Catching Up: Mini Reviews

So many movies, so little time to review them. I saw a number of movies over the last month and some of them took some real time to wrap my head around. While some may deserve more analysis, for now this will have to do - many more movies are quickly approaching on the horizon. The next two months are the most exciting for movies, and I look forward to sinking my teeth into the fall season's offerings. For now, though, reviews.


Happy-Go-Lucky

I recognize I'm in the minority on this one, but dear lord was this film a pain to sit through at times. Director Mike Leigh presents us with Poppy, one of the most grating characters of the year. Cheerful to the point of derangement, Poppy refuses to let anyone not be affected by her chipper attitude. There's no real plot to speak of, just a series of moments in her life and the characters she meets along the way. I was unable to believe that this character could or would exist in the world, or that anyone would do some of the things she does. The one truly shining element here is Eddie Marsan as her polar opposite driving instructor. Perhaps it says more about me than the film itself that I often preferred his volatile character to Poppy, but he was riveting. These are two people that should not have met, but because they have it rushes inevitably to a shocking and powerful confrontation that almost single-handedly redeemed this movie. As unimpressed as I was by this film, I would be happy to see Marsan get some recognition during the awards season.




Let the Right One In

If you've had your ear to the ground, you've probably heard rumblings about this one. Believe the hype - it's a masterpiece. It's unique visions like this that make me love watching movies. Classified as a horror film, I feel that is incorrect. It has a young girl who is a vampire, and there are certainly scenes of shocking violence, but at it's heart it is a beautiful love story between two kids trying to come to terms with who they are and what place they occupy in the world. I haven't been this affected by a movie in a long while, and can't recommend this highly enough. The nature of the characters make it hard to accept some of their actions, but at the same time you can't help but love the two kids in spite of those actions. The end especially had me literally cheer out loud for the characters. Trust me, you haven't seen a film quite like this before, this is one of the best you'll probably find all year.




Synecdoche, New York

I still haven't totally come to grips with the implications of this film after nearly a month of contemplation. Suffice it to say, Charlie Kaufman is one of our most original minds working today, and while this doesn't deliver quite on the level of his greatest work, it is still at times fascinating and moving. It follows a playwright named Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as he tries to make the most important work of art ever conceived. Right off the bat you should not expect narrative sense from this film - think David Lynch lite. Time passes these characters by with almost no notice, physical space becomes undefinable, and real and imagined begin to merge into one. Caden attempts to recreate his life on a gigantic sound stage, but as he does it all begins to fold in on itself. He starts telling the story of how he's telling the story of how he's telling the story, etc. Hoffman is great, as are all the women in his life - Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Diane Weist and more. It seems to falter at the end when it becomes less clear what is happening anymore, and the film seems to lack a coherent ending - but then again, so does life. I would recommend Kaufman's own Adaptation over this as it hits on many of the same themes, but this is a solid film with moments of brilliance. I think had Kaufman found a director instead of directing it himself, it could have been a masterpiece.





Trick 'r Treat

Here's a film with a story. Filmed in 2007 and set for an October release last year, it suddenly disappeared from the schedule. Presumed to be released this October, it once again was MIA. One would assume this means bad things, but quite the opposite is true, in fact. Trick 'r Treat is one of the best Halloween films in many years. It tells a number of intertwining stories all set on Halloween, each evoking different aspects of the holiday. It is clever, fun, scary, and very darkly hilarious. And Sam, the central... not villain, but let's call him an antagonist - is one fascinating and creepy horror film character. Dylan Baker shines as a man with a dark secret, and Brian Cox evokes the image of John Carpenter in his storyline, perhaps the most frightening of the movie. This is a film to be seen with a big audience, and it demands to be seen as close to Halloween as possible. It has been screened a number of times recently in hopes of getting the word out, and I think it's working - I have heard absolutely no negative feedback from those who've seen it. Who knows when or if this film will ever get released, but if the opportunity to see it ever does come up, take it. This is a new Halloween cult classic waiting to be discovered.





W.

Oliver Stone can be so hit or miss. His two past "president" movies were both masterpieces, but many of his other films fall completely flat, like World Trade Center. His latest falls somewhere in between. The film puts up a great argument for the need to tell Bush's story on film, but the timing is still too soon. It feels as though so much more could have been explored had we had some hindsight. Still, what Stone does tackle is often fascinating, especially W's relationship with his father. Josh Brolin embodies the man eerily well, but the rest of the cast is hit or miss. James Cromwell doesn't particularly evoke Bush Sr, but he gives a well rounded performance regardless. Jeffrey Wright makes you feel sympathy for Colin Powell, who was clearly misled by those he trusted. But Thandie Newton gives a Razzie-worthy performance as Condoleezza Rice. It's like she's never seen Rice before in her life and just did some sort of bizarre caricature of a dimwitted yes man politician. It's absurd. I was surprised to find myself understanding our president in new ways because of this film. While Stone's film doesn't forgive him for his mistakes, it does put them into an interesting perspective.





