Amour

I found it rather ironic that a trailer for Safe Haven, (Nicholas Sparks’ latest atrocity) played as a trailer before Amour. Nick Sparks has for changed the romantic genre for the worse. His highly formulaic and pandering films obfuscate the definition of love by equating it to fresh young bodies, sensationalization of romantic gestures, and exploitation of traumatic events.

Which brings us to Amour, the complete antithesis of the trailer that preceded it. Amour chronicles the aging couple George (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Three Colors: Red) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva, Three Colors: White). When Anne is left partially paralyzed and restrained to a wheelchair, George takes it upon himself take care of Anne, despite the strains it puts upon himself.

While the premise sounds rather cheesy and over sentimental, it is anything but. Michael Haenke (White Ribbon, Cache) grounds his film in honest realism yet remains poetic through it’s dashes of magical realism. The few deviations from reality act to amplify the raw, human emotions of the film and potently punctuate the thoughts scribed by the narrative.

Amour explores the delicate relationship between love and responsibility and demonstrates that even the most harmonious couple can be pushed to friction and frustration. This theme is perfectly translated through Haenke’s bold and incendiary cinematography. Most of the film is shot through a static camera; simply framing a close-up or medium shot and leaving the camera to linger. Although at times we feel invited into their cozy home, we then feel uncomfortably intrusive to their degraded lives.

Haenke is absolutely unflinching in his treatment, creating a suffocating ambiance as we are forced to face our mortality. We are completely tied to the film because of the two leads. Trintignant and Riva have outstanding chemistry, able to write the couple’s life history through subtle body language and suggestion alone. We can easily believe the deep bond their relationship has formed, making it so much more tragic to see their lives hang on by the thread that is love.

Unlike Nick Sparks’ convention, Haenke does not insult his audience with such mundane definitions of love. He knows that we clash with everyday life and the results are less than ideal and difficult to negotiate with. He knows that commitment and unconditional love aren’t enough to pardon us from death, but serve merely as a guiding light as we face the spectre of our judgement. And he knows how to render these complexities, forcing us to question our own preconceived notions. So no Nick Sparks, taking your shirt off in the rain isn’t a proper definition of love. Amour is.       

The Sessions

John Hawkes withdraws from his psychotic redneck ways (Winter’s Bone, Martha Marcy May Marlene) and takes on the juicy character piece that is Mark O’Brien in The Sessions. O’Brien is a poet who lives a life in an iron lung after being stricken with polio as a child. Still wishing to live his life to the fullest, O’Brien enlists the help of sex surrogate Cheryl (Helen Hunt , As Good As it Gets, Cast Away) to lose his virginity.

While the film is incredibly personal, told mostly through Mark’s perspective, The Sessions still conveys an objective tone. Much of the movie weaves exposition punctuated by voice overs of Mark’s poetry and thoughts. The ever dreamy Mark acts as a quiet specter of his world, subtly taking notes, never judging, only wishing to learn and grow.  

Helen Hunt certainly delivers an Oscar worthy performance, portraying the conflicted therapist, struggling to remain professional and fight her growing attachment to the innocent and hopeful Mark. The incredible amount of reserve in her emotion is palpable; resulting in a nuanced and well crafted performance.

There’s a wonderful quietness to Hunt and Hawkes’ relationship. Obviously the story involves them getting literally naked, but their ability to really show their warmth is what really makes these roles human and dimensional.

However, the film is Hawkes’ vehicle, and he knocks it out of the park. Taking a cue from Javier Bardem from Mar Adentro, Hawkes is able to add layers and layers into his character despite not being able to move from the neck down.  
Hawkes, takes full advantage of his physical limitation, manifesting every emotional fiber within facial expressions.

In his face alone, he is able to wear Mark’s emotional history; petrified by guilt and fear, yet thrusted into action through a strong sense of mortality and tremendous inner courage. In a heated Oscar race featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, and Denzel Washington, Hawkes has certainly made his case.

The closing moments of the film point out that despite his limitations, Mark was still able to live a life full of love. In a world with such a linear definitions for love, The Sessions explores the many facets that love has to offer. Whether it be friends, lovers, partners, or something beyond simple labels, these relationships are what carve the landscape of our being and give our lives emotional fertility. The results can be equally diverse; passionate, humorous, tragic, or just beyond words. Trying to sort these themes and motives can be difficult, but if you’re willing to test your philosophical and mental depth, class is in session.          

