War Horse (2011) Review (PG-13)

The story of War Horse begins with the birth of a thoroghbred in a small town in England a short time before the start of ‘The Big One’. A teen named Albert (played by relative newcomer Jeremy Irvine) admires the horse from afar right from the start. Albert is thrilled when his father outbids his landlord partially out of pride. His mother (Emily Watson), not so much, seeing that it may jeopardize their home.

Albert names the horse Joey and takes on training the horse to plow their fields after the father nearly shoots the horse in frustration. Saving the family home hinges on whether or not Joey can learn to pull a plow and the entire town soon gathers to watch Albert try to coax the horse into doing just that.  I won’t tell you how that works out, but the horse is soon being sold by the father to the military. War has broken out and good horses are needed. Albert is heartbroken, and not yet old enough to go into the military but he vows to find the horse and bring him home. He attaches a flag from his father’s regiment (from the Boer war) to the horse for luck (and as a storytelling device for the audience). So the story moves on to the next owner.

I’m of the kind to let you, the reader find out for yourself as to what happens next. The film gallops through the years and across Europe as the war moves along. Joey falls into the hands of various people involved and affected by the war. There are many scenes that are classic Spielberg; touches of humor, serendipity, and lots of sentimentality. Human touches. There are quiet moments to underscore the horror of the surrounding war. Spielberg doesn’t simply shoot a scene, he creates the perfect image to get not a reality across to the audience, but mood and ideals. He’s like a cinematic Norman Rockwell. For instance, a British regiment mounting their horses becomes like a moving painting. The frame is entirely filled by a golden field of wheat, the horses and men becoming visible as they mount. The air is filled with floating wheat particles, the sun casting a golden light over everything.

The old visual stand-bys of the director are omnipresent. Those shots of light illuminating dust particles. Silhouettes under orange-red skies or seen in the distance of a vast barren landscape like something out of a David Lean classic. Embers soaring into a night sky. There were even compositions that reminded me of Hollywood golden age classics like Gone With The Wind.

This is very much a work of art. Combine that with regular collaborator John Williams’ soundtrack and… just “wow”. There are some directors who get their hackles up by the idea of a score ‘artificially’ evoking emotion from the audience. Speilberg has no such qualms and rightly so. I have to say one of my favorite parts of this film was when I thought that I was hearing very deliberate traces of  prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf ” accompanying a scene that involved a goose on Albert’s farm.

Speilberg works with the best, so it’s no wonder the acting is top notch in War-Horse. It features some lesser known actors and actresses, but most of them are brilliant in their own right. Peter Mullan (Children of Men, Trainspotting, Tyrannosaur), who plays Albert’s flawed father, makes every part he plays interesting. At the beginning, he isn’t just placing bid on a horse. You really get the idea that it means a lot to him. he shakes. He mutters. He frets at the prospect of losing. He grits his teeth while doubling down and literally betting the farm. He’s fun to watch. He worked well with Emily Watson as the wife. The scene where she gives the landlord a piece of her mind was entertaining. There are many great actors in this, though. It would take to long to highlight them all. I did enjoy seeing Eddie Marsan in a small part, also. I do wish he would get some bigger parts, though. He’s a great actor and seems to be wasted a lot. I think he said one line in the last Sherlock Holmes film, as an example. I’d be remiss to fail to mention that he horses and their trainers were every bit as important as the actors were. There were some pretty impressive things that the horses do in the film. Such shots, I fail to see how they could get on film, especially the one that involves barb wire.

To be honest, I wasn’t really interested in seeing a ‘horse movie’ even if Steven Spielberg was back in the directing chair, but I’m glad I did. It is very much in the vein of Spielberg’s films over the last 15 years. It seems a little more cynicism, a little more of the harshness of the world has seeped into his consiousness. Where the films of his early career were mostly rousing adventures (Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Raiders Of The lost Ark), the stories he’s told in the last 2 decades (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, War Of The Worlds) have tended to be a little more on the dark side . War is often the backdrop as it is in War  Horse.

There is something a little different about War Horse, though, that is a little bit of a return to the sentimentality of his earlier films. There is an overriding hopefulness in the film that everything will work out, no matter how bad things are going. Some way, some how, things will work out.

Despite what some critics have complained about (I’m talkin’ to YOU Roger Ebert), I do not think Spielberg sidestepped the horrors  of war in this story. I think he actually did a better job showing that in this PG-13 film than a lot of Rated R films. The film isn’t about the bleakness of war, though. Its about hope in the the face of that bleakness.

The narrative device utilized by the director is definitely ‘modern Spielberg’, using the horse to move the film from the beginnings of WWI to the end. The story follows the horse through the hands of  various owners and through the various stages of war. The horse endures much. But no matter what nationality, the horse ends up in the hands of someone who love horses. Who has  possession of him is often in question. The horse is always regarded as valuable even if he isn’t handled with respect. The best and worst in men comes out wherever the horse is concerned. Think Spielberg was trying to say something there?

This was a great film to end the year on. I haven’t been terribly impressed with what hollywood offered this year, so at least the year in film ended strong. this one made my Top 10 of 2011. Click on the link to see where.  It’s worth seeing. It pretty intense for a PG-13 film. The violence in the film is treated far more realistically than in your typical action flick. There are consequences to the violence here. It’s uplifting for a war film, though, and has a little bit different of a point than the usual “War is bad” theme. I know that it is ‘bad’, but there are other things to be learned from war than that. Great film. Great time at the movie theater. Don’t wait for the DVD. See this one with an audience on the big screen. You won’t be disappointed.

