Monthly Archives: January 2015

Three Assholes Talk A Most Violent Year

Matt: For a movie called A Most Violent Year, there wasn’t much actual violence with at least two people exiting the Coliseum last night calling it simply “slow”. Did A Most Violent Year hold your attention?

Jay: Yes, actually, it did. I agree that it was “slow” but I kind of liked the control of the pacing. It was very deliberate, which helped build the tension. I also agree that A Most Violent Year was neither terribly violent nor actually a year (the script keeps reminding us, actually, of a strict 30-day countdown, but I suppose “A Pretty Shitty Month” is a less compelling title).

Matt: I actually like A Pretty Shitty Month! The film is set in statistically one of the most violent years in New York’s history. I was born in 1981 and had no idea until now that I was born in A Most Violent Year.

Jay: The scenes of NYC were unrecognizable to me (and I assume to us) – subways filled with graffiti, garbage overflowing onto the streets – and the movie was shot in a really hazy palette of colour. There was snow, obviously, but also just this bleakness, like everything was beige or maybe sepia is a better word. How did that grittiness add to your understanding of the movie?

Sean: I think the bleakness helped set the tone for the movie. There was no real happy ending other than Abel is a bigger player and maybe as a result he could bribe the DA into giving him a better deal.

Matt: Time and place is everything. This is a very different New York than the one that we know, the one that people talk about from the early 80s. Abel’s world is a dangerous one and director J. C. Chandor immerses us in it. He doesn’t have to show much violence. The mood he creates reminds us of the danger.

Jay: Abel is certainly guilty of fraud and tax evasion, among other charges. Does his refusal to pick up a weapon make him a “good” man?

Sean: No, his choice not to use guns does not redeem him. He seemed to like to think he was better than his peers because of it but he was not a good guy.

Matt: I went into A Most Violent Year expecting a gangster film. What I got was almost an anti-gangster film with Abel doing almost anything to avoid becoming a gangster. He prides himself up until the end on walking a righteous path. Is he as morally superior as he would seem to like to believe? Is he more interested in avoiding the appearance of wrongdoing than he is actual wrongdoing?

Jay: I don’t think he kids himself that it was righteous, just “the most right”, and picking the most right of two wrongs doesn’t exactly equal righteous. He seems to have some interior moral code that he’s following, but mobsters often do have exactly that, a strict code, but one that’s just terribly skewed toward their own ends. Abel aspires to be more of a white-collar criminal rather than a gangster, but that’s just semantics. He doesn’t want to pull the trigger himself, but he doesn’t seem above putting out a hit on someone. He’s all about growing his business, and he seems willing to do that by any means necessary. He’s chasing after the American dream, so appearances do matter. I also think he’s smart; he’s not against committing crimes, and he’s definitely not innocent, but he thinks about consequences.

Jessica Chastain plays a wife who seems to challenge her husband to push his moral compass to the limit in order to “support the family.” Can you relate to these characters? Is there ever a time when, as a husband, you’ve felt that pressure?

Sean: I could not relate to either of the characters. I feel a drive to succeed but not to compromise my values in doing that, and I want to do well for my wife but don’t feel I am pressured to attain anything specific by her in order to support our family.

Jay: Really? Then I think you’ve misunderstood some things…

Matt: Uh-oh. So…. Is she the devil on her husband’s shoulder or is their dynamic more complicated than that?

Jay: You know, that’s a really smart question and I couldn’t have put it so well myself. Clearly she’s a little less scrupulous, but she’s also a little less smart. Not to say that she’s dumb. This may be 1981 but she’s no housewife. She’s ambitious and cut-throat and has her own ideas about how to provide for her family. She basically accuses him of being a coward so I’m surprised their marriage isn’t rockier. Ultimately I think he needs her, she’s the one who pushes him to greater heights, she’s partly what motivates him but she’s also what forces him into situations that make him uncomfortable. But as he says early on, “When it feels scary to jump that is exactly when you jump, otherwise you end up staying at the same place your whole life.