Silver Linings Playbook

The romantic comedy follows the typical plot formula: initial dislike, growing attraction, breach of trust through misunderstanding, huge romantic gesture, reconciliation.  The genre is riddled with this formula, making for rather dull and uninspired fare. While Silver Linings Playbook does follow this mundane model, the script allows each actor to fully realize each of their own characters with brute honesty and complexity.

After being released from a mental health facility, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper, Limitless, The Hangover) is determined to get his job and his wife back, both of which he lost after a violent outburst. He moves back in with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) trying to get a grasp of control on his life, but find himself continually at odds with his family. Enter Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games, Winter’s Bone), his friend’s sister-in-law with a lot of spunk and her share of mental disorders. The two begin their peculiar friendship as Pat desperately tries to earn the “silver-linings” out of life.

The two leads, Cooper and Lawrence, both deliver committed and sure to be Oscar worthy performances. Cooper sheds his normal frat boy persona and composes himself as good hearted individual suppressing an emotional time bomb. His infectious optimism is tragically countered by his turbulent frustration in restraining his bipolar rage.  

After a foray in blockbuster hits, it’s refreshing to see Lawrence return to a more realized roll. Though both manic and quirky, Lawrence’s fiery performance is far from the MPDG archetype. She portrays Tiffany with a blunt and unforgiving demeanor, yet subtly exposes a genuine vulnerability as well. The chemistry between the two leads cannot be denied; Pat and Tiffany delightfully offset each other as they waltz with whimsy and clash with candor.

The rest of the cast is well rounded out with Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles, Jacki Weaver, and a revitalized Robert De Niro, in probably his best performance in quite some time as Pat’s temperamental father. De Niro’s role in particular manages to flesh out Pat’s issues. It becomes clear that Pat’s problems stem from troubles his father’s own unresolved demons.  

Much like The Fighter, Silver Linings  paints a portrait of the interwoven connection of community and family. The Philadelphia Eagles serve as an allegory of Pat’s recovery; the whole community is invested and their mood shifts based on Pat’s or the Eagles’ progress. With every shared triumph, director David O. Russell (The Fighter,Three Kings) demonstrates how quickly temper and frustration fester into volatile eruptions. Working with a raw camera, O. Russell captures the control chaos that ensues, making for a potent and visceral examination of familial politics.

While Silver Linings Playbook at its vein follows the bland rom com arch, the film elaborates on each of the character and explores the rich themes of mental health, self-esteem, and community (#sixseasonsandamovie); an outcome which translates into a thought provoking and heart moving work.  Even in a day where genres have become incredibly formulaic and insulting to its audience’s intelligence, you can always find a silver lining.        

 

Skyfall

The most recent entry into the Bond canon may be the most aptly named Bond to date. Skyfall embraces the themes of “falling” from the literal fall of Mr. Bond (Daniel Craig, in his third Bond film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)  in the cold open, to the metaphorical fall of Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men, Vicky Christina Barcelona) from top MI agent deranged terrorist.

The pervasive theme lingers throughout the film and dives into the richness of the character that is James Bond. While Quantum of Solace hid Bond behind ornamental and rather anemic action sequences, Skyfall strips the character bare and extracts the man behind the tux.

Like most Bond films, the plot is simple enough. James Bond is accidentally shot on duty by fellow agent Eve (Naomi Harris, Pirates of the Caribbean, 28 Days Later).  When he returns to action, he finds that MI6 is under attack by internet terrorist and ex-MI6 agent Raoul Silva. In addition to his plot against the secret service, Bond must protect M (Judi Dench, My Week With Marilyn, J. Edgar) from Silva’s unresolved Norman Bates issues with her.

Unfortunately, the film falls into some Bond conventionalities. Even in 2012, the Bond franchise embraces pervasive themes of misogyny and demonization of effeminate characters. These moral missteps consistently shatter our suspended attentions and make us shake our heads. In addition, the arch of the film seems rather familiar to most other Bond films; creating an awkward tempo to allot for obligatory sex scenes and chase sequences.

While this adherence to the Bond mold certainly limits the ceiling of Skyfall, Sam Mendes’ artistry (American Beauty, Revolutionary) cannot be denied. His work with legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men, O’ Brother Where Art Thou) renders one of the most aesthetically poetic Bond films to date. Their manipulation of illumination frames a wide range of settings from Shanghai’s sleek and noir metropolis to the cathartic and primordial climax at Skyfall, Bond’s childhood home.

What really draws you into this film in the utter deconstruction of 007.  We see him fall from grace as an elite agent, to flesh out a raw vulnerability absent in the franchise. He has become expendable and a relic of a time gone by.  Even further we catch glimpses of his harsh and unforgiving childhood; an upbringing which logically manifests itself in the unapologetic, gritty, and detached man we see today.  

