Working smarter, action included
Movies seen autumn 2011.
Originally written: June 2011
Limitless
The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
X-Men First Class
The Lincoln Lawyer
Girl with the Pearl Earring
The Lost Thing
Cartoon beauty Jessica Rabbit has been named the top screen siren in a poll by Lovefilm to mark Marilyn Monroe's 85th birthday. Audrey Hepburn was runner-up, while Monroe finished third in the list. Jessica Rabbit landed a fifth of the votes. That an animated vamp and nightclub singer, married to a comedy rabbit, and playing cute with joke moguls, says something about how viewers in the US react to film. For the non-literate, Jessica featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and was voiced by Kathleen Turner and Amy Irving (for her singing). It's hard to credit Audrey as number two as well. She is hardly the ideal of a siren. MM is more like it as are Raquel Welch, Ursula Andress, Elizabeth Taylor and Rita Hayworth, who are all in the top ten. But I cannot account for Hepburn, the anodyne Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman and Vivien Leigh, all good actresses, but hardly sirens. Or perhaps their definitions are different to mine, or how could they omit Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield, Mamie van Doren, Kathleen Turner herself or, indeed, Linda Fiorentino? Surely the term "siren" implies sensuality if nothing else. In that sense, a cartoon vamp makes much more sense than many others on the list.
CM
is the Featured Attractions Review and Criticism section.
Also in
CM
Alphabetical archive of movies reviewed
also in
Movies
Opening Credits
Critical Mess - Reviews
From the Director's Chair - Essays
Lists
Getting smart intelligently done
The Charly (Flowers for Algernon) trope has surfaced again, in the form of Limitless, based on a novel, The Dark Fields, that takes the basic concept of a man transformed into a genius and looks at it in a new light. Unlike Daniel Keyes' original, this version doesn't start with an imbecile as the centre of a scientific experiment, but with a reasonably ordinary, if feckless, wanna-be writer, and doesn't end with a pre-ordained return of the hero to imbecility. Making the hero a feckless and unsuccessful wanna-be writer should give fans someone with whom to identify. In this case he is Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) and his ex-brother-in-law is the person who supplies him with the McGuffin that unleashes this full brain potential. Soon his life is transformed: his book is finished; he starts making money and spending it; and he wins back his girl (the beautiful and talented Abbie Cornish). On the downside he's being followed by a mysterious stranger, seemingly after his supply of magic pills and he has been forced into the arms of a Russian mobster in order to get the start-up funds for his investments. We also learn that those who have stopped taking the pills soon succumb to illness and death, so Eddie needs to deal with that as well as the fact that it is apparent that taking too many pills can lead to side-effects, which are demonstrated by some vertigo-inducing camerawork, and a possible violent episode. All this occurs as he falls into the clutches of a Warren-Buffet like Robert De Niro, whom he is helping cement the "largest merger in history". The resolution of the complex plots, weaving together the mysterious stranger, the possible murder charge, the effects of the drug, the Russian mobsters and the investment guru, involves some gross elements and some overt violence, but generally the writers, and the director, Neil Burger (who's previously written and directed The Illusionist), have done an excellent job (I haven't read the book on which the film is based but it appears that the script has changed it more than somewhat, and changed it for the better) and manage to keep all the balls in the air remarkably well. It kept me entertained, and it was yet another good SF idea made into a good movie, showing that the genre is capable of being well-showcased by cinema. Bradley Cooper, previously the steady centre of The Hangover, is very good in the main role and our Abbie shows more than a few acting chops. Andrew Howard, as the nasty but suddenly very smart gangster, is also very effective. I really like the way in which the cinematography and editing are used very well to explicate the protagonist's symptoms and his dilemmas, one of the case where the medium and the message are in synch. My main criticism, apart from it largely wasting De Niro in a nothing part, is with the anti-climax: an extra few minutes that you imagine the studio boffins demanded be inserted to provide a feel-good ending. It was unnecessary and derogated from the intelligence and charm of the main plot. Nonetheless, recommended.
Captain Jack's pleasure Cruz
During our most recent European trip we reached the post-Nietzschian conclusion that whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stranger. The writers of The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides are amongst the undead because the latest episode of the Pirates series is not only stranger in name, it is stranger in nature as well. The first three movies balanced the swashbuckling with some grotesquely fantastic comedy, Jack Sparrow's comic antics and a romance between the ingenus. The first film was incredibly well-balanced but that balance shifted in the later episodes as Depp's Captain Jack became the dominant and the swashbuckling elements increased. The romantic subplots became less and less interesting. So one good thing here is that Knightley and Bloom are gone; and Penelope Cruz' Angelica provides the possibility of romance, being Jack's old flame. But the downsides include the fantasy elements, which don't integrate as well with the straighter parts, and the imbalance created by the presence of Ian McShane's Blackbeard, who is just too evil and overwhelming as Jack's antagonist. The plot involves several parties sailing off to find the Fountain of Youth: Jack and Angelica with Blackbeard; Barbossa, Gibbs and a mess of Poms; and a Spanish naval contingent. There are zombies on the pirate ship; mermaids fought and kidnapped; sword fights and chases of all sorts; and precious little time for anything sensible to develop. In fact, with all the action scenes involved, there is far too much plot for the film. That militates against the better elements of the film: Jack Sparrow's character and his incipient romance with Angelica. I also have reservations about the way in which mermaids are transformed from sailors' friends to killers, and the unnecessary subplot involving a missionary and a mermaid. That's on the downside. On the upside it's about Captain Jack Sparrow and Penelope Cruz provides more strength in the romantic area. This is the fourth movie, and there are promises of a fifth. The end certainly sets that up. But it might be time to leave well enough alone and look for another Disneyland ride to base a movie on.