4.5 of 5

Crash! Landen’s Best 10 Films of 2011

Once again, it’s time for my list of the Best Films of the Year! This has been a somewhat ‘down’ year in film, in my opinion. Most of the ones that I’ve selected wouldn’t cut the mustard in an average year. It’s one of my more mainstream lists, too. 2012 looks like its going to be a rebound year with films like The Dark Knight Rises and Prometheus on their way.

(Update: My list is starting to resemble something somewhat respectable. Sure, there are many ‘highly acclaimed’ 2011 films that I haven’t seen, but I’m beginning to get a list I can stand behind and defend. It’s still ‘mainstream’, but less so. And mainstream isn’t a bad thing, but…)

For some that didn’t quite make my Top 10, check out my list at the bottom of the page (of the films that I’ve seen from 2011). They’re roughly in descending order from the best film to the worst.  You can see my Worst 10 Films of 2011 here…

Now on with the Top 10 (Updated).

(Bumped) Don’t be Afraid of the Dark (Not a perfect film, but fun for horror fans… Some critics were trying to compare this to Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” mostly because Del Toro produced this, but that’s an unfair comparison. This is strictly a horror/haunted house story, but a very good one.)

(Bumped) Hanna (A pure action flick boiled down to the bare essentials of the genre. Saoirse Ronan is surprisingly believable as a child assassin).

(Bumped) Incendies ( A spiraling, twisting tale about identity, family, societal pressures and of course, the troubles in the Middle East. Review pending.)

10 Hugo(An unusual departure for Martin Scorsese in some ways, but still centers around what the director himself is in love with:film. Hardcore fans of movie history will probably enjoy this more than your general audience.)

9 Sherlock Holmes: Game Of Shadows (The rare sequel that exceeds expectations. It might center a little too much on the Holmes/Watson relationship and the action, but still fun.)

8 Rango (Another strong foray into the world of CGI animated films by Dreamworks. References many films without stooping to re-enact them as the worst of the CGI animated flicks do. Depp is the headliner, but I liked many of the peripheral performances, most notably Isla Fisher as Beans.  Review pending.)

7 Trust (A very well done film dealing with tough subject matter. Never announces what’s happening in the story. TRUSTs that the audience is intelligent enough to follow along.)

6 The Adventures Of Tintin (The first of two from Stephen Spielberg in my top 3. A little convoluted, but does justice to the comic strip series it’s based on while leaving the director’s fingerprints all over it.)

5 Tucker And Dale Vs Evil (I had to debate whether or not to put this as my number one film… It’s one of the best horror comedies I’ve seen in a long while. My heart says put this at #1, but my head won out. Still, a great film.)

4 Source Code (The second flick from director Duncan Jones. While not as poignant/meaningful as “Moon”, Source Code is far more fun. I guess that’s the kinds of films I gravitated towards this year.)

3 Senna (Another late addition to my list. It’s hard to figure where to put documentaries on my lists. It’s comparing apples to oranges, really, fiction and non-fiction. This was not nearly as depressing as most documentaries are, even if this one does involve tragedy.)

2 War Horse [Unadulterated and unapologetic Spielberg. You may know where the film is going at times, but that's not what's importatant here. No one milks emotion out of a given scene like Speilberg. No one can cut through to what is important to a given scene like Spielberg. He knows how stories work and he's maybe the best director out there at taking recognizable archtypes and presenting them to the audience (in a gift wrapped box gleaming in a lone beam of sunlight). War Horse is a great film and is pure storytelling. It's why I go to the movies.]

1 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy  A film that’s both quiet and mind blowing. Director Tomas Alfredson last directed the critically acclaimed ‘Let The Right One In’. This film is seemingly much more chaotic in its storytelling, but it does have a structure to it. There are a couple of scenes that the film always returns to as well as one charcter that bookends the film (and it probably won’t be the character that you think it will be going in). It’s not straight forward, jumping all over  in the sequence of events while leaking information to the audience what’s going on. It is a great film, though, about what’s hidden and uncovering what’s hidden with the Cold War serving as the backdrop. Or is it about loyalty and trust… Or maybe it’s just about spies. Whatever. It’s a great film, that surely will clean up come Awards season… except maybe at the Oscars. they probably won’t want to give all of the awards to a British film two years in a row, even if it deserves the accolades.)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy * War Horse * Source Code * Tucker & Dale Vs Evil * The Adventures of Tintin * Trust * Rango * Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows * Hugo * Incendies * Hanna * Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark * Cowboys And Aliens * Jane Eyre * Kung Fu Panda 2 * Super 8 * Warrior * Young Adult * Captain America * Our Idiot Brother * The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo * Win, Win * The Ward * Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides * Green Lantern * Transformers 3: Dark Of The Moon * Fright Night * Season Of The Witch * Water For Elephants * We Are The Night * Everything Must Go * The Beaver * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 * Thor * Tower Heist * Passion Play * Trollhunter * X-Men: First Class * The Zookeeper * Green Hornet * Limitless * Wrecked * Unknown * Sucker Punch * Attack the Block * Battle: Los Angeles * Hesher * Hobo With A Shotgun * Submarine * Red State * Choose * Atlas Shrugged

Ring In The New Year With Comedian Matt Moseley (Updated)

Today was a good day. I had lunch today with comedian Matt Moseley and  blog regular Mr. Assertive (the one above with the tan). Mr. Assertive picked up the tab. Thanks, Mr. Assertive. Later, I took probably this year’s last trip to one of the local Rave Motion Pictures Theaters (a positive visit even if I ate way too much popcorn). AND, I helped out a damsel in (minor) distress. I got a “thank you”, but don’t read into that. It was a pretty good day even if I did almost cough up a lung riding my bike up a steep hill. I enjoy that, though.

