To the Wonder (2012)

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It’s very difficult to know how I’d feel about this movie without having seen Malick’s own The Tree of Life, but in my mind the two films inevitably run together. In terms of plot, the two films are not much alike; the former film dealt with nostalgic remembrances of small-town childhood, while To the Wonder follows the romance between an Oklahoma man (played by Ben Affleck) and the French dancer (Olga Kurylenko) that emigrates to the US to live with him. Despite the differences in content, though, the two films are so stylistically similar that I’m honestly not sure if I’ll be able to easily differentiate between them in time. In fact, the credits for To the Wonder actually credit The Tree of Life for footage. Anyway, what seemed beautiful and artful in The Tree of Life seems ponderous and even overbearing in this film, and the style seems like an awkward fit for the subject matter this time around. To be sure, there are some fine moments in the film, because Malick has too keen of an eye not to capture at least a few striking visuals. But even those moments have little emotional resonance with the story being told. 6/10

The Company You Keep (2012)

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Robert Redford has directed some really terrible movies his last few times out, so it’s nice to see him rebound somewhat with this political(-ish) thriller. Shia LeBeouf plays an Albany journalist investigating the identities of former 1960s radical leftists now in hiding, and Redford himself plays the fugitive, now living as a college professor under a new identity, that he exposes. As usual, Redford’s political ideas seem undercooked and banal, and as with The Conspirator, he once again abandons the political themes anyway to focus on an irrelevant question of guilt or innocence. In fact, it’s mildly embarrassing to watch the movie devolve from a potentially interesting story of how people change through the years to a melodramatic tale of family secrets and lost love. So … maybe this isn’t as much of a rebound for Redford as I thought. Still, it’s made with much more skill than The Conspirator and Lions for Lambs and is much better acted, even if Redford’s strategy of casting familiar actors in seemingly every single speaking role can be a little distracting (“hey, look, it’s that guy!”). At least it’s a rebound in those respects, although it still leaves a lot to be desired. 5/10

Trance (2013)

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Director Danny Boyle has had a long career now with a diverse range of films to show for it, but there’s still an easily identifiable “Danny Boyle movie”, with this one being a good example. It’s about the twists and turns of an art heist gone bad, with the plot revolving around a hypnotist (played by Rosario Dawson) and her highly suggestible client (James McAvoy). Boyle tries very hard to sustain momentum with a lot of narrative reversals and surprise revelations, but honestly, this story makes almost no sense whatsoever, and it’s tough to suspend disbelief. It doesn’t help that it feels like he’s working with mostly second-rate actors, especially McAvoy and Dawson, neither of whom seem to have much idea of what they’re doing with their characters. Faring slightly better is Vincent Cassel as the ringleader of the thieves, but even he is reduced to reading a bunch of very poorly written lines and trying to make them sound better than they do. The movie’s not boring to watch, but it gets steadily less interesting as it goes on, and by the end it seems designed to get its audience to laugh at its plot holes in a group discussion afterwards. Overall, it’s a weak effort. 5/10

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

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Orson Welles’s follow-up to Citizen Kane is one of cinema’s great tales of studio interference. Welles finished the film, only to have the studio recut it after he left to begin another project, and cinephiles have been lamenting ever since over what might have been had Welles finished it his way. I recently saw it for the first time, though, and to be honest I was surprised that the film is as coherent as it is; I had expected to find a garbled mess, but I think the damage done by the studio has probably been overstated just a tad through the years. Anyway, the first half of the film is truly wonderful, as Welles introduces the members of the Amberson family and firmly and convincingly roots the story in a nostalgic bygone era. This is virtuoso cinema on a level equal to the climactic sequence in The Rules of the Game, and it’s thrilling with its sense of creative momentum. Studio interference or not, I think it would have been tough for the movie to sustain that level throughout its entire runtime, and regardless of who deserves the blame, the second half sags in comparison. Who knows what might have been, but as it is, I think the film has its undeniable moments of brilliance, while falling short of the overall greatness that its fans wish for it. 9/10

