsiderate and frighteningly hateful toward his mother. I do not know, perhaps some people are just like that without explanation. A pretty good question may be why Kevin did not kill his mother as well on that fateful day. Well, perhaps living the life she leads afterward, shunned by society and receiving little else but curses and dirty looks, is a fate even worse than death. Tilda sure seems to play it that way and Kevin seems smart enough to know it.