Anyway, back to Mr. Moseley. I’ve made posts before about him performing comedy here along the Gulf Coast. He performed last night at Coyote’s in Pensacola. Today,  (the 29th) he’ll be telling jokes at Shooter’s Sports Bar at 9:30 PM (at 2111 Airport Blvd in Pensacola). He’ll also be doing one last show at The Big Easy Tavern in downtown Pensacola on Friday (the 30th) starting at 9:30 PM. His humor is a little off the wall at times, but go see him, you won’t regret it. You’ll have a good night out.

A Solid Year

This was just my own little goal, but I wanted to see if I could post every day for a year. Sounded easy, but it’s been a little more difficult than I thought (mostly because I exceeded my memory size allotment with WordPress). I actually hit the year mark a couple of days ago. I had started  on the 26th of last year with late Christmas wishes and a Black Swan review (which I saw on Christmas last year). Time is relative, I guess, and  last December 26th feels either like a blink of an eye or an eternity ago. Or both.

I did manage to get more art up this year, but I think in 2012 I’m going to eliminate the College Football section. I may even delete those, so I can make space. When the New Year begins, I’m also going to concentrate less on making a daily blog entry. If I have a post, I’ll post it. I may even designate weekly posts or something for art or for reviews. All of this is so I can try to get more work on the comic book done. I might even curb my movie watching. Shudder.

Crash! Landen’s Worst 10 Movies of 2011

I was looking at my list of films that I’ve seen this year and realized it was going to be far easier to come up with my 10 Worst Films rather than my 10 Best. I still have to make one last trip to the theater this year for War Horse… maybe one more… but I don’t think that one has any chance of making it onto this list. This is a list of the most wretched, putrid, foul smelling mounds of cinematic crap that this year’s filmmakers could produce… Well… Okay, some of these had 2010 release dates abroad. I go by wide release dates here in the US, though. The only other rquirements besides being released in the US in  2011, are that I have seen the film and that the film in questions sucks. I mean, REALLY sucks. I get more and more selective every year, so there are probably quite a few more films that I KNEW would suck that I didn’t bother seeing. These films at least had something going for them that I thoughjt the film might not suck. God, was I wrong.

Some films that threatened to make their way into my list: The ‘trapped in a car’ epic that was ‘Wrecked‘ that featured Oscar winner Adrian Brody (you guessed it) trapped in a car for almost the entire film. The power trip fantasy Limitless that tried to sell the idea of a pill that could make you SO smart that if you stopped dressing and acting like a slob then no one would see you as a slob (BRILLIANT!). And it was disappointing that a Michael Gondry film, The Green Hornet, almost made it onto the list. It looked more like the producers directed it, since it in no way resembled his past work except for a minute or two in the film. There were others, but they were not even close to the films on this list.

I have reviews up for most of these (which I am supplying the links to), but there’s a few of them that have reviews pending. I’ll post them soon, but I probably won’t waste a lot of breath on them. Anyway… here’s my list:

10 Unknown (Another generic suspense film with Neeson. Each film that he does like this seems to be a wtered down version of the previous film. I have to say, though, that as bad as I thought it was, it is high art compared to the other nine films on my list.)

9 Sucker Punch (The only thing that I can figure is that Zack Snyder can no longer contain his costume fetish and is no longer even giving any pretense that he’s trying to hide it. It’s was like watching a series of expensive music videos featuring PG-13 strippers. All they needed were the poles… Oh, wait.)

8 Attack the Block (A mess of a film where the director was aspiring to create a second rate version of the 1980s  low budget sci-fi horror flick “Critters” in an urban setting with even worse FX and no characters with any kind of a personality to differentiate them.)

7 Battle:Los Angeles (Saw this one twice. The first time it was called Skyline.)

6 Hesher (A movie that had to have been written by Dave Mustaine back when he was in high school when he was angry at his English teacher.)

5 Hobo With A Shotgun (Wasn’t this one of those ‘Grindhouse ‘trailers within the film’ like “Machete”? Just an abrasive film with no laughs. I ASSUME that this stuff was supposed to be funny. I’m sorry to see Rutger Hauer has to stoop to a part like this.)

4 Submarine (Sets the record for time it takes in  insulting its audience. It throws out some anti-American sentiment before the credits even roll. It desperately wants to be a quirky, indie hit but succeeds only in imitating better films less successfully.)

3 Red State (A film with no one to like, no protagonist, illogical actions, insultingly two dimensional characters and plenty of confused political rhetoric from Kevin Smith. Despite Smith saying he changed the film anytime the audience might know where he’s going with the story, it’s still predictable and just stupid.)

