Category Archives: Jay

The F Word

If you are browsing Canadian shelves, you’ll find this movie under ‘The F Word’ but if your Netflix is an American account, you might try ‘What If’ instead because even not saying Fuck will still earn you an R rating in the good old USofA.

Daniel Radcliffe is Wallace, a med school drop out, burned in love, who meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party in Toronto one night. They click over magnetic poetry, exchange witty banter and phone numbers, until she casually mentions — a boyfriend. So the two become friends, the kind of close, opposite-sex friends who hang out all the time, tell each other their secrets, lean on each other for support, flirt outrageously, see each other naked, but are JUST FRIENDS. You know.

The chemistry and dialogue between them is fun and fresh. You may not be used to seeing Daniel Radcliffe in a role where he can wear jeans and acknowledge that he’s had sex, but he leaps into the character quite convincingly. He’s a very good, and very handsome actor.

Unfortunately, it’s a formulaic rom-com in a trendy package. The plotting is precisely predictable and the whole thing starts to feel like an exercise in the obvious. Their exchanges are fairly entertaining but eventually you just want them to do what they’re going to do. And they do. The end.

The Giver

The Imitation Game

10 Replies

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in The Avengers for math nerds. As Alan Turing, he assembles a crack team called Hut 8 who will secretly try to break the unbreakable German code machine, Enigma, to win the war, while pretending to be regular schmos putting in time at a radio factory.

Turns out, pretending to be regular is probably the bigger of the challenges for Turing. He’s a genius, but he’s also probably autistic. He’s horrid with people, often laughably so in the film (Cumberbatch portrays him lovingly, with sensitivity, grace in his gracelessness, and touches of clueless humour). Turing is also gay, and closeted, necessarily. Churchill credited him with the single largest contribution by an individual to the war effort; his work probably shortened the second world war by at least two years. He was an expert in his field, the father of computer science, and a war hero and yet he struggled just to make a friend.

The film flips between different time periods: his boyhood at school where he had his first love, a post-war break-in of his home that leads to him being interrogated by police, and the time he spent at Bletchley Park deciphering Nazi codes. Both book-ending periods paint us, the audience, a picture of the things he’s keeping secret. The film does an excellent job of presenting his world as a series of codes: as a boy he confesses that for him, conversation is a code. People are an enigma. The wallpaper in his home looks like morse code, dashes and dots. The production design is upscale period all the way.

For a movie about math and cryptology, it’s surprisingly gripping. Reels of news footage help give us a sense of their urgency. They aren’t battling Germans, they’re fighting a clock. Their countrymen are dying in tunnels during air raids (as Keira Knightley already did, in Atonement), or simply wasting away of starvation. The movie isn’t 100% historically accurate, but I think it’s faithful to the time and place and people, and if the computer itself is given the Hollywood treatment, looking much more impressive than it ever did in real life, where’s the harm? Perhaps it will inspire people to go home and look it up.

I think the film’s strength is its moral question. Once the code is cracked, how and when can that information be used? How many civilialns and soldiers would you sacrifice to keep a secret that could win the war? The movie does a great job of personalizing the question and we start to feel that as awful and tense as it was in the not knowing, it was a lot more bearable than the responsibility we’re faced with when we do know. The weakness is in having painted Turing as the unblemished hero. The truth is , he was probably unknowable, and without ever having known him, I’m betting that no one could be as spotless as he’s implied to be in the film. Turing, the actual man, was mistreated by his ungrateful government, who kept his war records sealed while he was prosecuted for simply being a gay man at a time when it was illegal to be so (or at least to act on it – “gross indecency” they called it, hypocritically), and then sentenced him to chemical castration, robbing a nation, and the world, of a great mind.

Into the Woods

12 Replies

Based on the Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods tells the story of a childless baker and his wife, cursed by a wicked witch to be barren forever but granted the chance to reverse the spell, if only they go into the woods to retrieve some special items for her. Their story intersects with the familiar Grimm Brothers’ tales of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel.

