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Rob Thomas’ “Veronica Mars” – We asked for it…

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Poster for "Veronica Mars"

As a member of the reviewing press, I sometimes get the chance to see films early, for free, or both. And like most critics (perhaps despite Kevin Smith‘s objections), I’ve never felt the need to declare this as a potential conflict of interest. But in this case, it seems incumbent that I mention I was a backer of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter project, a curious experiment in online crowdsourcing in which a bunch of fans of a little-watched rag-tag TV show decided to make a $5.7 million charitable donation to Warner Bros, a film studio that had $12 billion in revenue last year, and which probably spends that amount at Starbucks every week. I don’t raise this point to object in any way to my participation in the Kickstarter, nor to raise any doubts that its runaway success was the proximate cause of this film’s existence. But this is still a surreal new frontier for film production, and as both a financial backer of the film and a fan of the original UPN TV show, I must admit that I’m doubly unqualified to review this film with any objectivity, and should probably recuse myself from the discussion. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll go ahead and review the film anyway!

Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) is a former high school film-noir detective who returns to her hometown, the fictitious Neptune, CA, to help out her once and future boyfriend Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), who has just been charged with the murder of his pop-star girlfriend, Bonnie DeVille, who is played in archive footage by Andrea Estrella, but is a conversion in both name and actress from original-series character Carrie Bishop, played at the time by Leighton Meester.

Confused yet? For the most part, you shouldn’t be. The connections to the original series seem almost purposefully tenuous. The film attempts to engage new viewers immediately with a quick recap of the major characters and accompanying voiceover from Bell. Like Serenity before it, this opening sequence sets the stage adequately while dispensing with most of the unnecessary backstory. Those few superfluous details that make it in from the show are little more than throwaway lines (remember when Logan’s father murdered his teenage girlfriend?), and merely serve to effectively build out the world of the film. Logan is a mostly reformed bad-boy, son of a disgraced (and deceased) movie star, and apparently on leave from an unspecified branch of the US Military. Veronica is a smart, capable, and occasionally ruthless woman who made it out of her corrupt (and filthy rich?) hometown to become a hotshot would-be attorney in New York City. And several other characters – Wallace (Percy Daggs III), Mac (Tina Majorino), and current boyfriend Stosh ‘Piz’ Piznarski (Chris Lowell) – seem unfortunately relegated to “old friend” status. We learn almost nothing about them, and they unfortunately contribute very little to the story. The same cannot be said for Veronica’s father, Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni), who is a welcome and capable presence. The father-daughter dynamic is clear and unmistakable – and the tension as she asserts her adulthood and independence is both heartwarming and funny as the film goes on.

Still from "Veronica Mars"

All in all, the mystery was effective. To be honest, I was all set to call it “fun but predictable” before the last half hour rolled around, but the film takes many effective turns and crafts an elegant, if slightly hasty, solution to the Logan Echolls murder dilemma. I could mention several effective performances (including a stunning monologue by a talented and underused character actress – click here if you really want to know who I mean), but it honestly feels like a spoiler to even mention which performances spoke to me the most here. So I’ll just confine it to one: Kristen Bell herself. The most surprising adjective I could apply to the original property is “gritty”, especially when the protagonist is a high schooler. It takes an actor with an appropriate blend of intensity, humor, and (I daresay) vulnerability to pull off such a character, and Bell unambiguously owns the personage of Veronica Mars from the first frame.

Unfortunately, there is one problematic character in this film – the town of Neptune, CA itself. The film attempts to deliver a severely abridged rendition of The Wire, setting up a town with a corrupt police force (led by Jerry O’Connell) and a cycle of criminality that unrelentingly sucks good people back in. Much of this corruption centers around reformed gangbanger Eli ‘Weevil’ Navarro (Francis Capra), whose friendship with Veronica began when he smashed her headlights and threatened her life in the first episode of the series, and continues now that he has a wife, daughter, and legitimate business. This was always one of the most interesting characters on the show, and I regret to say, without that backstory to prop this character up, the film doesn’t earn the arc that it attempts to shoehorn in through about 10 minutes of total screentime for Navarro. And this wouldn’t be nearly so problematic if his arc didn’t inform Veronica’s decisionmaking so directly. Veronica’s central dilemma, of whether to move on to her high-profile job in NYC or stay and try to reform her broken hometown, feels like too big of a decision to resolve within the confines of a two-hour film that has its own story to contend with. The film seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it too, tying up and expanding the arc of the original series, while telling a higher-budget, self-contained, and PG-13 profanity-laden mystery story at the same time.