Zach and Miri Make a Porno

Oh, Kevin Smith. I'm an unapologetic Smith fan, so my bias will be showing whenever I talk about him. I recognize he isn't a great director, and his dialogue can be on the verbose side, but I enjoy everything he's done. And while I also enjoyed this film, I felt it was on the lower tier of his work. The laughs are undeniably there, and the actors are almost uniformly perfectly cast, but the story itself feels off. In many ways it feels like Chasing Amy-lite. The relationship between Zack and Miri feels forced oftentimes, and the ending feels incredibly rushed. As just a comedy, it works well, but I kept hoping for it to rise above comedy and be something more. I have to give a special mention to Jason Mewes, who has really pulled himself together in recent years. He showed in Clerks II and especially here that he is a born performer, exuding more charm and charisma than anyone else in the film. He turns Lester the Molester (not a porn name, by the way) into a lovable guy, no easy feat. I can't help but kind of hope Smith would move onto something new and put films like this behind him. He's starting to run out of things to say in this genre, and I think he has such talent that if he ever did decide to do a drama (or even his long rumored horror film) it could be a revelation.

Charlie Wilson's War

It's interesting how a person can know that something happened without knowing exactly how it happened. Such is the case with my knowledge of the Soviet-Afghan War. I knew of the fact that America helped train and arm Afghans to fight off the invading Soviets in the late 80's, and I knew that this incident played a major part in the fall of the USSR. Yet I never knew how the ball got rolling on our involvement. Charlie Wilson's War is the story of that ball, and, to steal the film's own metaphor, how it has been bouncing along ever since. That may sound like the potential for a long, stuffy, dull film - but you'd be wrong. Actors Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and especially Philip Seymour Hoffman turn this brisk film into a rousing crowd pleaser. It's not one of the year's best, and its Oscar possibilities aren't as strong as might have been expected, but it's the kind of movie that a lot of people will enjoy over the holiday season. I certainly had a fun time.

Charlie Wilson is a boozing, fun-loving congressman, played by Hanks. He gets wind of the troubles in Afghanistan and decides to get involved. He has no idea what exactly getting involved entails, however, until he travels to the wartorn nation and sees firsthand the atrocities that have been happening. From that point there is no looking back, as he begins to work on the largest covert operation in American history. The role fits Hanks like an old glove, and he is charming and fun as Wilson. Yet anyone expecting anything groundbreaking or layered will be slightly disappointed. Hanks never really digs into the role like he has in past roles, occasionally appearing to be on autopilot. I think the same argument people have against Jack Nicholson playing Jack repeatedly can apply here to Hanks. It's fun to watch, but not a revelation.

Speaking of Nicholson, it seems like Philip Seymour Hoffman is channeling a young Jack in his role. I don't think I've ever seen Hoffman light up the screen with charisma before, but here he is really chewing on the scenery, delivering the single best performance in the film. He's a hotheaded, sarcastic, very funny CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos who joins Wilson in the Afghan plight. When Hoffman isn't on screen, this is a good movie; when he is on screen, it's a great one. If this film does turn out to have any awards cache, expect him to be the first to benefit from it. The audience was howling at many of his scenes, yet he never sacrificed the character's fierce intelligence to get a laugh. Hands down, the best scene in the film is the introduction of Wilson to Gust. Spoiling it would be criminal, but it is both hilarious and a great insight into Gust's character.

Switching gears a bit, of this film's weak points, none are more glaring than the miscast Julia Roberts. Even if you feel Hanks isn't doing a whole lot with his role, you at least feel as though he is doing his job effortlessly. Roberts, on the other hand, never sinks into her character, and it brings you out of nearly every scene she is in. And the problem goes far deeper than simply her poor imitation of a Texan accent. Roberts hasn't been on screen since Ocean's Twelve back in 2004, and one gets the feeling that she has forgotten how to dig into a role. Her performance in Charlie feels a lot like that of an actress trying to refamiliarize herself with the craft. Her confidence just isn't there, and it's a shame. Her role was clearly meant to be a fun one, and she never appears to be having any.

The runtime, about 100 minutes, also feels short. That may sound good, and in some ways it is, but I never quite shook the fact that it felt like something was missing. Rumor has it the film has been heavily edited down, and I think that may have been a mistake. A two hour movie is not a chore to sit through if it's as entertaining as this one is, and I suspect another twenty minutes might have made it all flow better. For example, we never understand why Wilson wants to get involved with the Afghan plight. As far as we can tell, his first introduction to the conflict is when he briefly catches a new report on TV during a party. Surely a congressman has enough on his mind that a snippet of new footage isn't enough to so drastically change his life (even a congressman as fun-loving as Charlie is). Also, there is a whole subplot dealing with Wilson being investigated for his partying ways that feels like it never fully develops. We never get the sense that it has any real bearing on the rest of the film or Charlie's work in Afghanistan. Things like these could easily have benefited from a bit more development.

So many political and war related films of late have failed miserably with both critics and audiences, and it's for the same reason in every case: they just seem too dreary and depressing considering what is going on in the world right now. That's not to say a depressing film about recent history can't work (United 93), just that it takes a skilled filmmaker to walk that line between depressing and insightful. Charlie Wilson's War deftly avoids this problem altogether by trying to be a fun film first and foremost, and I suspect audiences will flock to it more than other recent political films. It hits us every once in awhile with a powerful moment (Charlie's trip to a ravaged Afghan town, where he meets two children left disfigured after playing with a mine hits you in the gut, and one really hopes that those kids' appearance was digitally altered and not reality), but those moments are rarely the focus. Charlie, Gust, and to a lesser extent, Roberts' Joanne are all fun people you want to spend time with. They aren't there to lecture you, and as a result you can let the facts of the story sink in without feeling lectured to. It may surprise some, however, to find the film ends on a slightly melancholy and ambiguous note. Yes, Charlie got the ball rolling in Afghanistan, but he has no control over how that ball will bounce after the war is over. The final line of the film, delivered in text, is both decidedly amusing and strikingly sobering.