Meryl Streep plays the witch and plays her beautifully. Director Rob Marshall knows she’s the linchpin and grants her the most spectacular entrances and exits. But it’s Emily Blunt in the role of the baker’s wife who feels like the heart of the movie and Blunt really shines. She can make any line sound so natural, and her voice can only surprise you in the best way possible. She was nominated for a Golden Globe and deserves to be, possibly even more so that Streep (!). Anna Kendrick as Cinderella is comparatively disappointing. It’s always difficult for this reviewer to see past her donkey dentures, but her voice is up to the challenge, even I can admit that. But Cinderella just isn’t that exciting to watch (this problem was likely compounded by the inclusion of a preview for the new live-action Cinderella movie to be released in 2015 – my sister and I wrongly imagined some of those scenes as scenes from Into the Woods).

“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.”

There is a lot to recommend in this movie. The ensemble cast is spectacular. After their opening number, “Into the Woods” I felt like I should applaud. And if you had doubts that Chris Pine could sing, let me assure you that he’s learned more than just a thing or two from Shatner along the way. Actually, our group quite enjoyed the scene between Pine’s Prince Charming (recycling his smug asshole look from Horrible Bosses 2) and Rapunzel’s Prince (Billy Magnussen, leatherclad) – the two men are singing about their respective woman-induced “Agony”, splashing about homoerotically in a waterfall, trying to out-macho each other, crotch-thursting, popping buttons to reveal increasingly deep vees of smooth, tanned chests, reminding us more of a duet between George Michael and Freddie Mercury than your typical fairy-tale princes. Delightfully tongue-in-cheek, you almost wished more of the movie could feel this way.

“Scrumptious carnality”

The sets are gorgeous, and no matter how many times our characters go into the woods, it never feels like they’re passing the same 5 trees, it’s a truly enchanted forest that creates a storybook look that’s fun to get lost in. And the fabulous Colleen Atwood heightens the visual gorging with a stunning array of costumes, including a suit that transforms a man into a mister wolf. Johnny Depp, playing the wolf, is lurking inside those woods, looking lupine and oily, putting out vibes that should warn us away. Although top-billed, Depp’s in the movie for maybe 5 minutes, but that’s more than enough to turn things pretty sour. How do I say this…I felt like I picked up on certain nuances in his song that I was uncomfortable with. As in: sexual innuendo. As in: the wolf would like to “eat” Little Red Riding Hood in more than one way. He’s an absolute creepster with a real pedophile’s mustache and his singing “Hello, Little Girl” will send shivers up your spine. He tells us there’s a “scrumptious carnality” about to be had, and maybe that works in the Broadway production, but it feels grossly inappropriate in this toned-down Disney version where the actress playing Red is indeed a little girl, much too young to be on the receiving end of this lascivious song. And when she starts responding that what they’re doing is new and scary but also kind of exciting, well…I wanted to slam on the brakes.

The characters wrap up their traditional story lines around the 80 minute mark – but wait! These poor schmucks don’t get their happily-ever-afters. The story continues. And I’m glad that the movie doesn’t end on Cinderella’s wedding day because I would have felt cheated. But 80 minutes of singing and skipping through the woods was about as much as I wanted. So the remaining third of the movie, which gets a hell of a lot darker, felt entirely too much. Streep delivers another great song but I was fed up with the inundation of special effects, my patience was waning, and it just felt like filler. My sister felt that since all the characters start (or continue) making selfish, morally ambiguous choices, she didn’t have anyone to pull for. She’s not wrong. My husband felt that the songs were not particularly catchy or memorable, and he’s not wrong either. I enjoyed the movie, enjoyed it quite a bit, it would be impossible not to given the sheer amount of talent (although I am wondering why all of that talent had to be white), but I’m not feeling it for Best Picture this year. Of course, I’m sure I said the same about Rob Marshall’s Chicago and we all know how that went.

Rudderless

Godzilla

5 Replies

This is another movie I took in at the drive-in this summer, and here’s the thing about drive-in movies: it’s never about the movie. You go for the experience. You go because it’s a beautiful night that you don’t want to waste indoors. You go because you can pig out in secret in your car. You go because you can make out with your hunny in the back seat. And you go because it’s a double feature, or a triple feature, so even if the movies are bad (and they often are), at least it’s two bad movies for the price one!

