Monthly Archives: April 2015

The Water Diviner

Russell Crowe is my gluten: I’m fucking intolerant. It’s bad for me. It’s not going to sit well, and it sure as heck isn’t gonna end well. So why? Why do I do it? Because his personal life is a little loathsome to me? I mean, if that were my criteria, what movie would possibly be left for me to watch? I can’t possibly avoid them all. I can’t stop watching Gwyneth Paltrow movies just because Gwyneth is too goopy. Okay, bad example. I do avoid Gwyneth Paltrow — I was going to say like the plague, but that’s offensive. I’ve never even met the plague. It’s a horrible cliché for one thing, and it’s also woefully irrelevant. In fact, I do nothing to avoid the plague. I don’t have to. I do, however, have to actively filter Gwyneth Paltrow from my movie going experiences. So if I ever do meet the plague, I suppose I will avoid it like Gwyneth Paltrow.

Anyway, wasn’t I reviewing a movie?

Right. Russell Crowe stars in and directs this little ditty, and I’m calling it a little ditty to trivialize it a bit, even though it’s an emotional movie about the death of your children, and the horrors of war. But it’s also got enough technical problems to make most movie studios embarrassed. You’d think. Certainly someone who’s been in the industry as long as Crowe in should know better.

Even I can admit he gives a pretty good performance as a grief-stricken father – he sent all 3 sons to the battle of Gallipoli (World War 1) and none made it back. His wife can’t cope so he promises her that he’ll bring them back to be buried in consecrated ground in Australia. He’s not super welcome in Turkey, where resentments are still oozing, but he’s convinced that he can find his sons the same way he finds water – by divining them.

It’s not a complete disaster but it lacks heart, and you sense how powerful this was supposed to be so all you can taste is the failure. I wish someone better had done this movie. The battle scenes felt very low-budget. I could practically see the red price tags and the clearance-rack roots. At the same time, it also provided That Moment in the movie when you stop and take notice. All these young men, mown down but not effectively killed, lie on the ground all night, waiting to die with no one coming for them, alone in their agony. And we just hear the groans and moans of unadulterated pain, and it chilled me like no amount of blood and guts and gore ever could.

Take Care

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What is it about a movie that makes it utterly, utterly forgettable? I watched this last night on Netflix and had to scrounge around for the title this morning because hello – forgot it.

Leslie Bibb plays the victim of a recent car accident. She’s laid up with broken bones and such and isn’t crazy about convalescing in the New Jersey home of her overbearing older sister. But it turns out that there’s no one in New York chomping at the bit to take care of her, especially not her blandly good-looking neighbour who makes weird guttural noises through the shared walls of their apartments and isn’t keen on doing favours. So instead of doing any logical thing, she instead calls up an old boyfriend who owes her (according to her) because she nursed him through cancer and then he promptly dumped her, and got rich.

Guess who’s not crazy about the idea? Well, the ex-boyfriend, naturally, but also: his current girlfriend, who’s already got jealousy issues.

The dialogue is as limp as cheap balloon the day after a party. There’s no real chemistry between the two leads. Bibb’s character is so needy and entitled it’s hard to really cut her a break, and the overacting doesn’t help. It isn’t terrible, it’s just never good. Occasionally serviceable as a time water I suppose, but little more than that.

The Longest Ride

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So I’m convalescing in Toronto and I figure, what better way to rest my body than to take in a long, boring movie that should never have been made and I would never otherwise see, in a dark theatre on Yonge and Dundas?

87 (approximately) escalator rides up, and you’re in a space where you can forget that it’s actually a nice spring Friday afternoon somewhere, somewhere where Cokes don’t cost $8 a pop, and relax into the last movie on your list because you’ve literally seen everything else.

And if I may just sidebar for a moment here: In Ottawa, at least, our new cushy VIP theatre with the comfy recliners and the alcoholic beverages, doesn’t show any movies until evening. Does that feel a little judgy to anyone else? Just me? Yeah, I know it’s 1:30pm on a weekday, but I’m playing hooky and I’m a big girl, so if I’d rather a vodka something than a Coke anything, let me use my big girl pants and decide for myself, mmkay?

Back to the movie. Because I know you’re super interested.

It’s called The Longest Ride and it does in fact feel like they’re taking you on an unforgivably long ride. You might even end up chapped. It should be called Trying and Failing to Recapture the Magic of The Notebook. I’m no big fan of The Notebook, but I get why it has its rabid defenders. I think maybe we’ve mined Nicholas Sparks for all he’s worth. These aren’t diamonds, if they ever were. It’s just rocks. Worthless rocks.