2 Choose Watching this film is the wrong choice, trust me.

1 Atlas Shrugged  (A brutal film. Just brutal. And I don’t mean that it’s a violent film. Never before have I become uninterested in a film that I wanted to watch as fast as I did with this one. The ‘news clips’ that are used in the film’s opening gave me the same kind of feeling as being forced to watch television with someone else controlling the remote who changes the channel to a random station every three seconds, only every channel that comes up either has a train or someone talking about interest rates. I thought once I get past the opening, then it would have to get better, but listening to the actors drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and ON about economics and political ideology. I felt like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange when they had him strapped in that chair with his eyelids peeled back watching war clips, but instead of war clips I was watching Jim Cramer and finance programs, and McDowell had a better soundtrack to listen to. And this is one of those no-budget cheap sounding soundtracks where someone randomly holds down a few keys on a keyboard for several seconds at a time and they just play that over whatever’s happening onscreen at the time, which for this means nothing. Just talking heads for two hours, then one of the actresses screams at the end which was what I was doing for most of the film. Just horrible.

And that’s my 10. Do yourself a favor and avoid these at all costs unless you’re a masochist. If that’s the case, then… Enjoy!

I’ll post my ‘Best  10 Films’ list in a day or two.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) Review (PG)

The Adventures with Tintin is an incredible film based on the European comic strip of the same name by the late Georges Remi. This is the way that I wish Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” had been handled, but then that one didn’t have Stephen Spielberg in the director’s chair. I really hope this and “Warhorse” are a sign that he’s going to get back to directing movies on a regular basis.  This is a the first time he’s directed an animated film that uses motion capture. It’s not surprising that this may be the best motion capture film I’ve seen (at least off the top of my head).

 

This film is spectacular to look at. I’m NOT one of those that HAS to see a film in 3D if that’s an option. I’m one of those that sees 3D mostly as a money generating gimmick. There are times when I’ve seen a film in 3D and was impressed by it. This is one of those times. It didn’t hurt that I didn’t develop a headache midway through the film (which has occurred frequently). I especially enjoyed the scenes in the city the most and the Haddock mansion reminded me of Scooby Doo cartoons for some reason (for me that’s a good thing.. original series, of course).

 

The film  follows the title character Tintin (Jamie Bell), a globetrotting reporter and his faithful dog Snowy, as they become involved in a very involved mystery stemming from a model of a sailing ship that he purchases in what amounts to a flea market. The model is a replica of a famous ship that sunk in the 17th century called the Unicorn (and captained by a man named Haddock). As soon as he buys it an American and a sinister looking man named Sakharine (Daniel Craig), both try to purchase it for many times its value. Tintin refuses and takes it home with him.

Tintin soon discovers that the model has hidden secrets and the game is afoot (sorry, wrong movie). Anyway, he is visited by two agents of INTERPOL, Thomson and Thompson, who are searching for a pickpocket (who snatches Tintin’s wallet before escaping the two lawmen. To be honest, I have no clue what the pickpocket had to do with anything, but maybe his importance will occur in sequels. There are quite a few deviations during the story, but I’ll get to that later.

Tintin’s investigations lead him to Marlinspike Manor, where he recognizes the Haddock symbol in the architecture. After another deviation (again, more later…), Tintin is confronted by the mansion’s caretaker and by Sakharine. Tintin discovers that there is another replica of the Unicorn in the manor and the mystery thickens. I don’t really want to give anything more away than that. In this film, one clue begets another and there is trouble for Tintin and Snowy at every turn (almost quite literally).

Tintin soon finds himself at odds with the mysterious Sakharine in trying to solve the discovered mystery. Sakharine has a few advantages. He knows Tintin has in his possession something that he needs to find what he wants to find. Once he gets that, he knows where he has to go for the next big clue to reveal itself about what he’s searching for. Sakharine also has a number of henchman at his disposal.

Tinitin does manage to find an ally in the last of the Haddocks, a sea captain (Andy Serkis) that has been kidnapped by Sakharine. This Haddock steals the spotlight from Tintin for quite a bit of the film. Most of the gags stemming from his perpetual inebriation.

It is the stuff of high adventure and I, like at least one other big name critic, was reminded of Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series. It’s set in about the same era, spans the globe (taking Tintin to Morocco, and is loaded with many complicated chase sequences.

There’s a lot of action. In fact, there may be too much. A friend of mine, we’ll call him Mr. Assertive, took his family to see this. His family liked it, but in his words: “There was just too much”. After seeing it, I understood what he meant. Tintin was incapable of doing anything without instigating an action sequence.

The sequences were generally there to progress the story, though. For instance, the discovery of something hidden in the Unicorn replica was caused by a cat that gets into Tintin’s home only to be chased by Snowy. After an extended sequence, the two knock over the Unicorn replica, damaging it…. So it was necessary… But, I can see where someone could think that it’s getting a little old. Anytime Tintin even tried to cross the street he was greeted by an onslaught of crisscrossing traffic.

It felt nonstop, but I didn’t have as much a problem with it as he did, I think. It was minor. The action sequences were reminiscent of those earlier Spielberg films. The locales and era had a lot to do with that, too, though.