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

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This is now the second film I’ve seen by director Cianfrance, and unfortunately, it’s the second one that I find myself considerably less impressed than the critical consensus. This film is about motorcycle stuntman Luke (played by Ryan Gosling) who learns that he has a child from a fling a couple years earlier. He sets about trying to find ways to support him, and sets off a chain of events that eventually involves Avery, an ambitious cop (Bradley Cooper) troubled by internal corruption within his department. This is a bad film in a lot of ways, but chief among them are Cianfrance’s utter inability to create credible characters. The film is 140 minutes long but inexplicably fails to give us more than an outline of who the two main characters are, and we’re given offhand details that are seemingly meant to be suggestive but are ultimately substitutes for character development instead of the real deal. Cianfrance’s insight is no match for his ambition, and it’s amazing how little we really know about these people at the end of a very long movie, and how little the filmmakers seem to care about them. Furthermore, as in Blue Valentine, Cianfrance seems unable to imagine characters that have the ability to make good choices for themselves. Frankly, this is one of my least favorite kinds of movies, the art film that thinks it’s profound just because all of its characters are miserable. Perhaps Cianfrance can get back to us when he actually has something to say about them, because after two movies like this, it’s plain that he’s just faking it. 4/10

Macbeth (1948)

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Shakespeare’s bloody play seems well-suited for an Orson Welles project, and Welles naturally casts himself as the scheming and Scottish lord. I find it hard to know what to make of the film, not having much Shakespeare expertise, and so I’m unable to make much of a statement about the relative merits of Welles’s adaptation. And, I suppose it goes without saying, that Welles dominates the film as an actor and director, seemingly occupying the focal point of nearly every frame while he’s onscreen. Which is most of the time; the only substantial exception that I recall offhand is when he’s offscreen to kill Duncan. As any rate, what really struck me were the minimalist sets. Apparently working with a small budget, Welles films on sets that look hastily constructed of mud and stone, and although they never look objectively “real” or otherwise like anything besides sets on a soundstage, they’re wonderfully atmospheric. They give the film a real feeling of foreboding and menace, and frankly they overshadow the actors – including even Welles, despite his best efforts to the contrary – and the actual material being performed. I’m not sure whether this is a point in the film’s favor or a point against it, because I don’t think it’s a very strong film aside from this element. But either way, it’s transfixing; I could watch this sort of thing all day. 7/10

The Game (1997)

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I’ve never been a big fan of David Fincher, but on the whole, I’d say that I enjoyed this film more than his others. It’s about a wealthy recluse named Nicholas (Michael Douglas), who is approaching the same age that his father died at when he receives an odd gift from his brother (Sean Penn). What follows is an unpredictable (but also kind of predictable, if you know what I mean) series of twists and turns that makes Nicholas reexamine what’s important in life, blah blah blah. As usual for Fincher, the moral of the story is simpleminded and borderline facile, and also as usual, there’s a gesture towards social commentary that might have been interesting but isn’t really followed up on. Still, the movie works well enough on its own terms, and its reliance on atmospheric effect makes it more suited to Fincher’s strengths as a director than most of his other films. Additionally, Douglas makes his character far more credible and sympathetic than he might have been. He’s always been a very underrated actor and this is an underrated high point of his career. 8/10

Spring Breakers (2012)

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This is the first movie I’ve ever seen by Harmony Korine, and I’m not exactly eager to catch up with the others. It’s about a group of girls who head to Florida for spring break, take part in all the usual debauchery, and eventually fall in with a self-styled gangster named Alien. The best things I can say about the movie are that a) it’s interestingly shot by cinematographer Benoît Debie, and b) Alien, played by James Franco, is a genuinely original character, and Franco’s performance is pretty awesome. It’s strange seeing him in this role just a few weeks after seeing him be so awful in Oz the Great and Powerful. Perhaps that role was just too dull to hold his interest, but whatever. Granted, those are two big positives in the film’s favor, but the rest of it is pretty dire. It makes the cardinal mistake of being about its least interesting characters (the four girls) instead of its most interesting ones. A movie more focused on Alien would have probably been a lot more fun, especially since the filmmakers don’t seem at all interested in the girls in the first place. They’re scarcely distinguishable as individuals, and at times the effect isn’t much different than if the Greek chorus were the focus of a play. Meanwhile, Korine doesn’t even seem to have much interest in the spring break phenomenon, and doesn’t have much to add to the yearly MTV specials that are responsible for the phenomenon being such a cultural milestone in the first place, at least until the movie veers into weird and implausible gangster territory. The whole thing feels like an excuse to get Alien into the movie, and that being the case, why not just make the movie about him to begin with? 5/10

The Brothers Bloom (2008)