As Adele’s “Skyfall” (sure to be nominated if not win best song) alludes to, James emerges from his despair, and faces the day with a new poise and confidence; the exact attitude Skyfall takes to define Generation Y’s James Bond. 

  

Wreck-It Ralph

Let’s talk straight here: a lot of kid’s movies are about learning who you are and what you want to do with that. They use a variety of plot devices, narratives, foils, characters, and shiny animation techniques to teach the children all the lessons about growing up, developing your personality, and being a good person.

This is basically a long way of saying: ignore the critics that are saying “Wreck-it Ralph” is some stale incarnation of these things. Spoiler alert: it’s all the same lesson. This movie just does it with enough young pizzazz that it takes you for a ride along the way.

The titular character, Wreck-it Ralph (John C. Reilly, Step Brothers, Magnolia), has been working inside a videogame as a villain for years. It’s not his fault, he’s coded that way! But Ralph has enough of it, setting off to different games to prove himself a hero and win a shiny medal. Along the way he inadvertently cross contaminates the games and threatens the livelihood of his friends and the arcade games they live in.

There is certainly a lot going on in this movie. There’s dangers to the integrated world of video gaming; Ralph gets sidetracked helping a girl in the racing game Sugar Rush; his protagonist counterpart, Fix-it Felix (the goofy Jack McBrayer from 30 Rock) goes searching for him with the tough-as-nails Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch, from Glee, Best in Show, as herself) from the first-person shooter game he steals the medal from; and not all is as sweet as it seems in the Sugar Rush kingdom….So yeah there’s a lot of story. Granted the first 30 minute are not promising and of course along the way we encounter different examples of what it means to really fit into your environment.

But what the movie does so well is not letting itself get too bogged down by it all. It’s not hokey or preachy, rambling or lost, it is a clever mash-up of video games and kid’s movies; and it does that with style. But what many critics are seeing as a flaw I see as a well executed adventure ensemble. The audience now has so many more characters and narratives, and since “Wreck-it” more than manages it, the result is visual feast.

The graphics are superb (as is to be expected from a modern kids movie); and the thought behind the style of each game world (and the game train station they travel through) is clearly meticulously thought out. This movie dazzles and delights, and with so many positives it’s easy to just push start.   

Proportionally sized review about pre-movie short “Paperman”: Implausible, beautiful, and adorable, “Paperman” is an impressive update to 2D animation that tells a sweet love story. It’s pretty cute, and should be gracing the youtube virals in no time.

The Flat

Months after his grandmother passes away, Arnon Goldfinger and his family climb the stairs to her Tel Aviv apartment, prepared to clear it out. While sifting through the odds and ends his grandmother accumulated in the 70 years since she left Berlin in the 1930s with her husband, Goldfinger’s grandfather, Goldfinger stumbles upon bundles of letters and a Nazi newspaper.

He finds out that his grandparents, who moved to Israel to escape the Holocaust, had a deep friendship with Nazi SS Officer Leopold von Mildenstein and his wife, and their relationship lasted not only through World War II but well after. As Goldfinger digs deeper to find how this incomprehensible association could survive, he learns more about trauma, denial, and his family’s past.

Early on, we’re told that von Mildenstein and his grandfather bonded over mutual Zionism, but this is unsatisfactory to Goldfinger, whose feelings stay largely guarded behind a neutral investigator’s face. Too quickly the movie begins to explore a slow-moving world of conjecture and justification.

As he interviews old friends and colleagues to understand the friendship his grandparents shared, it becomes clear that his understanding stems from a perspective perhaps too different than those he’s talking to: While he is intrigued by his family’s history as Jewish Germans, the people he talks too remember it too well. He is a third-generation German, too far removed from the traumatic incidents to inherently sense the things his interviewees suppress.

One the film’s strongest points is in its exposition of trauma and denial felt by World War II survivors. “The second generation didn’t ask what happened. You don’t understand, and I’m glad you don’t understand,” his grandmother’s friend says. The interviews start to clear the dust, and you begin to see the pattern of accepted silence and cocoons of Holocaust denial through earlier generations.

Despite weaving his own narration into the film, Goldfinger seems intent on remaining separate and objective from his family’s history. It’s sometimes hard to grasp the deep personal nature of his story when he insists on acting as an unaffected third party.

Goldfinger works to inject some personal relatability to the film through the interviews, but even that falls short when we’re left with cordial conversations that don’t advance much and confusingly give the feeling of a PBS special with the narrative of a home video.