Matt: When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier this month, the list of Best Supporting Actress nominees were mostly identical to that of the Golden Globes with Jessica Chastain being replaced by Laura Dern. Should she have been included? According to IMDB, she’s received 18 nominations for her performance while the excellent Oscar Isaac has 3. Why do you think he hasn’t gotten more attention?

Jay: I’m not terribly upset she was left out, but I can’t say that Laura Dern was more worthy. I don’t have a particular appreciation for Jessica Chastain, but there were a couple of scenes that were show-stopping. Plus, anyone who can act through the 80s bangs and the big gaudy earrings and still be noticed has to be doing something right.

As for Oscar Isaac, it is a bit of a mystery. I remember when I first started seeing previews for this film in theatres, it took me a while to place Chastain. The shoulder pads were distracting, I guess, not to mention the press-on nails, and I had to go through a rolodex of actresses in my mind before I got to her name and it clicked. Him I recognized right away, but in the movie he seemed way more transformed. Maybe it’s because the last big movie I saw (and loved) him in was Inside Llewyn Davis, and the difference is astonishing. He comports himself like a don, like his empire is vast and his future assured. We know that’s not necessarily the case, but there’s never a hair out of place or a stray piece of lint on his ubiquitous camel coat. Appearances clearly mean a lot to this man; he wants to make it clear he’s risen above his station. And I believe it. I believed his pride, his hubris, his sense of “right.” So I don’t know why he hasn’t been singled out, although considering the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, maybe I have an idea why.
…

Cake

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I actually worried whether I was the worst person to review this movie, or the best, which would crush me. Jennifer Aniston plays Claire, a woman who suffers from chronic pain, a condition which is not unknown to me.

Claire attends a support group for chronic pain sufferers where the members are currently dealing with the recent suicide of one of their own (Anna Kendrick). Claire is unwilling to share in group but is haunted by visions of her dead friend.

Jennifer Aniston is absolutely the reason to see this film. Her performance is very touching because it’s raw and real and visceral. It’s hard to watch, or it was for me. Soon we start to see that there’s a lot more to her pain than just the physical, though the script remains maddeningly vague on these parts. Actually, the story feels anesthetized, like it doesn’t quite want us to feel what we know must be there.

I worried about what it would be like to see the private struggles of my life up on the big screen, but I came away not thinking of myself, but of my husband. In the movie, Claire’s husband (Chris Messina, love him) is estranged and it’s not hard to see how she’s managed to push away all the people in her life. Her pain makes her angry and acerbic, but it’s also a clever strategy for getting rid of people she doesn’t want to deal with. She wants to be in pain, be alone with her pain. Being in pain makes sense to her. Her maid, played lovingly by Adriana Barraza, is her only remaining caregiver, one with seemingly infinite patience for the pills and the bitterness and the constant setbacks. But the brutality of Claire’s expression weighs on her heavily, as it must. This is actually a very sweet and savvy exploration of the relationship between domestic and employer.

The story of what happened to Claire unfolds too slowly, and allows the audience to connect the dots before the big reveals, diluting their punch. But the full story is never wholly understood, so the emotional payoff, both ours and Claire’s, is lacking.

Mr. Turner

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Earlier this week, Matt and I went to the Bytowne, a historic old cinema with a vintage red velvet curtain, conveniently located in downtown Ottawa, to see Mr. Turner. At 3:30 in the afternoon, we sat among a sea of gray hair, the audience makeup largely retirement-aged, discount-wielding seniors here to see “the show”. What show? The early bird show, that’s what! No matter which specific film is showing, it’s all the same if a) you’re going to talk loudly throughout the whole thing, as old people so often do, and the ones directly behind us certainly did with vigour if not with understanding, or b) you’re going to sleep throughout the whole thing, as the old man sitting beside Matt did, his light snores drowned out by the shouting behind us, and his sleeping body obscuring our access to the aisle when we’d finally won our freedom.