I won’t pretend to have loved this movie. In fact, I was mostly confused by it. From what I understood, 15 years ago, these two pods were found and suddenly they crack open and out come these monsters. At the time, I didn’t fully comprehend there were two, then I failed to adequately distinguish between them, and ultimately I failed to realize that these were NOT Godzilla. Turns out, Godzilla is this whole separate entity that the government has known about and kept secret for years – he lays mostly dormant, but when the world’s really in trouble, like it’s being terrorized by these two MUTOs. Godzilla’s the good guy in this monster movie, and he doesn’t appear until like half way through, which led to my confusion. I weirdly assumed that a movie called Godzilla would be about Godzilla, but it’s kinda not.

I actually felt like I was watching a mash-up of two other drive-in movies, Pacific Rim, and Transformers: Age of Extinction, but when Godzilla finally did appear, I admit I thought, damn, now that’s a beautiful monster. Really nicely rendered. Different, but not alienating to classic Godzilla. And thank goodness he’s purty, because the humans in the movie weren’t nearly as compelling (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass fame, and Elizabeth Olsen). If this is a reboot, then I say, sure keep the king of the monsters, but replace the humans, or at least let them get eaten.

Boyhood

12 Replies

Boyhood is a really cool concept for a movie. You have to admire the film makers who set out to film a movie over the course of twelve years. Twelve years! That’s a long time to be committed to a project but it really pays off. Ellar Coltrane, who plays the titular boy Mason, was 7 when they started, and 18 when they wrapped. Imagine signing that kind of contract at such a young age. You can’t, because such a thing would be illegal in the US. The producers would have just had to cross their fingers, but everyone kept showing up, year after year. I’ve heard the kids maybe regretted their involvement at times, and who can blame them – hello, awkward years and teenage rebellion!. I’ve never had the same job that long, and few people of my generation ever will. Amazing. Richard Linklater, the director, was known for making movies that took place all in one day. This one, obviously, blows that right up. He even made a pact with Ethan Hawke that if he died during filming, Hawke would take over.

The time lapse is not the only naturlistic aspect of the movie. The family exchanges feel authentic; some of the footage feels almost home-movie-ish, like when the kids are lined up to get the most recent edition of the Harry Potter series. These kids went through everything that normal kids their age did – they experience Britney Spears, the Bush administration, and skinny jeans. Patricia Arquette really elevates her game as a struggling, single mother who raises her son and daughter and works to make better lives for them. Ethan Hawke, aging visibly o camera, plays the deadbeat father with a lot of growing up to do himself. Their lives feel real, like they could be your neighbours. Their cars and their sneakers are not mysteriously above their station. Real life happens to them, they repeat clothing, grow ill-advised mustaches, date the wrong guy, take up and then discard hobbies.

The script must have had to evolve as they filmed because a family is dynamic. It reacts and is influenced by the world around it. Politics and trends are woven deftly and interestingly into the story. Linklater was directing his own daughter for these twelve years and watching her grow in front of his lens. The kid actors are quite good, fortunately; they’re not hammy or too old for their age. I was beginning to think that for whatever reason only British kids could manage not to be annoying on film, but these two may have turned things around for the Americans, and it must have been difficult to cast someone who’s not just right for the part now, but will continue to be for years to come.

So we know the span is quite large (12 years!) but the scope is actually pretty tiny. We just stay focused on this little family, following this kid during those formative years of his life, all those little things that will eventually add up to the man. There’s not a lot happening. Yes, childhood is tumultuous, but these are pretty normal lives. Nobody adopted a pet dragon, or got adopted by a dog, or took home a giant inflatable robot. He just went to school, watched his mom divorce and remarry, learned to tolerate his sister, tried beer, masturbated to the Sears catalogue. Regular kid stuff that’s only interesting when you add it all up and realize that this is it. This is childhood. And at the end, it spits out an adult that we hope will go off and do well. This movie was the scrapbook of his life, and a running time of nearly three hours doesn’t cover more than an episode or two at each age, but even at that, this movie can feel a bit draggy. It’s not an action-packed movie, but I was moved by it. It’s not depressing by any means, but I guess I felt a bit sentimental about it, probably because I truly felt like I was given the chance to really get to know these people. In fact, it was hard to remember that this is fiction, it feels that much like just watching through someone’s window.