Another little quibble I had was the humor. Maybe it was the audience I was with, but a lot of the humor, especially early on, fell extremely flat. I think people warmed up to the slapstick style, especially once Haddock made his first appearance. He livened up the film,  for sure. The film really didn’t need too much, though, as I said the visuals were top notch. The detailing could almost be described as excessive at times. Combine the beautifully rendered visuals with the action and it was complete eye candy, but with substance. It wasn’t  mindless flash, the action did move things along.

This film should have near universal appeal. Only the truly stupid won’t appreciate the artistic merit. It’s not ‘edgy’, but it’s just very well done. It’s a good example of how blockbuster kids’ films should be made.

4.5 of 5

… And To All A Good Night.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to ‘vat19ambient’ for posting this.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) Review (R)

Hmm… This one certainly isn’t going to get anyone in the Christmas mood is it? It does snow in the film. It’s also going to be very difficult for me to review The Girl With Dragon Tattoo (based on the internationally best selling book by the late Stiegg Larsson) having seen the original version (all three in the trilogy, actually; reviews here and here, BTW). I find that I just cannot remove myself from it given that all three of the films in the trilogy were released here in the states just last year.

Another thing that makes reviewing this difficult is at the time  I saw the original films I had never seen any of these actors. Noomi Rapace is now appearing in several English language films, but when she appeared as ‘Dragon Tattoo’ title character, Lisbeth Salander, it seemed that Lisbeth was who the actress truly was. She was the rare female that I would describe as ‘hard nosed’. Her character stayed true to her nature for the entire film series, even if the films diminished in their returns with each sequel. It wasn’t just Rapace, though. Michael Nyqvist WAS left wing reporter Mikael Blomkvist in turmoil. The villains really WERE Nazis, serial killers, and scary-sick perverts.They weren’t acting. I was reading the movie, so if they were acting poorly, I would have never known. The thing was though, they weren’t. The situations in the film were quite real (at least in the first film).

In the new film, I know this new Lisbeth ain’t no Lisbeth. She’s that actress Rooney Mara from The Social Network (another David Fincher film) and I didn’t care for her acting in that one (her scenes seemed very ‘staged’ to me). That’s not Mikael Blomkvist, that’s Daniel Craig! And he’s James Bond! And why’s Robin Wright talking with that Swedish accent while Craig’s still using a British accident? And hey, there’s a big name actor there in a seemingly small part. He won’t have anything to do with all of these murders now will he? Do you see how I an have a problem with the familiarity of the actors? No? I know actors play more than one part in their career. I know that. But I think it helps to ‘believe’ what’s happening onscreen when the actors are unknowns. It was difficult here to not see the actors as actors when I’ve seen this done well with unknowns. That’s all I’m saying. And yes, I said ‘ain’t no‘… What of it?

Moving on.

The film is directed by David Fincher, whose work in the past has had a dark tone to say the least (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac). I’m betting the seedier elements (serial killers, fetishists, S&M, dark secrets in general) of the story  are what drew him to this project as evidenced early on by Rooney appearing naked (and fully pierced) in the first teaser poster released. Fincher begins this film with a very slick, chicktified… yes, that is a word. I’m using it… ‘chicktified’… version of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” over what I can only describe as a credit sequence that resembled an expensive Super Bowl motor oil ad aimed at people who read French Vogue magazine… or a David Fincher directed James Bond film opening sequence, where the ‘Bond girl’ was more of a ‘Bondage girl’  and the star instead of James Bond (played by Daniel Craig). I didn’t like it. Sorry. Fincher was apparently trying to get the audience’s attention. It was artistic. Visual. Nerds will say the word “kewl”… but it felt like a desperate attempt to be weird. Fincher is known as a ‘visual’ director (and he is). He, like Hitchcock, really tries to give the audience something different with an opening credits sequence as he did in Panic Room or Se7en. In the former, the credits were striking, but didn’t seem to convey any sort of information to the audience or have a reason for being. In the latter’s case, the opening seemed to set a creepy tone for the rest of the film. In this case, not only does it seem out of place, it seems to be running at a tempo that is completely off kilter to the rest of the film. I’m assuming this was a Fincher film once again scored by Trent Reznor (Se7en, The Social Network). There are minimalist electronic screeches and scrapes all through this, but the music and the scenes of  a bitterly cold winter just don’t mesh with the opening in my humble opinion. Maybe Fincher was trying to wake the audience up a little before having them settle into this nearly three hour tour… a threeeee hour tour.

Yes, Fincher (like a lot of other film directors) no longer seem to have the ability to trim their movies down to a running time that is tolerable to a general audience.There was much that could have been cut in this film to make a faster, tighter film. Just as an example, there is a completely unnecessary scene in a tattoo parlor preceding a scene where she makes use of a tattoo gun as a form of revenge. First, we know she frequents tattoo parlors. Hence the damn title. Second, she states she’s never used one before. That’s all you need to know. Frankly, going to get a ‘tat’ right after what happens to her seems a little lacking in reality (to me, anyway). But there were a number of things that seemed like they were there just to add space or because it looked cool. I love movies. I watch lots of them. Some I even say that I wish would go on forever (but I don’t really mean it). After the 2 hour and twenty mark, I begin to lose patience with ‘cool’ and just want the story to be told. I guess I’m sometimes similar in mindset  to the guy in “Amadeus”  that said there’s only so many notes that one’s ears can hear in one sitting. For me though, there’s only so much ‘cool’ I can take before I start clamoring for real substance.