But I suppose that’s fine. A TV series continuing as a film always feels, to a degree, like expanded-universe fan-fiction. It simultaneously gives the fans what they want, and serves as a re-pilot for a series that will almost certainly never exist. And the more I describe this method, the more it reminds me of the aforementioned Serenity, another TV-show follow-on that I think handled its expanded universe slightly more effectively than Veronica Mars without feeling quite as beholden to the events of the original series. I enjoyed this film. And you should take that opinion for whatever it’s worth. And given the dearth of great standalone detective stories in the modern era, I suspect that a non-viewer of the original series would still get a great deal out of this. But can you trust me on that? Hell if I know. I’m just a marshmallow.

FilmWonk rating: 7 out of 10

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #42 – “3 Days to Kill” (dir. McG)

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This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel bear witness to Luc Besson’s latest take on “An Aging American Action Star in Paris”, featuring Kevin Costner in 3 Days to Kill.

Spoiler alert: We’re not shy about our disdain for this film, and we are a bit more lax than usual about concealing plot details.

Check out our discussion below (28:58).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 2.5 out of 10

Show notes:

  • Music for tonight’s episode features Edith Piaf‘s “Non, je ne regrette rien”, and MC Solaar‘s “Sauvez le monde”.
  • Sarah Silverman was indeed credited as “Raving Bitch” in the 2000 Christopher McQuarrie film, The Way of the Gun. She appears directly below another actress credited as “Sloppy Prostitute”.
  • We also referred to a 2002 film featuring Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock working for the “Dumb CIA”- that film was Bad Company, directed by Joel Schumacher (not Besson).
  • I couldn’t find a French legal citation, but I was able to find several references to the French squatters law, all quite similar in that they suggest that squatters cannot be evicted in winter. More info on EU squatting law here.

Listen above, or download: 3 Days to Kill (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

Movies, Podcasts, Kevin Costner, 3 Days to Kill, Luc Besson, McG, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld

Hiyao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” – Dream, invention, and responsibility

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Poster for "The Wind Rises"

Editor’s note: This screening featured the US edition of the film, dubbed in English.

The first act of Hiyao Miyazaki‘s The Wind Rises, allegedly the director’s final film before retirement, contains many jarring transitions between childhood dream and reality. The young Jiro (voice of Zach Callison) dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer at the dawn of aviation itself. Certainly, the technology would soon see its first use in global warfare, but at the dawn of the 20th century, it remained the stuff of fantasy and legend. The first airplane that we see is Jiro’s confabulation of something halfway between a World War II Japanese Zero and the split feathers and slowly flapping wings of an eagle or hawk. It is a gorgeous, mighty, preposterous thing – and young Jiro can’t stand the notion that his Harry-Potter-worthy spectacles will prevent him from ever being able to fly one himself. This fantasy is presided over by Italian aerial pioneer Giovanni Caproni (Stanley Tucci), or at least a magical caricature thereof, who is happy to stroll up and down the wings of his ridiculous six-winged creations, or jump off to a running stop in mid-flight.

These dream sequences are exhilarating, to be sure, but the transitions between dream and story were often accompanied by jarring shifts in tone and a lack of clear separation, to the point when adult Jiro (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is caught in a monstrous earthquake and fire while traveling on a train to university, it is not immediately clear whether the towering, apocalyptic inferno that scorches the sky and countryside is real, or another imagined construct. But it quickly becomes clear that this is a very real event.

From this point on, what we’re seeing is a heavily fictionalized biopic of Dr. Jiro Horikoshi, the eventual designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, a high-speed fighter that would be the scourge of the Pacific campaign during World War II, widely regarded as one of the finest pieces of aeronautical engineering ever produced for its time. But this Jiro is not the architect of a weapon of war; he’s just madly in love with airplanes.

Still from "The Wind Rises"

The film broaches this theme quite explicitly in the imagined conversations between Jiro and Caproni. The Italian begins by telling Jiro that airplanes are not weapons of war, and that he dreams of eventually using them to ferry passengers and unite the world through travel. At this point, the audience is free to reject this sentiment as wildly absurd and disingenuous, as both Jiro and Caproni’s employment is at the behest of their governments, who were on the eve of engaging in expansionist warfare. And yet, even with the benefit of hindsight, The Wind Rises succeeds as a highly personal and humanized take on the age-old science fiction theme of whether an inventor is ultimately responsible for what his dream and invention might be used for. Aviation can unite mankind, or empower its capacity for mutual destruction. Nuclear energy can power a city, or destroy one. Many of our most valued technologies would not exist if not for their invention in the service of war. But this is really only the beginning of the film’s treatment of this theme.