This is an experiment of a movie that needs to be seen. I’ve certainly never seen anything like it. Will anyone attempt it again? The door’s open now, but it’s such an undertaking, and such a risk, that I believe this movie is one of a kind.

The Interview

1 Reply

The only thing you need to know about this movie is that it’s profoundly dumb.

We rented this movie from Google Play on Christmas Eve with middling expectations and they were not exceeded. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are back at it again, both writing and directing, but not quite pulling off this strange and controversial movie. Had it been released as intended, it would have made some decent coin, maybe cracked the top 5 amid all the stellar Oscar contenders also released on Christmas day, but it would have struggled to find an audience in its second week, or to make much of a lasting impression. So thank you Kim Jong-un for giving this movie a crazy boost and a marketing angle that no other campaign could have touched.

James Franco, doing an impression of his little brother Dave, plays Dave Skylark, celebrity interviewer. His producer, Aaron (Seth Rogen) aspires to more so when they hear that North Korea’s Supreme Leader is a fan of the show, they land an interview with him that they hope will lead to bigger and better fish. Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) intends to use the interview as yet another propaganda piece but the CIA have even loftier ambitions – they draft these two numbskulls to “take out” the tyrant.

Now, why on earth the CIA would entrust such a mission to these buffoons is beyond me. Well, okay, no it isn’t. They just wouldn’t. They couldn’t. So you really have to be willing to overlook the extreme wobbliness of this premise in order to enjoy the movie.

Rogen and Goldberg have proved themselves to be an amazing writing team but The Interview has none of the heart of Superbad or the guile of This is the End. And let’s face it, with the world’s youngest basketball-loving head of state, the jokes should write themselves. I mean, he’s a bad dude with more human rights violations than qualifications to run a country. He’d rather let his peasants resort to cannibalism than alter his hacking budget, but still, he’s a joke.

Rogen and Franco do earn lots of laughs. They’re charismatic guys, they work well together, and off each other, and they’re fun to watch. It’s just that the plot is built loosely around one-liners, and for some reason instead of sticking with what they know (socially awkward teenage boys, and smoking weed), the plot involves the assassination of a reclusive dictator. Weirdly, we’ve seen this before. In fact, I think you could oldkim summarize Zoolander in nearly the same way: celebrities vs despot.

If you’re in the mood for a hilarious take on foreign policy, rewatch Team America: World Police. It’s more continuously funny and more worthy of the label ‘satire.’ But if you’re just a fan of Seth and James, you won’t find another Pineapple Express here, but you’ll find some shit to laugh at (sometimes literally, unfortunately). And in the name of patriotism and free speech and all that hullabaloo, maybe that’s enough.

Birdman

17 Replies

Birdman opens with C-list celebrity Riggan (Michael Keaton), a superhero has-been trying to reclaim glory as a serious Broadway actor, meditating and levitating before rehearsal of his play. Wait – levitating? Yes. It seems that Riggan has picked up some super powers along the way.

But this movie is so subtly engrossing, its rhythm unrelenting, that I actually forgot this little nugget of information until the next bit of surrealism came our way, presented just as slyly as the first. Some remnant of his Birdman alterego remains, and narrates Riggan’s present tense in a voice reminiscent of Christian Bale’s Batman, driving home the satirical meta-performance at work here. Director Iñárritu gets right up in his grill, nursing long but very intimate shots that show unflinchingly every wrinkle, every worry line ever earned by these actors.

Set almost entirely behind the scenes at St James theatre and shot in long, loooooooong takes that keep the film moving briskly, there’s a beauty and a mystique that really locked me in. Finally Iñárritu has found his element. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki floats the camera down corridors and ascends smoothly through the scaffolding and the balconies like an unobserved peeping tom. We take our cues from this camera work. We race to find new action, we catch our breath when travelling down darkened hallways. In this way, the movie feels serene yet is in constant motion. The music helps us keep pace and is sometimes so coolly frenzied that musicians forget they aren’t supposed to be seen!