Mr. Turner is a biopic about the famous painter J.M.W. Turner, a man far more complex than I ever would have guessed. I’m finding it hard to review a film that I simultaneously felt was very, very good, but also a yawn, so instead I’m passing the buck and forcing Matt into an interview of sorts.

Jay: Mike Leigh is known to be scrupulous in his research and has recreated the last quarter-century of Turner’s life quite faithfully. What this means is this movie is relatively free of conventional “plot.” How did you deal with this as a viewer, and do you believe it was an asset or a detractor to the film?

Matt: I think Leigh’s attention to detail was both Mr. Turner’s strength and its weakness. It made for a production design that was almost above reproach and that was almost always interesting to look at. His commitment to historical accuracy was admirable and to his credit, I never felt talked down to as I often do when I got to the movies. Quite the opposite. I think he might have given me too much credit. The danger is a movie can sometimes get so bogged down in these details that it can alienate the viewer and Mr. Turner alienated me. Mr. Turner didn’t just take its time, it was slow and all the facts seemed to get in the way of telling a story.

Jay: Yeah, I thought some of the asides, like the little rant about slavery, kind of took you out of the movie, and definitely added length but not illumination. Other scenes, like when a young Queen Victoria visits the Academy and he overhears her spurn his work, are so much more vital. We see Turner stung by the Queen’s rejection of his work and then lampooned by music hall comedians for his move toward abstraction. He wants to please the public and yet isn’t prepared to compromise his vision to do so. Do you think director Mike Leigh sees himself in this character?

Matt: I don’t know much about Leigh except that I’ve sat through several of his films. Sometimes it’s a pleasure, sometimes it’s a chore. Even my favourite of his films unfold way too slowly for mainstream North American audiences. He seems to tell the stories he wants to tell without compromising his vision and isn’t afraid to alienate viewers with shorter attention spans. So, in tha way, I can see how he would identify with Mr. Turner and that would explain why everything about this movie feels like it was the one that he has been waiting his entire career to make.

Jay: I think it was in the works for years and years, actually. That being said, I imagine that to pour so much of yourself into a movie, you’d want as many butts in the seats as possible. Movie directors aren’t normally known for making art for art’s sake. He works with a lot of his long-time collaborators, like Dick Pope (or Poop, according to the Oscars), his amazing cinematographer, and this time he also cast his own romantic partner as Turner’s romantic partner, Mrs. Booth. Turner not only neglects his family, but outright denies them to most others who ask. Why do you think that was and why did his attitude toward family seemingly change once he met Mrs Booth?

Matt: Well, this movie threw a lot of information at me so I’m not sure but I interpreted that as shame and embarrassment over having neglected his family. I thought it was easier for him to start over with a new family than repair the damage that he did to his first one.

Jay: I felt like he genuinely just didn’t care. Like the art was the only thing that mattered to him. He didn’t have time or interest in relationships, except for his father, whom he cherished yet seemed to treat as a servant. There were so many seemingly contradictory aspects of the character that I can’t believe Spall pulled it off, and with grunts half the time rather than words! Timothy Spall has received many accolades for his portrayal of Mr. Turner, including best actor from the London Film Critics, the New York Film Critics, and the Cannes Film Festival. Usually known as more of a character actor, how do you feel about his failure to earn an Oscar nomination?

Matt: Well, I wouldn’t call it a failure because it was one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. He’s an actor I’ve always admired and Leigh is the only director I can think of who would have the balls to cast Spall as a lead. I think the Academy snub is mostly due to 2014 just being a particularly competitive year when it comes to male lead performances with David Oyelowo already being one of the most controversial Oscar snubs in recent memory. I think the main difference between the Oscars and the awards that Spall has already won is that the Oscars are a huge television event and they have to walk that fine line between being “prestigious” but also putting on a good show. So they want Bradley Cooper and Benedict Cumberbatch to show up. I think the Oscars try to find a balance between the tastes of critics and the tastes of audiences and I think Spall’s snub mostly boils down to Mr. Turner’s failure – or lack of effort – to connect with the general public.