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Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody star as the title characters, con men who identify a rich heiress (Rachel Weisz) as their next mark. Writer-director Rian Johnson made this after he broke through with Brick, a fairly brilliant and unique arthouse hit a couple of years before. This film isn’t quite as great or unique, but it’s a lot of fun, and in particular it’s one of the best roles Weisz has ever had. She’s wonderfully charming as the sheltered Penelope, and she gives life to a character who must have seemed fairly improbable on the page. Speaking of which, Johnson’s script demonstrates nothing if not a great deal of effort, and there are so many twists and turns in the story that, while elegant in their own way, get a little tiring after awhile. After all, there are only so many times that you can have the rug pulled out from under you before you know not to step on the rug, if you know what I mean. It is to Johnson’s credit, however, that things always happen in a way that is true to the characters. At any rate, by the end the movie runs out of steam a bit (which remains true even during a second viewing), but all in all I think that there’s a degree of integrity in the film’s construction that I admire. This isn’t an entirely successful movie, but it’s enjoyable. 7/10

The Stranger (1946)

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Orson Welles purportedly shot this film as a mere director-for-hire, just to prove to the studios that he could play nice with them and deliver the goods. Perhaps that explains why the movie is so ordinary by Welles’s standards. It’s the story of a German war criminal (played by Welles) who has fled to America, where he is living under a new identity as a professor in a Connecticut college town. He is pursued by a war crimes investigator (Edward G. Robinson). In some ways, the movie feels more like a Hitchcock film than a Welles film, and in particular I was reminded of Hitch’s Shadow of a Doubt, which came out three years earlier and shares a somewhat similar storyline. Though leave it to Welles to dream big; Hitch’s film was about a mere serial killer, while this one is about the apparent architect of the Nazi genocide effort. Anyway, the film also shares Hitch’s predilection for narrative carelessness, where a lot of things happen for new reason aside from the fact that the plot needs to move forward, and even a few setpieces (like one that occurs on a ladder) seem straight out of Hitchcock, as well. Nonetheless, this all amounts to very little, and the best scenes in the film are the ones that square Welles off against Robinson. It’s a pleasure to watch these two great actors work together, even if the material isn’t really all that interesting. 6/10

Chinatown (1974)

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This is something very close to a perfect movie. I’ve seen it several times, and it’s very difficult for me to find even minor flaws, because it’s one of those cases where everything just came together. Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a Los Angeles private detective who stumbles upon a high-profile murder case and becomes involved with the deceased man’s wife (Faye Dunaway). It’s a great joy to watch Nicholson during a time when he was such a supremely inventive and perceptive actor, before his larger-than-life persona began to take over his on-screen persona to such a great extent. Dunaway is terrific, too, in what might be an even more challenging role. What shines through the most, though, is the tremendous craft on display by all the filmmakers. Polanski has perhaps never been better as a director, producing one of the most convincing period depictions (i.e., the late 1930s) that I’ve ever seen in a movie. Additionally, Robert Towne’s script not only manages to be a superior detective movie on its own terms, but a fascinating exploration of the history of Los Angeles as well. This has long been a personal favorite of mine, and I think it’s one of the greatest of all films. 10/10

The Departed (2006)

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I suppose it figures that, after his enormously impressive career, Martin Scorsese would finally win an Oscar for one of his weakest films. I remember liking this for the most part upon its initial release, but watching it again recently, I was surprised by how poorly it holds up. The film is a remake of the Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs, about a gangster (Matt Damon) working as a cop, and a cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) undercover as a gangster. Of course, the cops-and-criminals genre is not new territory for Scorsese, but unlike his other gangster films, this one doesn’t have much feel of authenticity for how the mob works and feels more like a series of Hollywood screenplay constructions. Likewise, Scorsese is no stranger to violence, but as far as I can recall, the violence in his films always feels like a natural results of who his characters are and the choices they make. Here, though, things just sort of happen, regardless of whether or not they make much sense. On the whole, this feels like an unusually sloppy effort from Scorsese, with a few major story problems, performances that don’t seem to quite fit (among the major roles, I enjoyed Damon and Vera Farmiga the most), and a symbolic flourish to close the film that is downright shameless. It’s not a bad film, exactly, but it leaves a lot to be desired. 6/10

Finding Neverland (2004)