Riggan, meanwhile, is crippled by all the nay-sayers in his life: the junkie daughter (Emma Stone), the anxious lawyer (Zach Galifianakis), the guilt-tripping ex-wife (Amy Ryan) – but none more so than that voice in his head that slowly cannibalizes him by the end of the film. When one of his actors is put out of commission, he’s forced to bring on board stage actor Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) who immediately threatens to outshine him. With his own superhero baggage (Hulk, anyone?), Norton threatens to casually steal the spotlight from Keaton as well with a brilliant send-up to Method acting, and a nod toward his own reputation for being difficult on set, but Keaton reminds us why he left the Batman franchise in the first place – dude is a first rate actor when he plays crazy.

The movie is ambitiously self-aware and asks smart-aleck questions like, why bother making a $20 million dollar movie when you can go viral for free? This may not be ground-breaking material but as long as Keaton is in on the joke, the monster egos and insecurities, the fraud and the acerbic wit, it’s all part of a complex self-examination that’s fascinating to witness.

Matt and I saw this movie nearly a week ago and it’s taken me this long to even begin unpacking my feelings about it, and this after an all-you-can-eat-sushi session in which we debriefed and compared notes. As Matt will tell you, the movie is also Iñárritu’s excuse to poke back at the critics who have called him out on his self-important, self-conscious work in the past (Babel, Biuitiful) even though this movie actually seems to acknowledge that these criticisms may have been valid.

I really enjoyed this movie. It’s a pleasure to watch, a puzzle to figure out, and a commentary just begging for feedback. Please, give us yours. Assume spoilers in the comments.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

3 Replies

Rudolph is celebrating his 50th year of bringing stop-animation joy into our homes this year. Most of us grew up watching this Christmas classic every year but re-watching it as an adult may leave you with a slightly different interpretation.

Yes, it’s tempting to say that Hermey the elf is gay. He’s got snazzy Justin Bieber hair and a lisp that just won’t quit. So is “dentistry” one of the oldest euphemisms for “raging homosexual”? Possibly. But you can’t really tell someone’s gay until they tell you they are, so if Hermey wants to stay in the closet, or is still exploring his options, we’ll let him. Meanwhile, it seems that some of the lady elves have found him to be an excellent dance partner. Sounds like a win all around.

Santa, however, I have issues with. He’s a dick. Definitely sexist. Pretty racist. I mean, he rejects Rudolph on the basis of the colour of his nose alone. He was totally excited about this guy on paper, but red nose? Deal breaker. And he’s a complete ass about the song the elves perform especially for him. I mean, these little dudes slave away all year long for him, and all he can do is criticize? This is not a nice guy. No wonder kids always cry when you plop them on his lap. I will say though that more mall Santas should aspire to his excellent beard grooming. Man’s got some tidy facial hair. Mall Santas always go for the curly bearded look, and I think it’s a mistake. I also enjoyed Santa’s Sherlock hat – who knew he also rocked the deer stalker?

But the best-dressed award goes to Sam, the snowman narrator. Love the tartan vest, the watch fob, his Colonel Sanders tie, heck, his bowler hat’s accessorized with winter berries! Burl Ives pwnd Christmas, y’all.

Yukon Cornelius is a little more lumbersexual, but you have to hand it to him, he’s an inclusive, forward-thinking guy. His sled dogs include a cocker spaniel, a poodle, a Saint Bernard, a collie, and even a little wiener dog. He’s also a champion for immigrant employment. Who else would think that all this time the Abominable Snowman just wanted to dignified work and a decent wage?

I also felt like the Island of Misfit Toys must have planted the seedling of Toy Story into John Lasseter’s brain. Little Johnny would have been about 7 or 8 when Rudolph first aired and he heard a bunch of talking toys utter the magical words “a toy is never truly happy until it is loved by a child.” There was even a cowboy riding an ostrich. Not much of a stretch to Woody, and a dynasty is born.

It’s still a treat to watch this movie though, it takes you back to simpler times, to wearing your flannel jammies and sharing a big bowl of popcorn with siblings while the Christmas specials air. The animation was done primarily in Japan, but the voice work was recorded in Canada. In fact, the woman (!) who voiced Rudolph lived in the same Ontario retirement residence as the guy who voiced Hermey the elf up until her death a few years ago. For many of us, this movie became a Christmas tradition, one that you can honour during the holidays, or you can do like me and totally desecrate it by buying it on DVD and “accidentally” watching the claymation Destiny’s Child video in the bonus features – or worse yet, the Regis Philbin one.