Jay: Agreed. It WAS a great year to be a man in the movies, but then again, isn’t it always? I mean, it’s great to be a male artist period, as evidenced by Turner himself. He lived the life he wanted while abusing the various women in his life. I like how Leigh presented this to us without judgement. Here is a man, who is both great, and deeply flawed. And I loved how the whole movie took on a glow, like it was a painting come to life. Actually, many of the many scenes n Mr. Turner open in long shot, with this huge, gorgeous landscape and Turner barely visible down in the corner, just a solitary outline of a figure. It kind of reminded me of the “hidden” elephant in one of his canvasses. Tip of the hat to all the film makers who made that feeling possible.

They Came Together

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Okay…. Whaaatttt???

A lot of funny people came together to make an all-out spoof of Hollywood date movies and, mostly because of the cast, it works better than it really deserves to.

I can’t decide if they weren’t trying hard enough or if they were trying way too hard but the jokes are constant and usually way too obvious, with rom com cliches being called attention to as directly as possible. (The waiter literally has a pole up his ass). There’s a lot here that really doesn’t work. Some jokes go on way too long practically daring you to yell at the screen. But at the rate that they’re spitting out jokes and gags, some are bound to stick and the ones that did had me laughing through the ones that didn’t.

Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler play the two leads and they’re likeability go a long way in selling some pretty lazy writing, a lot of which would probably not make it past dress on an average week at Saturday Night Live. Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms, Jason Mantzoukas, Cobie Smulders, and New York City are just the tip of the iceberg in a supporting cast that should really know better. Too many funny people worked on this movie for it not to be funnier and I’m almost embarassed that I laughed at all.

I blame Jay a little. I watched it with her and when she laughs I laugh. Don’t watch it alone.

Unbroken

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I was cynical about this movie because critics told me to be. “It’s bad”, they wrote, “don’t bother.” But I watched it and thought: it’s not so bad. Good, even, in some parts. Basically redundant I suppose, but not bad. So why then was it panned? And why then did I feel much the same way upon viewing The Monuments Men, also derided by critics – maybe it wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t the disaster I’d been lead to believe.

So now I’m worried that critics are taking pot-shots at “celebrity” directors. There’s almost nothing conventionally roastable about George Clooney, yet Tina Fey and Amy Pohler still found a way to mock him for making what I thought was a decent movie. He pretended to be a good sport about it, but they hit him where it hurts. If Kim Kardashian was standing behind the camera, fine, open season. But Angelina Jolie has paid her dues and proves it with a movie that is technically sound, and both made movies this year that contribute to a proud historical record for their country. Clint Eastwood, another actor-turned-director did the same with American Sniper, and though I’d say it’s the weakest of the three, it’s being hailed (although not uniformly) as the best.

Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a true tale that’s been simmering in different Hollywood pots for the past 70 years. He was an Olympic runner who competed in the Berlin Games and then joined the army just a few years later after the Pearl Harbour attack. As a bombardier in world war two, he and his fellow crewmates were sent out on a search and rescue mission on a plane that couldn’t hack it, and went down due to mechanical failure. One of only three survivors, he then spent more than 6 weeks at sea, barely surviving only to be washed onto Japanese soil where he brutally treated as a POW for the remainder of the war.

You can see why people thought this would make a good movie; it moves episodically from one huge hurdle to the next, a great showcase for the human spirit (and for American spirit in particular). In fact, it’s a relic, the kind of war movie that casts the Japanese as “the enemy” pure and simple, and its indomitable American protagonist as the uncomplicated hero. But what should have been great turns out merely to be good. It’s beautifully shot but generic – we’ve seen the castaway thing a million times, and the POW thing a million more. Jolie adds nothing of her own to these events.

Jack O’Connell impresses again in a physically demanding role (he’s even better in Starred Up) and the cast is strong, but no one is given much more than the standard paces to work with, the script being surprisingly traditional after a Cohen brothers treatment. The movie opens with some nerve-wracking battle scenes in the sky, but from the moment the plane splashes down, we’re drowning in misery and degradation.