A rodeo cowboy who can’t stop riding bulls even though his life depends on it meets a pretty college student who’s about to leave for a big city art experience that can’t be missed. But they go ahead and fall in love anyway. They meet an older gentleman (Alan Alda) who can’t read so good anymore, darn eyes, so cute little college student reads the letters from his sweetie for him. And as she reads we as the audience get to witness this second love story unfold as well. Two for one! But it’s like getting 2 for 1 at Pizza Pizza: yeah, it’s a deal, but it’s garbage that makes you feel queasy and you know you shouldn’t so just don’t.

Nobody in this movie is watchable, except Alda, whose character is woefully underdeveloped. If you’re thinking he might be a lush island in the middle of this ship wreck, think again. Britt Robertson, who plays the cute young thing, came as a bit of shock to me when Sean helpfully pointed out that she was appearing in two trailers back to back, this one, and also Tomorrowland, which creeped me out, because she’s playing a kid in the latter and not so much in the former. The creep factor never truly left me. She’s well into her twenties but looks about 12. So when cowboy gets all up in her bidness, it feels letchy and gross. Cowboy, as you may have heard, is played by Scott Eastwood, son of Clint. He has the same squint and very little ability. But who needs ability when you’ve purchased perfect abs? So what if he looks more like he’s been raised on the beaches of southern California than on a ranch in North Carolina? Details! Throw another country song on the jukebox, squinty! Actual lyrics: “I feel a sin comin on, please Jesus don’t hold me back.” Allrightie. And the director couldn’t resist upping the kitsch factor even more – the other pair of flashback young lovers is played by more Hollywood royalty progeny – Jack Huston (grandson of John) and Oona Chaplin (granddaughter of Charlie).

The drivel is flavourless and nobody here has the chops to rise above. And the two love stories don’t even have anything to do with each other. It’s just two stories that aren’t individually interesting enough, and because of divided screen time, you get maybe 3/4 of one, and half of the other, neither adding up to much. It’s two-dimensional and a little bit preachy and it’s NOT EVEN GODDAMN SEXY. So I’m still trying to figure out how the director of the Biggie biopic Notorious is doing Nicholas Sparks now, and why nobody told him not to, and how I can politely get off this very long ride.

Monkey Kingdom

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There is so much luscious photography here, a real gluttony of beautiful images that intimately capture a tribe of macaque monkeys in Sri Lanka that I’d like to look the other way, I really would. But Disney Nature isn’t just making nature documentaries. It’s telling stories. Feel good stories. And if the monkeys don’t provide enough drama, or a convenient narrative arc, then one will be provided for them.

The monkeys live in an abandoned ancient city reclaimed by the jungles of Sri Lanka. It’s a striking if haunting place to film monkeys being their monkey selves. The movie focuses on one in particular – Maya, a “low-born” lady monkey with a bowl cut a la Jim Carrey in Dumb And Dumber. Poor Maya gets the last and worst of everything. Even though it’s Tina Fey doing the narrating, you can almost hear Rodney Dangerfield going into his “I get no respect, no respect at all” routine.

Then the soap opera unfolds. Maya gets a boyfriend, but then he gets exiled by the possessive head of household, who normally doesn’t give her the time of day but instead hangs out with the three ugly step sisters who taunt our poor Maya and don’t let her join in any reindeer games. So of course when the boyfriend is run off we find out Maya’s pregnant and she has to be a single Mom, scavenging children’s birthday parties to put frosting and cheesies on the table. And then an enemy tribe shows up to do battle because they want to live on Castle Rock and so far Maya’s tribe only shares reluctantly with an antisocial mongoose. It feels a little like an episode of The Walking Dead – two bands fighting for survival, wanting the best and safest territory for themselves. Maya’s tribe loses, and must leave. Her band of macaques ends up going into the city where they literally monkey around – stealing food from carts, shop lifting from stalls, gorging on people’s dinners while their backs are turned. AND THEIR BACKS ARE ALWAYS TURNED!

There’s a lot to commend and recommend, but let’s face it: Disney is staging its documentaries. These stories don’t just happen in the wild. If you watch, say, Planet Earth, David Attenborough will narrate what is happening so that you can fully appreciate what you see. Tina Fey, wonderful as she is, and I did love the jokey, conversational tone of her narration, is often telling us what the monkeys are thinking. And just how does Tina Fey know what the monkeys are thinking? Did the monkeys provide a script? Is Disney just filming an elaborate play put on by very clever monkeys? Since when does a nature documentary have plot?