The look of the film is typical Fincher. I guess he’s fallen in love with the ugly greens and browns because it seems to me, ever since Fight Club, all of his films are starting to look very much alike, only dimmer with each passing film. There is a crispness to the images, but it’s almost becoming a little more boring to look at. I kind of wish he’d try something different.

Even so, there are some spectacularly framed shots in the movie. Cameras placed in interesting places. Reflections. Stark contrasts… But it almost seems like Fincher’s more interested in trying to be ‘cool’ instead of telling the story. At least he hasn’t started using excessive super slo-mo, yet, like Zack Snyder and Guy Ritchie.

Is anyone still with me? I’m on a roll, so I figure I’ve lost everyone by now. I do that sometimes. I didn’t really give anything away in my ‘review’ of the original film and I don’t want to do that here, either, but I will run down a brief synopsis. The story begins with a journalist named Michael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig). He has been successfully sued by a man that he’s written an expose on for the left wing publication Blomkvist works for. The allegations may be true, but the journalist has been set up rather well, probably by  the man he wrote the story about. The story is widely publicized and this brings him to the attention of an eccentric head of a wealthy family, Henrik Vanger (played by Christopher Plummer). After an extensive (and illegal) background check, Vanger hires Blomqvist (under the pretense he is writing a biography) to investigate the disappearance of a teenaged family member.

The case is an old one, having happened in the 1960s, but it still haunts the family. The crime has all of the requirements of a locked room mystery. The crime scene is that of the family’s island and there is a list of suspects, most all of them part of the family. The family is dysfunctional to an epic degree. Members only talk to certain other members of the family. The family has ties to the Nazis. Many, many dark secrets of the ‘behind closed doors’ variety.

Nothing is expected to come of the investigation by Blomqvist , but Henrik promises not only to pay him well, but offers up information on the man who set up the journalist. Naturally, he agrees or we wouldn’t have a film. Meanwhile we get to know the other major player, Lisbeth Salander. She is the young hacker (with a photographic memory) who investigated Blomkvist for Vanger. She has an extreme volume of personal baggage and seems to be under personal assault daily from  all angles. Even at 23, she is still a ward of the state and suffers particularly from a man named Bjurman who takes over her finances and oversees her ‘rehabilitation’ after her legal guardian suffers a stroke.

Eventually, when Blomkvist needs an assistant for his investigation (that he actually finds some new leads in), Vanger suggests Lisbeth. Their introduction is an uncomfortable one, but Salander finds the prospect of assisting in the apprehension of a killer of young women very  appealing. And so it goes.

The film has a good bit of difficult subject matter, especially when it comes to the highly detestable degenerate Bjurman. Just like in the original, I felt his role in the story was extremely superfluous.  It does have place in the second film (if there’s a sequel), even if it’s still distasteful. Here it just serves as shock value and to make the film longer.  Plus, we get another scene where she’s assaulted by a group of muggers  in the subway, which was more than redundant. I get it. She’s having a hard time. I don’t even think that was handled well, either, when she uses what looks to be martial arts on one to get her laptop back, then uses escape tactics reminiscent of sequences from the movies “Subway” and “Kontroll“. Although I thought it was redundant in the first version also, at least Lisbeth wasn’t portrayed as a superhero as she is here (at least not at that point in the series). It’s not consistent with how she deals with Bjurman. If she dealt with Bjurman as she does the subway attackers, I guess we would lose some of the shock value, though.

One thing that’s interesting to me about the subject matter (or maybe the contradictions therein), is the fact that while this is very much a film with a feminist message, it puts forth a character that is running from who she is to such a degree that she’s completely changed the way she looks, trusts no one, and continues to accept her own suffering as something as normal as brushing her teeth. I think Fincher capitalizes on the subversive aspects, but I think the original intent of her appearance is just to portray a defiant reaction to the oppression of society in general. Maybe the fact that she looks so different in her appearance is a way of stating ‘she doesn’t deserve it because of what she’s wearing’ or something to that effect.

I did like Mara (as Lisbeth) more in this than in the other film I’ve seen her in. I did think that some of the actions by her Lisbeth does seem out of character to me. Her willingness to fall in the sack with Blomkvist so readily just didn’t feel right (her willingness to get naked often was not a problem, though). There was a ‘one in done’ in the original film, that was more like the character’s way of saying ‘thanks’ (that’s a great way to be sure). I don’t think I cared for the extended ‘heist like’ double ending, but I didn’t care for it in the other version, either.

Daniel Craig’s typically good in the film. Whereas I think Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth would kick the living crap out of Mara’s, Craig’s bull headed Bond-like journalist would make short work of the Michael Nyqvist incarnation of the character. I think early on in the film, Craig seemed to still have either some carry over from his role in Cowboys and Aliens or was letting some 007 seep into his character. I thought it fit better when he was a bit more unsure of himself as he was towards the end of the film.

Christopher Plummer is always fun, no matter what he’s in. Whether he’s the good guy or the villain he tends to slip in a good dose of humor. He seemed to be enjoying himself in this and his character is even a bit aware of the trappings of the mystery genre (and says so at one point).