While Zamperini’s story is one of redemption and forgiveness, Unbroken shows only despair. Zamperini’s character is lost, a sense of triumph unearned, and the movie stirs emotion only by default.

Maps to the Stars

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Well…that was interesting. Not quite what I’ve come to expect (and fear) from David Cronenberg, but not your typical Hollywood fare either, though that’s exactly what it’s satirizing.

John Cusack is the family patriarch, a successful therapist\coach of some sort, with a book deal a talk-show circuit and an awful lot of bullshit. His wife acts as the agent for their spoiled child-start son, fresh out of rehab which he entered at the age of 9, and who’s still the “good kid” and certainly the bankable one, compared to a sister (Mia Wasikowska ) who’s just finished an involuntary stint in a sanitorium and now works as a “chore whore” (personal assistant) for an aging diva still aching for parts (Julianne Moore).

I confess that I didn’t always know where this is going, and I’m still not sure where it went, but the performances, Moore’s especially, were so strong, it hardly mattered. It occurs to me that an ode to Julianne Moore is long overdue here – in this movie and in so many others, she just goes for broke. It’s not always pretty but she’s one of few actresses not deterred by the unflattering. In this she goes from raw and wounded to vacuous and self-absorbed, but she does it in a way that’s not unsympathetic. The misery and sorrow feel real and thus it’s impossible to really hate her. Moore somehow manages to humanize her characters and put a real spark into them.

The script is less than brilliant. It’s easy to point fingers at Hollywood, to laugh at the yoga and the dysfunction, but it’s already been done dozens of times. This is just another fresh layer of fucked-up.

In Canada, we used to honour cinematic achievement with a Genie award (they’ve now merged into the “Canadian Screen Awards”). They’re irrelevant as ever (Cronenberg has 5) but if you’ve ever wondered what else they’re good for you, boy are you in for a treat.

The Monuments Men

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Based on the “true story” of a motely gang of art historians, museum curators, and the occasional sculptor for balance, who risked their lives to save and protect major works of art that were stolen by Nazis during the second world war, The Monuments Men, as they were called, feels a little like a war-themed Ocean’s 11.

Critics were pretty hard on this movie, but having finally watched it, I feel like that’s unfair. Art expert Franks Stokes assembles a crack team just as impressive as any of Danny Ocean’s – Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville and Dimitri Leonidas all give strong performances though they compete for screen time. Bill Murray and Bob Balaban are probably my favourite duo; they play off each other fabulously. The trouble with The Monuments Men is with the tone: this wants to be a light-hearted caper, like Ocean’s 11, but Clooney feels too much reverence for the subject and so throws in another lecture rather than a joke. Truthfully, when George Clooney lectures, I’m going to listen. That man has the twinkliest eyes short of Santa Claus. But this is not exactly playing to his cast’s strength, or his audience’s expectations.

The Monuments Men arrive mostly as the war is winding down, so there aren’t a lot of battle scenes, which is not to say there is no blood. Anyone looking for a typical, action-driven war movie will be out of luck, though it certainly looks like one, with beautiful, crumbly post-war Europe shot and framed with care. This one is more of an intellectual exercise, with a moral question at its heart: is a human life worth a piece of art?

Clooney’s character answers this rather touchingly, in the end, with an older version of himself visiting a monument he recovered in the 1970s. “Yeah,” he says, eyes twinkling. I wondered for half a second if this was perhaps the real Frank Stokes but it was the twinkle that gave it away. Must be a Clooney, I thought, and so it was (Nick, George’s dad).

George Clooney knows this is a story worth telling, and seeks to honour the men who made it possible. It just feels like maybe this is the wrong medium to do it. Even at two hours, he just barely manages to give each of his actors one big “moment.” The monuments are pretty well served, but to really know the men, maybe a miniseries would have been more appropriate. Next time, George, take it HBO.

Men, Women & Children

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Just when you thought Jason Reitman could do no wrong, along comes Men, Women & Children, 2014’s movie we loved to hate.