I should have known. I should have known that a film studio who banks on sympathetic, singing lions, and little birds who braid hair, and apes who adopt humans, and sharks who won’t eat fish, and dogs who plan elaborate, romantic dates, well, they’re probably not going to be able to shake that tendency in a hurry, are they? So do they give in to their singing-animal desires and use The Monkees as a soundtrack? Sure they do. And throw in Salt N Pepa’s Whatta Man for good measure. I know it sounds like I’m knocking it and I guess I kind of am. I’m a bit of a purist. But the truth is, this is eminently watchable, and friendly, and does a good job of bridging the gap between cartoon and nature show. It will engage children, and it’s not a bad place to start for a young, curious mind – hopefully curious enough to look beyond the silliness and think about what life in the jungle really means.

The Wedding Ringer

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Well, I liked it more than I liked Get Hard!

Josh Gad is a dream. Maybe not so much in this particular vehicle, but he’s a dream. I was lucky enough to catch him on Broadway when he originated the role of Elder Cunningham in Book of Mormom. And he was a goddamn dream. So I will follow him to the ends of the Earth. I will follow him into a Disney princess movie, and apparently, into a film that feels like the leftovers of an Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn comedy.

And while Josh Gad is lovely and Kevin Hart is lovely, they don’t make quite the same team as the old Wedding Crashers did. Darn.

It is funny though, it’s just not quite charming. Doug (Gad) is getting married in two weeks and the jig is up. Those friends of his that will fill out the astronomical bridal party? They’re all just figments of his imagination. Little Dougie doesn’t make friends so easily. But his wedding planner knows just the guy. Jimmy (Hart) makes his living helping out friendless men. He provides the services of a best man, and if need be, the whole damn wolf pack. It’s a tall order in just two weeks, so crazy it even has a name – the golden tux – and to pull it off is gonna take a miracle.

Good thing Doug has for some reason claimed that his best friend Bic is a priest! So poor Kevin Hart shows up to family functions pretending not only to be BFFs with a guy he’s only just met, but a super religious one as well. Not awkward at all.

The plot is tired. It’s so tired. Like, anorexic tired. But the bridal party is such a weird, motley crew that you can sow some real laughs there. There’s no racial tension here, no rape jokes, but there is Cloris Leachman on fire, so there’s that.

Are your expectations sufficiently modest? Do you just want to sit on your couch and have some moderate laughs without needing to think? Are you hoping to go to bed later that night without really remember what you watched? If so, have I got the movie for you – generic and totally harmless, and maybe just funny enough.

Woman In Gold

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Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a famous painting by Gustav Klimt, the last and most representative of his “golden phase”, so-called because the oil painting is literally covered in painstakingly applied gold leaf. Adele’s husband commissioned it; the Bloch-Bauers were both friends and patrons of the artist Klimt and this portrait hung proudly in their home until Nazis stole it during the second world war, as the luckier of Adele’s family fled, and the unlucky died in death camps.

Today we know her simply as “Woman in Gold” because Nazis felt Klimt was distasteful (not quite Aryan enough, I suppose) so Austria hung it on the walls of a museum, pretending it was rightfully theirs, and white-washing the fact that its subject was a Jew.

The movie tells the “true” story of Maria Altmann, Adele’s beloved niece, as she tries to win this and several other pieces of family artwork back from the Austrian government. Austria, in a bid for good PR, opened its courts to “art repatriation” and gave families the chance to claim the things unlawfully taken from them during the war. Of course, Austria never intended to let go of things they now consider to be national treasures (and this Klimt alone is said to be worth $100 million). So while they smile and nod at Maria, her request is rejected, and likely never actually considered.

So Maria lawyers up, choosing noob Ryan Reynolds because he has Austrian roots instead of experience or knowledge. And this connection does push him to do good work, to pursue this for years through any venue he can. But the actor Ryan Reynolds isn’t quite up to the task. He pales beside Helen Mirren, but he also struggles to bring any gravitas or seriousness to a role that demands it. So it’s hard to take this as a drama about justice and redemption when it is cast like a romcom.

But I did feel emotionally compelled by the material. Maria’s life is told in flashbacks to her Viennese life just before the Nazis invaded and the Austrians welcomed them with open arms, and flowers. Now she’s seeking to right wrongs committed half a century ago, wrongs that still smart and always will, and that can’t really ever be reconciled. A painting can be physically returned, but not so of her parents’ lives. Maria goes to Austria only reluctantly – too many painful memories – and finds that the people there have not entirely let the past go: she finds a kind-hearted journalist willing to help, but is also accosted by a total stranger who basically gives her a “you people” speech and tells her to let the Holocaust go.