This definitely wasn’t the complete surprise that the Swedish version was, but how can it be for me? I knew what was going to happen since there were only minor changes made here. Some resolutions come quicker here than they did in the Swedish trilogy. Lisbeth even announces to Blomkvist some details of her own troubled past that I don’t think came out so early  before. Still, Fincher’s visual style is atypical (even if I don’t like the dimness… the greens… the browns…). I liked the original version a little more I think, but that one had flaws, too. The tale is still an interesting one, though, so I’ll give it the same score I gave to the other…

4 0f 5

Warrior (2011) Review (PG-13)

 

Warrior is the first big mainstream attempt to make a modern day ‘Rocky’ using the backdrop of Mixed Martial Arts. Or at least that’s what anyone watching this will compare this to. There’s no real comparison, though. Different eras. Different sports (even if I have a hard time calling an event where you can ‘choke someone out’ or attempt to break someone’ bones or punch someone when they’re already knocked out on the mat… But I digress).

 

And really, Rocky was lightning in a bottle. It was high art that was accessible to everyone. It was a sociological character study. It was the epitome of the underdog story… And like Stallone’s other scripts it was taken from someone’s life story without proper authorization. Again. I digress. getting back to ‘Warrior’…

So after doing my best to alienate MMA fans, let me say that this is a solid film. It ‘s very well acted. All o the principle players do good work here. I rarely call for award recognition, but I would hope Nick Nolte gets some recognition here. He has a very difficult part to play here. His past battles with drugs and alcohol probably helped him with the role. The fight choreography isn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but it works for the movie (and it’s one of the few categories where it would trump Rocky).

The story is that of a severely dysfunctional family, specifically about two brothers, Brendan and Tommy Conlon, and their father Paddy who was obsessed with them becoming top athletes in wrestling (and the fight game). At some point, Paddy’s alcoholism and obsession with athletics forces the wife to flee to parts unknown with her youngest son Tommy. The eldest son stays because he won’t leave his girlfriend (and future wife) behind. Tommy becomes withdrawn and becomes filled with anger for Paddy and Brendan when his mother dies of cancer. He never contacts them and they find out after her passing much later (curiously he blames his brother for not being there even though he was unaware of his mother’s whereabouts and condition).

And that’s all before the movie starts. When the movie begins, both sons, have fallen on hard times while Paddy has cleaned himself up being clean and sobre for nearly 1,000 days now. Neither brother speaks to their father or to one another. Paddy (Nick Nolte) comes home one night to find one of his estranged sons (Tommy) sitting on the steps of his home. Tommy (played by Tom Hardy) is still angry and has come home to vent some of his frustrations to his father. Unbeknownst to Paddy, Tommy, now an ex-MArine, is conflicted with regrets of his own. I think at this point Tommy already has intentions in mind. After arguing with his father he leaves, but I don’t think his showing up is just a random event.

Meanwhile, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) has become a physics teacher, but takes to taking fights at ‘tough man’ style contests at strip clubs to try to make extra money. He has a wife, Tess (Jennifer Morrison),  and two kids and they are in danger of losing their house. This complicates matters when he gets gets suspended from his teaching duties when its found out what his moonlighting activities are. There is a benefit to being suspended, though. It gives him time to train to take fights. After a series of serendipitous events he finds himself in a major MMA event called the Sparta.

After Tommy becomes a youtube sensation (a la Kimbo Slice) he asks his father to train him for an upcoming MMA event with a five million dollar purse going to the winner. Tommy’s condition is that they only speak about training and nothing else. Paddy agrees, but soon begins to feel the strains of  his past obsessions, contact with his sons and his sobriety.

The film is very well acted. Hardy is really good here in what seems to be becoming old hat for him if you account for his roles like in Bronson or the upcoming Dark Knight Rises (Bane!). At times, it’s easy to like his character. You pity him at times. Then, he plays the villain role to an extent, and acts as a lot of people do, with a level of irrationality. Edgerton is good, also, but he has more of the purely nice guy underdog role. His character only does what he has to do for his family and does not have nearly the amount of inner turmoil that the brother has. But, the real standout of the film is Nick Nolte. This is probably the best role I’ve seen him play in quite some time. I don’t think I remember him playing a character quite like this one. The only time that the trademark Nolte ‘angry actor’ moments manifest themselves are when… Well, I should let you watch it, I guess. I also thought the usage of the Moby Dick backgound detail in his part of the story was used rather cleverly.  I didn’t catch the significance of it until the scene where it became obvious. it’s subtle.

The biggest problem I had with the film is the contrivances and conveniences that occur to have both brothers getting back into fighting at the same time, both in dire straits and entering the same contest. I think, though, the film might have been better served to focus on one son. There’s quite a bit that you have to swallow the closer you get to the end. In fact, at one point, I figured one would break a wrist or a leg and have to fight on with the injury. And… Well, see for yourself. The way they balanced the two sons’ back stories was impressive that it never became too hokey or unbelievable. I did like how they resolved the story of the two brothers in the ring. I’m not giving anything away by saying that. It’s in the trailers and even if it wasn’t, you know it’s inevitable and necessary to conclude the story.