But why did critics pan it and audiences avoid it? It’s not really an objectionable premise: a bunch of teenage kids, and their square parents, realize that the internet is colouring and changing their interactions and relationships on every level. It’s got a big cast of talented people. But it all just feels so sad. So infinitely sad.

The characters are all connected but the movie feels disconnected. As a necessity, everyone’s reacting to their screens and not to each other. The internet’s destroying us! – not exactly an original idea – but Reitman goes at it ambitiously, and vehemently.

For a script about technology, which is rooted firmly in the now, from a director who’s usually fairly with-it (witty teenage abortion with Juno, recession fallout in Up in the Air), this movie feels awfully stodgy and seems to miss the point. Plus, every single scenario, each character in the movie, exists not to tell a story but to tell a cautionary tale, one that will bash you over the head with its obviousness.

But the biggest crime that Reitman commits is that he fails to see that all of this internet-is-evil proof on offer in this film actually makes the opposite case. Eating disorders predate cellphones. Cheating on your spouse came before the internet. Exploiting children? Adolescent heartbreak? Parents worrying about teenagers? All very possible even without the help or the hindrance of technology. The weird thing about this movie is that the greatest evil seems to be when technology’s in the hands of the parents, not the kids. They’re the ones making the biggest mistakes, and shouldn’t they be the ones to know better?

Jason Reitman took a big swing here, but he missed by a mile.

Penguins of Madagascar

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Sidekicks can steal the show – just ask the minions of Despicable Me, and now, belatedly, the Penguins of Madagascar, in their very own spy thriller!

The movie opens on a March of the Penguins-like origin story for this band of ragamuffins, and a documentary film crew (voiced brilliantly, in part, by Werner Herzog!) show them to be, let’s say, more bumbling than brilliant. This proves true once they’re grown as well – they escape the circus from the last movie but land themselves right in the hands of a nemesis they didn’t know they had (John Malkovich), an old zoo-mate from their Central Park days. This nemesis, also known as “Dave”, has it out for penguins in general and these ones in particular – their cuteness took the crowds away from his own zoo exhibit and he’s been harbouring a grudge ever since. The penguins seem to be in a little over their heads but an agency called the North Wind (a wolf voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, a neurotic polar bear, a sarcastic seal, and a sexy snow owl) swoops in to take over the rescue operation.

The traditional animation isn’t ground-breaking and the story’s not exactly scintillating, but I can see how this will work for kids. It’s full of fun visuals, simple puns, and wacky sight gags -“Melons, dead ahead!” It’s very hard not to have fun watching this movie, and if you’re a littlun all sugared up on snack bar, all the better – the pace is frenetic! I’m not sure it has much to keep adults captivated – too silly and earnest – but you should at least be able to sit through it with the kids. And if you’re missing King Julien, then just sit through about half a Pitbull song (if there’s a better musical representation for this empty-but-flashy animation, I don’t know it) during the credits, and whoop, there he is.

Begin Again

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Jay watched and reviewed this movie awhile ago and I can’t say that mine would look much different than hers so I won’t bother with a full review of Begin Again, director John Carney’s somewhat disappointing attempt to relive the magic of Once. All I’ll say is that Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo do their best to replicate the improvised feel of Once but it really would have worked better with less recognizable faces.

What I do want to comment on is the recent Oscar nomination for Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois’ original song Lost Stars. The music really is the best part of the movie. Even when the songs don’t leave a lasting impression the way those in Once did, Carney films the recording sessions in a way that makes you want to pick up a guitar and jam with them. Carney has always been good at capturing the evolutions of songs as their written and continue to change each time that they’re played.

There are a lot of songs written for Begin Again and I’m not sure Lost Stars stood out for me. It is one of the better examples though of a song evolving over time with Adam Levine’s hilariously over-produced butchering of it alone making the song worthy of recognition.

It can’t win though. I had mostly forgotten about the song almost as quickly as I had forgotten about the movie itself and, when being forced to compete with a movie with the emotional impact of Selma and a song with the emotional impact of Glory, there’s really no contest.