The movie gives her (and us) a fabulous Hollywood ending. The case garners enough attention that they shame the committee into (eventually) doing the right thing. Maria refuses to sell the painting, instead opting to find it a home in America, where she too has fled, and built a new life. But in real life, when Maria reclaimed the painting, she turned around and sold it for 135 million dollars, and while it is absolutely her right to do so, I guess the script writer thought it took a little away from the triumph to make this known. So while I enjoyed this movie, I think it let us down. It didn’t respect the audience or the character enough to let her stand as is – not as caricature of virtuosity and justice, but a real, live human being who went through hell and is still, all these years later, trying to put the pieces back together however she can.

Animal Kingdom

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When Josh’s Mom dies beside him of a heroin overdose while they watch some crap TV, he nonchalantly calls for an ambulance, and then for his estranged grandmother, since he’s a minor and has nowhere else to go. His mother has struggled to keep him away from her family, consisting of 3 dangerous, criminal uncles, but his grandmother has no such qualms, affectionately letting them use her home as their base of operations.

Very quickly Josh is sucked into this world, and it’s brutal. He’s just a kid, he doesn’t want to be there, he doesn’t have any criminal aspirations, but this is a rough world with few options. For better or worse, this is his pack, and as its weakest member, he knows it’s kill or be killed.

A well-intentioned cop tells him “Everything sits in the order somewhere. Things survive because they’re strong, and everything reaches an understanding. But not everything survives because it’s strong. Some creatures are weak, but they survive because they’re being protected by the strong for one reason or another. You may think that, because of the circles you move in or whatever, that you’re one of the strong creatures, but you’re not, you’re one of the weak ones.”

I think this was meant to scare him into testifying against his family, but it definitely makes him think. Humans have evolved to live in family units for protection and survival, but Josh’s family is full of beasts. They come from a place where your worth isn’t measured in blood or bond, but in how useful you are, or how much of a threat you are. Family means nothing – anyone can be sacrificed if it means advancing your own survival.

Ben Mendelsohn is chilling as the oldest and most feared uncle. He will make your skin crawl. You have to admire this movie for airing its dirty laundry so unflinchingly, but that’s what makes it hard to enjoy in the traditional sense. You root for the kid of course, and despair that there’s no one to take his side, and become despondent at his lack of options. Director David Michod takes the slow-burn approach, creating a taut sense of tension that’s hard to shake. Jacki Weaver is SO good in this, so good. She’s the matriarch of this family, presenting different faces to cops and to criminals, and never ever breaking.

This movie is noir but not violent. It’s all about the creep. The fantastic score is all menace. It distinguishes itself among other crime family dysfunction in the genre by being realistic and quite matter-of-fact, and it’s the lack of explosiveness that shocks you in the end. A great film that makes for great commentary, but not something I’ve easily shaken off.

Chappie

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The unsolicited, one-text review of the movie Chappie, by my sister:

“It wasn’t great. Chappie was a terrible movie.”

Cop Movies!

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Sean

There’s nothing like cop week to get the dirty taste of dance movies out of your mouth! Thanks Wandering Through the Shelves for sponsoring yet another thoughtful Thursday theme, and for giving me the perfect excuse for subjecting my wife to all the explodey movies she normally turns her cute little nose up at.

Bad Boys: Mike & Marcus (Will Smith & Martin Lawrence) are two “loose cannon” cops, not to mention best friends, who spend so much time together they sound like an old married couple – the kind constantly threatening to get a divorce. But damn if they don’t pull together in times of trouble! Legend has it that this script was originally intended for Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey – now just imagine that movie for a minute, if you will.

Heat: Bank robbers start to feel “the heat” from cops when their latest robbery turns out to be a little sloppy. Lieutenant Al Pacino is on to them but Robert De Niro needs one last heist before he can retire (isn’t that always the way?). Then of course De Niro makes his fatal mistake – he goes against the golden rule ‘Never have anything in your life that you can’t walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner.’

Die Hard: It’s Die Hard, what else do you have to say? It’s Christmas AND he’s off duty (plus he’s NYPD visiting LA), but John McClane (Bruce Willis) is still a bad-ass motherfucker who will single-handedly END YOU.