Back to square one
After four entries, any series is in need of a reboot. You cannot just keep going on the same track unless you are following a published, popular seven-part trilogy. The makers of the X-Men films, basically Marvel and Bryan Singer have decided that a prequel is the way to reboot. X-Men First Class is that story. It takes us back to the origins of the mutants, with a number of the characters from the first three films re-appearing - including younger Prof X, Magneto, the Beast and Mystique. They posit that the release of atomic energy as the cause of the mutation, and this is a key plot-driver for the chief baddie (Kevin Bacon over-acting to the hilt). But this makes no sense, since Magneto, X, Mystique and Bacon's character all predate the first bomb tests; so unless this is a Lamarkian universe it's a silly plot device. Having got that one whinge out of the way, I have nothing but praise for the film we are given. New director, Matthew Vaughan (Layer Cake, Stardust, Kick-Ass), is right on the money with the tone and look of the film, and his younger class of actors are equally good, particularly in the case of those who have to remind us of their more mature selves: James McAvoy is the strong centre of this, prefiguring Patrick Stewart; Michael Fassbender is equally good as the young Ian McKellen; and Nicholas Hoult makes us remember Kelsey Grammer's Beast. Jennifer Lawrence is very good as the young Mystique, although there is little connection to the older Rebecca Romjin incarnation (although the script is very good in explaining how she appears so young in the later films). The script calls for the events in the mutant universe to intersect with ours in 1962, which is more than enough of a hint for most readers, but it does so in a strange and sometimes surprising way. The first hour, with its multiplicity of plots coming together towards the coherent climax, is handled well, and the cast introductions dealt with to make the large number of characters understandable. Helping out the central cast are our Rose Byrne, as a sympathetic CIA agent, January Jones, who has gone from playing with Hamm to playing with Bacon, as yet another ice-queen and Hugh Jackman in an uncredited, but very funny, cameo. I liked this film a lot. Whether it will be successful enough, sans Wolverine, at the box office to keep the series going is more doubtful.
Autodidact takes on automobilist
If On Stranger Tides is a good example of a movie that is well short of the sum of its parts, The Lincoln Lawyer is diametrically opposed. What looks like a straight-forward courtroom procedural, with a cast that promises very little. Apart from the reliable William H Macy, the main cast are all in that questionable category: Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe and John Leguizamo, who between them have turned in some stinkers. McConaughey is the eponymous character, Mick Haller, a defence lawyer who takes on as a client Phillipe's rich kid, accused of a violent assault on a woman in what at first looks like a sting gone wrong. Tomei flits in and out as Haller's ex and Leguizano is the bondsman who puts the lawyer in touch. Yet all do a decent enough job in this film, much to my surprise. No surprise in the performances of Macy, who provides some much needed class in a cameo as Haller's PI, and Bryan Cranston, who seems equally at home in drama and comedy (and was an effective "Buzz" Aldrin before he started his meth lab in Breaking Bad) and has a brief role as one of the cops. As befits the genre, there are a number of strange turns before the truth is revealed. There is also a fairly high level of violence and menace, and not a little humor as well. The film also demonstrates Roger Ebert's "Law of Economy of Characters" (movie budgets make it impossible for any film to contain unnecessary characters; therefore, all characters in a movie are necessary to the story - even those who do not seem to be). In this case, without divulging too many spoilers, it is no shock that the current case manages to shed light on an earlier case where Haller's client had been found guilty despite Haller's belief in his innocence. This is not one of the great movies but it is diverting (for which some praise for Brad Furman, directing only his second feature, but showing great control of his story, and of his sometime wayward actors) and well worth a viewing if it comes your way.
Painting by a number
The ways of the artist are, to me, enigmatic. The ways of genius are even less explicable. To see a film-maker try to encapsulate the creative process within the narrative confines of commercial cinema, and succeed, is miraculous beyond belief. Girl with the Pearl Earring, by keeping the action restricted and contained, does what many epics (like The Agony and the Ecstasy) have conspicuously failed to do. It has taken me some time to catch up with this flick, directed by Peter Webber, a Pom with a background in television, so I am not giving much away if I tell you that it's about the creation of the eponymous artwork by the Dutch master Vermeer. Olivia Hetreed's story, based on Tracy Chevalier's novel, imagines a youthful domestic in the Vermeer household, who provides for the artist an inspiration above the norm. Scarlett Johansson, in one of her earliest roles, around the same time as Lost in Translation, and Colin Firth are the protagonists. Each is extraordinarily good and they are well supported by Judy Parfitt as the mother-in-law and our Essie Davis as Vermeer's wife. The real mystery arising from this movie is why Vermeer went out of favor for two centuries and why he, for no reason other than the quality of his work, came back into critical favor. The interesting question posed by the movie is one related to gender: the movie suggests that Griet (the name given to the servant who is supposed to be the model) was in many ways an artist as talented as Vermeer but, for social reasons, couldn't paint - so her only role was as muse. The quiet simplicity of a great movie invites those, and just many other interesting questions.
Here be a monster
Shaun Tan's fifteen minutes of animation fame, The Lost Thing, recent Oscar winning cartoon, is a masterpiece. It makes you wonder why some creators need two to three hours to say a lot less. Narrated by Tim Minchin, with a musical score by Michael Yezerski, the film tells an essentially SF tale of an alien being discovered by a kid who cares but lost in a society that does not, until it finds a world in which it can live. The change in music, from elegaic to celebratory, matches the change in mood and in the light in the animation. In all a brilliant piece of imaginative genre film-making.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]