I liked ‘Warrior’ quite a bit. It’s more of a character study, a drama, rather than an action film. It juggles quite a few subplots in reaching the finale. I might have liked it even more with a little more editing, but it’s still quite good as is. Few films make use of the split screen or multi screen shots anymore, but this one did so very effectively. I wish they had done more of that, since the story of two brothers taking different routes to make it to their showdown was made for that particular storytelling technique. Anyway, great movie.

4 of 5

 

Water For Elephants (2011) Review (PG-13)

WARNING: SPOILERS TOWARDS THE END. YOU”VE BEEN WARNED.

The story of Water For Elephants begins in modern times with an elderly gentleman (Hal Holbrook) who appears while a circus is trying to close up shop and move on to the next town’s performance. He seems to be a little confused, so the proprietor of the circus takes him in while he tries to contact a nursing home whose residents had been shuttled in to attend earlier that night. While doing this the older man relates that he had once worked for a famous circus that went out of business in 1931. Fascinated the proprietor asks to hear his tale before calling the nursing home.

And so he begins to recollect the days of the Great Depression when he was a young man attending Cornell to become an animal vet. Everything is going according to plan until his parents are killed in an accident. Because they mortgaged the house to send him to school, he loses the family home. Distraught, he packs his suitcase and hops the first train out of town.

As fate would have it, the train he tries to stow away on is the Benzeni Brothers Circus Train. He befriends some of the circus grunts and remains with them hoping to get a job, watching as they set up and perform a show. His eyes almost immediately come to a resting place on the star performer, Marlena, who happens to be the wife of the owner, August.

Jacob lands the job when August sees that he might have some use. When Jacob reveals that the most prized horse in Marlena’s act is suffering from a painful and terminal affliction, he suggests that the horse be put down. August however introduces him to the harsh realities of  a circus during the Depression, saying a horse in pain is less important to men without work. Against his wishes (but in line with Marlena’s) Jacob puts the horse down. This enrages August, but after initially threatening to have Jacob killed, reveals that, lucky for the young vet that the lions and tigers need to be fed, so it works out.

Time moves along and Jacob covets August’s wife from a distance until August buys an elephant from another circus that has folded its tents. That’s when August asks Jacob to begin training the elephant, which puts him in close proximity to Marlena, who will be the star of the new act…. And I think, everyone can see where that’s going.

At times, Water For Elephants is visually stunning as a story about the circus should be. For a movie that banters often about life as an illusion, I thought the story (and the visuals) were a little lacking in cinematic magic. It seemed the director was a little too pragmatic and needed not a better eye for visuals, but maybe a more artistic one. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well shot, but as I said I was expecting a little more of the inherent illusion that travels with a circus.

The fact that most of the characters were rather bland didn’t help. Even the protagonist Jacob (Robert Pattinson) and the ‘forbidden’ love interest, the married Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), were both rather stoic. Jacob is not the kind of guy that wears his emotions on his sleeve. If he has a passion for becoming a veterinarian, it’s never apparent. It works more as a plot device to work him into having an important role in the circus. Marlena is a woman without her own dreams. She’s only married to the Ringmaster and performing in the circus because she feels there’s nothing for her in the ‘real world’.

The one character that was more keyed up was Christoph Waltz’s August, a ringmaster (and circus owner) who seemed to still be playing his role in Inglourious Basterds. I don’t think it was his fault as much as the writing. He starts as a hardnosed business type protecting his employees. Then he’s a guy with uncontrollable temper issues. Then he’s a nice guy. Then he’s a guy with uncontrollable temper issues because of his drinking. Then he’s a nice guy. Then he’s pure evil killing his own employees. It was never consistent.

The love story was also disappointing in its lack of fire, being more like attraction by osmosis. The finale fell mostly flat with me, and in saying that, it’s time for my second installment of…

Hollywood. I Can Fix Your Film. The biggest problem of the film is that it promises a tragedy in its opening and then illogically gives you a happy ending. You expect when the older Jacob (Hal Holbrook) begins telling his tale with obvious regret/heartbreak that he lost the love of his life (in the incident that put August’s circus out of business), but no. He ends with not tragedy, but that he lived a flowery life ever after with Marlena which renders his words (of “I’m not running away with the circus. I’m coming home”) far less meaningful.

It implies his best memories were with the circus, but the story’s not about him loving the circus. It’s about Jacob’s love for Marlena, so… without him having lost her, there is no symbolic gesture of having lived in regret and going back to something that reminded him of not what he loved, but who. The story contradicts itself with a confused happy ending inserted at the end of the recollection and the denouement.

I haven’t even mentioned the incident that occurs at the climax involving Rosie the elephant that came off as silly and forced. It seems that they tried to connect the incident so as to give the title purpose, but really elephants are not alluded to enough to make the motif important. What happens with the elephant throughout is more incidental than substantive. It’s like the director gives the all important ‘character arc’ to the elephant without having made the film about the elephant. It’s like the writer couldn’t make up his mind about what story he wanted to tell, the love story or the elephant’s morale tale, and muddled both stories in doing so.  This IS a step up in quality by director Francis Lawrence whose past films include crap CGI FX mediocrities I Am Legend and Constantine, even if it does have glaring flaws. I liked the movie, but felt like Water For Elephants could have been a classic film instead of just the good time waster that it is.

3.5 of 5