The characters – both Jiro himself – tasked with building fighter planes, and his friend and colleague Honjo (Jon Krasinski), tasked with designing heavy bombers – seem quite aware that their inventions will be put to destructive use. But they just can’t help themselves. They collaborate and share ideas. They consume and improve upon technology with a ravenous passion. And the film essentially glorifies this drive to innovation. If The Wind Rises has a technological thesis, it is that invention is morally neutral at worst, and glorious at best, regardless of its eventual purpose.

In another imagined conversation, Caproni eventually asks Jiro if he would rather live in a world with or without pyramids. This is a curious question. Pyramids could be regarded as a one of the great, wondrous achievements of mankind – echoing their greatness with their endurance through the ages. Or they could be regarded as a monument to squandered resources and lives for no greater purpose. Much like warfare itself. It can be for glory and progress, but it will be for death and destruction. The Wind Rises is clearly in the former camp – air travel is a great wonder of mankind, and the film depicts each grand aerial vehicle as a larger-than-life, incredible machine – even some of the confabulated terrors from Jiro’s early dreams (including a massive zeppelin dropping vaguely human-shaped bombs) are impressively depicted. Jiro sets out to build a sleek and speedy fighter, and he tests it initially without a single gun, bomb, or bullet on board. If he has any nationalism within him, it is absent in this depiction. He just wants to build a beautiful plane. It is a fascinating theme – and one that the film explores with impressive depth, despite its rather perfunctory treatment of the ensuing war.

Still from "The Wind Rises"

In fact, Jiro experiences two sad and beautiful love stories – the first with his planes, and the second with his long-time love, Naoko (Emily Blunt). After meeting at a young age during the earthquake, the two carry on a lengthy courtship that eventually blossoms into an enduring romance. This relationship is really only given time to breathe in its later years, but it conveys some remarkably tender moments between the two. This relationship, like that of Jiro and Honjo, is depicted mostly from Jiro’s own perspective. Naoko is offscreen for the majority of the film, and yet, as the story advances through the years, the couple’s history convincingly hangs over their every interaction. And while this love story exists as a separate force and feeling from Jiro’s own drive toward designing the perfect plane, the two romances often mingle in interesting ways. A late scene depicts Jiro working at his drawing desk while Naoko rests on the floor beside him. He operates his slide rule with one hand while tenderly clutching Naoko’s outstretched palm with the other. It is a sweet moment, and one of many for this pair.

Once the film gets into Jiro’s story, it really finds its footing – but this is after a very rough first act in which it quotes a French poem so many times that it begins to lose all meaning both as the source of the film’s title, and as its explicitly stated theme. Le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre. The wind is rising, we must try to live. This poem is broad enough that it could be taken to endorse basically any position. But given that it is followed by the aforementioned earthquake and inferno, its application in the film seems clear and deliberate. Chaos, death, and destruction will ensue no matter what you do, and the best you can do is to live your life and try your best to do something valuable. But try not to think too hard about how you might be contributing to that first thing. I don’t wish to belabor this point, but the film invites this sort of introspection by essentially glossing over both the ultimate fates of several characters, as well as the entirety of World War II. It screeches to a halt and fast-forwards to the end of the war, and we see another charred countryside, identical to the one from earlier in the film (and evocative, perhaps deliberately, of another Studio Ghibli film, Grave of the Fireflies). And perhaps that’s what it all added up to in the end. The first conflagration was the accidental product of a natural disaster. The second was a deliberate invention of mankind. Another great and wondrous thing, crafted for the ages.

Ultimately, despite its bumps, The Wind Rises is a mature and thoughtful tale. It offers a treatment of scientific progress as a pure and desirable dream, even if it is sometimes driven by impure or destructive motives. The dreamers won’t be around forever – but their dreams live on, one way or another.

FilmWonk rating: 7.5 out of 10

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #41 – “RoboCop” (dir. José Padilha)

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Poster for "RoboCop"

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel are pleasantly surprised by another unnecessary remake of a 1980s film that manages to be a little bit more than the sum of its parts.

Check out our discussion below (49:00).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 6.5 out of 10

Show notes:

  • Music for tonight’s episode includes the track “First Day” from the RoboCop (2014) soundtrack, composed by Pedro Bromfman. It also includes a brief snippet from the original 1988 RoboCop theme song, composed by the late, great Basil Poledouris. I kept this cut brief because the soundtrack is out of print, so I was unfortunately unable to find a decent digital copy of the original track.
  • Read the full FilmWonk review of Elysium here.
  • We made a brief reference to philosopher Jeremy Bentham‘s concept of the Panopticon – you can read more on Wikipedia if you’re interested in the topic.
  • In case we lost anyone with our brief discussion on neurology and freewill, here is a quick rundown from Dr. Steven Novella at the NeuroLogica Blog regarding a 2008 study illustrating the decision-making phenomenon that we described:

    “The subjects were not necessarily consciously aware of their decision until they were about to move, but the cortex showing they were planning to move became activated a full 7 seconds prior to the movement. This supports prior research that suggests there is an unconscious phase of decision-making. In fact many decisions may be made subconsciously and then presented to the conscious bits of our brains. To us it seems as if we made the decision, but the decision was really made for us subconsciously.”