There is a lot of exposition that ultimately reveals fewer clues than one might imagine. Coupled with the passionless reporting style, the result is that much of the film begins to feel long and tedious. When “The Flat” reaches the end of its journey, it’s clear that Goldfinger has meticulously researched his grandparents’ questionable political affiliations and denial, but his constant objectivity robs the narrative of any emotional punch. This prevents the evidence from really coming together; as a result, the film comes up short of what it could be.

The verdict: With a narrative as suppressed as the story it’s uncovering, the film falls a bit flat.

Looper

Rian Johnson resurrects the almost forget genre of science fiction.  While this summer’s Prometheus had some moments, it failed to be a groundbreaking work by any means, however  Looper may become a sci-fi classic.  

Looper takes place in a not so distant dystopia, where time travel is both real and outlawed.  Though outlawed, criminals use time travel to send their enemies back in time to be whacked by hitman called “loopers.”  Loopers are paid handsomely in silver, until their employers terminate their contracts by sending their future selves back to be killed.  Their last paycheck is in gold, but with one caveat; they can’t let their future selves escape. Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt, ((500) Days of Summer, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises) lives a comfortably numb life as a looper until his next assignment is his older self (Bruce Willis, Moonrise Kingdom, Die Hard) and he lets him escape.

In order to reap all of Looper’s gifts, you’ll have to give yourself to the mythos of their laws of time travel. Sure, it’s sometimes (and perhaps ultimately) problematic, but the time travel aspect of the film merely acts as a plot device. The travel aspect of the film allows it to delve into the heart of science fiction; as Willis’ character says when asked how time travel works: “It doesn’t matter”. Looper uses extra-ordinary means to speculate on humanity not unlike a Philip K. Dick story: accented by its existential flair, posing questions about the ever transforming landscape of one’s self identity.

With Looper, Johnson doesn’t just step onto the more mainstream movie scene but charges. It’s a shame that he’s lost some of the distinction that came with his previous works Brick and The Brothers Bloom, but his style manages some charm and quirk.

In similar style to Children of Men, Johnson impeccably designs an exhausted and decrepit future, rotting from corruption and urban decay. Contrasting a gritty city exterior, is the sexy and decadent world of the loopers; a world of constant cyclic hedonism clouded by a Huxlian-Somatic haze.

The movie is well acted all around: Gordon-Levitt and Willis each shine on their own, while Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada, Your Sister’s Sister) acts as the moral anchor to the film.  Her dynamic performance illuminates the tremendous heart of a single mother, desperately trying to quell her anxieties while still being haunted by the toxic influence of the city. Jeff Daniels is also noteworthy as the enigmatic mob boss from the future, drawing strong parallels to Albert Brooks in Drive.

Even with all the head scratching, Looper delivers one of smarter and sleeker action blockbusters to grace the cinema in quite some while; it’s just a matter of time before you see it.   

Lawless

The line-up for Lawless drove expectations way up; with a star studded cast including Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, and Shia LeBeouf (maybe not so much Shia) and Aussie director John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition).  The end result, failed to live up to such great expectations.  

Lawless follows the stories of the Bondurants of Franklin County; brothers running a successful liquor business in the times of prohibition. Between Forrest’s (Hardy, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) legend status and Jack (LeBeouf, Transformers franchise)’s budding love the brothers must navigate the new pressure of Special Detective Charlie Rakes (Pearce, The Hurt Locker, Memento).

In a rather mediocre film, there are still dazzling aspects.  Hillcoat certainly knows how to shoot a film; seamlessly navigating between the misty country roads (take me home) and the luminous, rustic summers.  The way he plays with shadows sculpts scenes of beauty reminiscent of noir films, drawing both complex and enticing set pieces.  The cast gives strong performances; from the solemnly brutal Tom Hardy to the vivacious and mysterious Jessica Chastain.  Even Shia holds his own on the screen against such high caliber talent, and makes for a sympathetic protagonist.

That’s where the film’s exceptionality ends.  The plot is muddled and mundane, being carried by narration that doesn’t mind dragging it’s feet.  There are many sequences that seem so extraneous and unnecessary it becomes difficult to focus on aspects pertinent to the main plot. Characterization in this film do nothing to help a rather sluggish and heavy script; each character is very one-note, lacking any sort of complex dimension.  The only two women in the film were completely expendable as characters. They serve only as obligatory love interests for their male counterparts.  It all makes for rather standard and boring fare; in a film that dares to be landmark and modern classic, it doesn’t live up to its name and sure doesn’t break any laws.