Jay

I watched a lot of cop movies this week and it turns out that a lot of my favourite jams just happen to have cops in them. Actually, if you look hard enough, probably there’s a cop or two in nearly every movie. There were cops in dance movie Billy Elliot, and cops in teen comedy Superbad, and more cops than you can shake a stick at in the black and white movies we watched a while back. They’re everywhere, even in outer space, but above all, they’re immediately below 🙂
Fargo Marge Gunderson is probably my favourite cop-hero of all time. She doesn’t do the ass-slide over the hoods of cars, she doesn’t use karate to subdue perps twice her size, and she doesn’t cause millions of dollars in damage as she careens her car wildly through populated city streets. She’s just a quiet woman getting er done – you know, kind of like a real cop would do. Frances McDormand is crazy-talented, and I love watching her waddle through this movie with her quaint sense of humour, her helmet hair, the meals she shares with her husband. She doesn’t thump her chest or swing her dick around but she’s persistent and dogged and we enjoy watching her unravel this case – poor used car salesman Jerry (William H. Macy); he never really stood a chance against such a humbly formidable opponent.

The Departed This one is kind of on the other end of the spectrum, isn’t it? Two young cops join the force – one, Matt Damon, has a pristine record but works as a mole for mob boss Jack Nicholson. The other, Leonardo DiCaprio, comes from a rough background which helps him go deep under cover, infiltrating the gang, and feeding information back to the only two cops who know he’s actually a good guy – Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. What ends up happening is that these two chase each other, relentlessly trying to uncover the mole while staying hidden themselves. It’s tense, degrading work, and losing means you pay with your life. Honestly, my favourite cop is probably the one played by Mark Wahlberg. He just goes so off the hook, unpredictable, balls to the wall, you have to admire it. The ending leads me to believe that he’s not clean. But is he a disgruntled ex-cop gone rogue or is he somebody’s rat? Either way, “If a gun is pointed at you, it doesn’t matter if you’re a cop or a criminal.”

21 Jump Street Aaaaaand switching gears again, one of my favourite cop buddy movies of recent years, and probably ever (although, for the record, I also super love Hot Fuzz, and if Matt hadn’t jumped on it, I’d have tried my best to beat Sean to it). This movie is self-referential and mocks the very genre it masters, but it’s never a mere homage. It’s smarter than a spoof, much like Hot Fuzz I suppose, and isn’t afraid to pay respect to its roots, embracing them even, and making them part of the fun. There’s never a moment when the film stops winking at us, trading in the cop movie clichés for cops in bike shorts doing slow-speed chases through grass, having cases thrown out on sad technicalities (“You have the right to remain an attorney.” – “Well, you DO have the right to be an attorney if you want to.”), bullet-riddled tankers that somehow fail to explode. I didn’t like Channing Tatum before this, and I still only like him in this (and I believe that includes the sequel) but for some reason the chemistry between he and Jonah Hill just really works.

Matt

As long as I can rembmer, I wanted to be a cop. I used to play cops and robbers in the schoolyard- usually with people who didn’t even know they were playing. When I was about to 12 I had to rethink my career goals when I realized that my eyesight wasn’t nearly good enough and would never be able to drive a car or see who I’m shooting at but the dream was fun while it lasted. I didn’t know much about police work back then but I did watch a lot of cop movies. Thanks to Wandering Through the Shelves for giving me an excuse to revisit them this week.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)- In the Heat of the Night is nearly 50 years old but its oepning scenes couldn’t be timelier. There’s been a murder in Sparta, Mississippi and the police go out and arrest the first black man they see. Of course, the suspect turns out to be an off-duty Philadelphia homicide detective who they call Mr. Tibbs. If Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger’s characters ever managed to become buddies, this would have been a contender for the best cop buddy movie of all time. Instead, What we get instead is much more interesting- a classic that manages to say a lot about race relations in the deep South in a time where you had to pretty careful what you said about race in the deep South. Best of all, it never forgets to deliver an engaging murder mystery

Hot Fuzz (2007)– According to TV ads, Hot Fuzz is “from the guys who have watched every action movie ever made”. Satire works best when a writer understands its subject so Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg were smart enough to take aim at a genre that they clearly knew well- and loved! Pegg plays a big city cop witha love of police work who is paired with a smalltown cop with a love of police movies (espeically Bad Boys 2). You can feel the love for buddy movies in almost every scene as Wright does his best to recreate the look and feel of a mainstream action movie and filling it with unexpected laugh-out loud moments throughout. To me, this is still pegg and Wright’s funniest movie.

Se7en (1995)– Between Sean and I, we have three picks from 1995 – a year that seems to have been a golden age for cop movies. Unlike most movies about serial killers, the cops (played of course by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt)- not the killings- are the focus. Freeman, days away from retirement, has lost faith in humanity long before John Doe’s first killing and Pitton his first week on the job, still believes he can make a difference. Over the course of one week and seven brutal killings, both men will have to examine their beliefs. Se7en also has the distinction of being the first film in director David Fincher’s twenty-year winning streak. The final “What’s in the box?” scene is so powerful that even Pitt’s overacting couldn’t derail it.