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Johnny Depp plays J.M. Barrie, during the time that the playwright spent writing Peter Pan. The film shows him as inspired by his friendship with a local family headed by Sylvia (Kate Winslet), a widow with four young children. The story mixes some predictable elements with some more inventive ones, but most of the appeal is due to the performances by the two leads. They give the relationship between Barrie and Sylvia an element that’s hard to define; it’s not quite erotic tension, but it’s also more than strictly platonic, and whatever it is, it’s actually quite poignant. Their scenes are certainly more successful than the ones between Barrie and his wife, played by Radha Mitchell. It’s no fault of Mitchell, who, truth be told, gives a sensitive and sympathetic performance, but her role is just so thankless and her character’s actions so predictable that it slows the movie down. The film reaches a genuinely moving crescendo when Barrie stages his play for Sylvia, a moment of extreme sentimentality that nonetheless feels earned. This isn’t a great film, but it’s surprisingly good, certainly better than anything director Marc Forster has managed since. 8/10

Stoker (2013)

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Mia Wasikowska stars as India Stoker, a teenager mourning the death of her father when her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) moves in. Korean director Park Chan-wook’s first English-language film owes an obvious debt to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt), although as is to be expected, it’s much creepier than the Hitchcock. This is to good effect in some ways, and in particular Wasikowska has never been better. She’s much more convincing as a morose, possibly disturbed teen than she is as the bubbly pixie, and this role strikes me as the most daring she’s taken on to date. Still, in some ways I don’t think the movie is quite disturbing enough. I don’t have any concrete ideas of what I mean, but I constantly had the vague impression that the filmmakers were holding back. Probably the best example I can offer is the character played by Nicole Kidman. Kidman is very good in a thankless role, but her role is very thinly conceived and feels too much like it exists as a screenplay construction and not a real human character. She has one great scene (featured in the trailer) but otherwise doesn’t have much to do. On a final note, like all of Park’s features, the cinematography and art design are commendably audacious, but Park’s direction here is occasionally clumsy, especially when scenes feature heavy dialogue. Perhaps it’s inherently difficult for a non-native English speaker to adjust to the rhythms of English speech? I’ve always wondered this when English-speaking directors make films in other languages; do those films seem odd to native speakers as well? 6/10

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

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For some reason, the powers that be at Disney decided that they needed to make a CGI Oz movie, and not only that, but to make the fairly cynical choice that it needed to be a prequel of The Wizard of Oz. To my mind, this shows a complete lack of appreciation for or understanding of the charms of the older film, but whatever. This seemed like a doomed venture from the start, but even putting that aside, this is a stodgily paced, tediously acted and just plain ugly film. As a director, Sam Raimi has always had trouble controlling pacing and tone, even with his better movies, and this plays out with a simultaneous freneticism and lack of urgency. The character moments are so dull that the film drags whenever they’re the focus, and this lack of interest renders the action scenes pointless even if they weren’t so disorganized. Meanwhile, Raimi’s also always had difficulty handling actors, and despite a fine cast, the acting in the film is really hard to watch. James Franco, as the wizard, and Mila Kunis, as Theodora the witch, are especially painful, but even the normally great Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz fail to make a good impression. Finally, I was discouraged that the art design was so unappealing. It’s one thing to be reliant on CGI for effects, but another for the art that forms the basis for the CGI work to be so poorly designed. This film replicates the effect from the 1939 film upon the arrival to Oz, where black-and-white turns to color, but unlike in the earlier film, this time it creates no sense of awe or wonder. It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to spend time in this version of Oz, where everything is a few shades darker than it should be, even in full sunlight. It’s not uncommon for these big-money Hollywood blockbusters to have little to recommend for themselves, but this one is as inept as I’ve seen in a long time. 2/10

Pola X (1999)

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This is the first film I’ve seen by director Leos Carax, and I’m not altogether sure what to make about it. It’s the story of Pierre (played by Guillaume Depardieu), a wealthy young novelist who absconds from his privileged life after meeting Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva), a mysterious girl. A lot of stuff happens after that, although I can’t really remember much of it a few weeks later, and mostly what I’m left with is the feeling that the film has an incredible energy but not really much to say. Still, the film definitely makes me curious about the rest of Carax’s work, and I’m sad that I’ve missed so many chances to see more of it. This film felt rambling and disorganized, but there’s a vitality to it that’s hard to ignore. 6/10

Side Effects (2013)

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Director Steven Soderbergh has said that this will be his last theatrical film, after two decades of very diverse and prolific work. This one is reminiscent to me of the psychological thrillers that were popular in the 1940s, when movies exploring the mysteries of the mind were all the rage. This one’s adapted for the times, though, by using the modern boogeyman of pharmaceuticals as its jumping-off point. There’s a limit to how good this kind of thing can really be, since they depend so much on bizarre plot twists, lurid subject matter, and characters seemingly having no will of their own that doesn’t involve furthering the script in transparently schematic ways. Still, this one is more clever than most, and in fact is genuinely unpredictable, which makes its somewhat conventional and implausible (even by the standards of the genre) ending seem like a little bit of a letdown (come to think of it, this is a pretty apt description for Soderbergh’s career as a whole – unpredictable and clever but a little disappointing towards the end). I don’t really think the movie would withstand multiple viewings, but it’s fun while it lasts, and features good performances by Rooney Mara, Jude Law, and Channing Tatum. 7/10

Hunger (2008)

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Director Steve McQueen’s debut feature film focuses on the events in a Northern Irish prison during the early 1980s, which culminated in a hunger strike by Republican prisoners led by inmate Bobby Sands (played here by Michael Fassbender). McQueen employs a somewhat fractured style, with the first half of the film focusing on the conditions for the prisoners, before transitioning to a more exclusive focus on Sands in the second. This is a difficult film to watch for a few reasons – the prison is an abomination, the prisoners (willingly, as a protest) wallow in their own filth, and Fassbender’s physical transformation late in the film is quite severe. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the movie, though, are the occasional audio clips from Margaret Thatcher, condemning the prisoners and expressing an unyielding refusal to negotiate with them. There’s little question to me that the filmmakers sympathize with the Republicans, but at the same time, it’s hard to avoid the comparison between Thatcher’s intransigence and Sands’s own obstinate will. The most powerful scene in the film is an extended conversation between Sands and a priest, in which the latter tries to talk the former out of his plans for the hunger strike. It’s filmed in a single take, and frames the moral case for the prisoners’ actions, but also exposes the continuing cycle of violence that fuels the conflict in the first place. This is a difficult but ultimately very rewarding film. 9/10

Nixon (1995)

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I had a film professor once who said that, when he was programming his viewing selections for a course, he wanted to show movies that had some problems. Problems promote discussion and shed light on the filmmaking process; often we were asked to consider how a screenwriter had gotten around a problem or theorize on how existing flaws might have been fixed. This professor was emphatically not a fan of Oliver Stone, but I remember thinking that discussion on just one of Stone’s films could spark enough discussion to last a whole semester. His wildly ambitious Richard Nixon biopic is as good an example of this as any, seeing as how Stone delves headfirst into the dense politics of the time, often not caring whether or not his audience knows who these people are, and not waiting for them to catch up. Plus, he has an actor who looks and sounds nothing like his famous subject, and a runtime over three hours to boot. Unsurprisingly, the film was a box-office dud, but I think it stands as Stone’s greatest achievement nonetheless for all its problems. As a biopic, the film is unusual for its structure and tone, darting back and forth in time and mostly focusing on events in Nixon’s life for their political significance instead of their significance to him as an individual. Even events such as the deaths of his brothers are relayed in these terms, attempting to link those personal tragedies to the choices Nixon made as a political figure. Furthermore, the tone of the film is often that of a classical tragedy; Stone is unafraid of straightforward dramatic gestures, giving Nixon a feel of a modern Shakespeare tragedy more than a nuts-and-bolts biopic. This is a very difficult film, and not without its flaws (beyond those that I’ve mentioned here) but I find it immensely rewarding. Even more than his other films, it sets Stone apart as a highly unique and vital filmmaker. 10/10

Network (1976)

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Paddy Chayefsky’s scathing satire of TV news, directed by Sidney Lumet, is not just a favorite film of mine, but the one that I find most emphatically lays bare the state of our current national discourse. Certainly the need for dumb entertainment wasn’t new in the mid-1970s, and as Faye Dunaway’s character makes all too clear in the movie, it’s not exactly like the network news was an intellectual bastion before she and her ilk showed up to the scene. Still, it’s hard to deny that mass media news was utterly corrupted at some point and remains so to this day, and the film has a clear-eyed view of how it all works and, just as importantly, it shows how audiences just don’t care and even prefer it that way. It’s a very dire state of affairs, and the film doesn’t flinch from it, although it’s also tremendously funny and features some terrific performances. Chayefsky’s scripted some of the wittiest, most piercing dialogue I’ve ever seen in film, and Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall are all top-notch. When Lumet was at the top of his game, he could deliver a film that combined crisp, commercial filmmaking with a stout social conscience, in a way that seems radical seen today in the context of the hyper-dumb commercial filmmaking that currently prevails in mainstream Hollywood. There’s not really anyone like him working today, and weren’t many even then, and this is one of his best and most enduring efforts. 10/10