Listen above, or download: RoboCop (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #40 – “The Lego Movie” (dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)

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Poster for "The Lego Movie"

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel tackle the latest piece of zany versatility from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, The Lego Movie.

Check out our discussion below (22:41).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 8 out of 10

Show notes:

  • Music for tonight’s episode includes the delightfully satirical tracks “Everything is Awesome” and “Untitled Self Portrait” (Batman’s song) from the film’s soundtrack.
  • The budget for The Lego Movie is officially $60 million, notwithstanding the “Hollywood math” constraints we mentioned. For more on this, check out Edward Jay Epstein‘s book, The Hollywood Economist. For reference, “the last couple of Pixar films” had official budgets of $185 million (Brave) and $200 million (Monsters University) respectively.

Listen above, or download: The Lego Movie (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #39 – “Labor Day” (dir. Jason Reitman)

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Poster for "Labor Day"

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel dive into Labor Day, a surprising genre exercise from beloved director Jason Reitman, featuring Kate Winslet as a single mother who is taken hostage by – and finds herself falling for – an escaped convict named Frank Josh Brolin. Can a talented cast and filmmakers elevate a premise that seems, on the surface, to be the fodder of Nicholas Sparks novels?

We thought so – and we promise we’re not damning with faint praise. Check out our discussion below (42:32).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 7 out of 10

Show notes:

  • Music for tonight’s episode begins with “Criminal” by Britney Spears, and ends with Spanish guitarist Fernando Sor‘s “Exercises in B. Minor, Op. 35, No. 22” (as performed by Stephen Novacek) a variant of which appears on the Labor Day soundtrack. Why didn’t we use the version from the movie? Because it wasn’t available as a standalone track. Listen to the lovely guitar. And eat your vegetables. Punks.
  • Correction: Alexie Gilmore played Marjorie, Hank’s stepmother. Evelyn (the annoying neighbor) was played by Brooke Smith, best known from Grey’s Anatomy.
  • Correction: J.K. Simmons is indeed an insurance spokesman, but he represents Farmers Insurance, not Allstate (Dennis Haysbert) or State Farm (“Mayhem”/Dean Winters). As an advertising major, Daniel regrets the error.
  • Correction: It turns out 17-year-old Henry is actually played by a different actor, Dylan Minnette.

Listen above, or download: Labor Day (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

2013 Glennies: Best Picture (Top 10 Films of 2013)

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#11: The Wolf of Wall Street

Poster for "The Wolf of Wall Street"

Directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Terence Winter, based on the book by Jordan Belfort

As always, the #11 slot goes to a film that I thoroughly enjoyed, but have reservations about including in the Top 10. As expected from Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street is well-made, well-acted, and a bit overlong. Following his turn in 2011’s Moneyball alongside Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill proves once again that he is capable of staggering acting quality when paired with an A-list star. The star in question is Leonardo DiCaprio, who is basically playing a drugged-out, misogynistic, and ultimately more honest version of the rich tycoon that he played earlier this year in The Great Gatsby. Like Lord of War, this is a chronicle of an unsympathetic character’s rise to power, and like Observe & Report, it is an unabashed celebration of bad people doing bad things. Make no mistake – this is a film about, by, and for – terrible people. And that’s okay. Nobody’s a single thing, and you have to be a certain amount of terrible to partake in the kind of debauchery on display here. Apart from that, this is certainly one of the best comedies of the year.

#10: Blackfish

Poster for "Blackfish"

Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, written by Cowperthwaite and Eli B. Despres

This documentary is best summed up by a quote from a former SeaWorld trainer that appears in an on-screen interview:

“I can’t imagine a society that values marine mammals as we do…without parks like SeaWorld.”

For a film that’s ostensibly a hit-piece on captive marine mammal shows in general, and SeaWorld specifically, Blackfish approaches an emotional subject with uncommon subtlety. It presents the issue purely in terms of practicality – there is no safe manner in which an orca can be kept safely as a private show animal, therefore it shouldn’t happen. Then it lets its subjects – who are apparently immune to irony – hang themselves with quotes such as the one above. Any moral conclusions about whether it’s “right” or “wrong” to keep orcas captive are left for the audience to draw on their own – even if it’s clear which direction the film is prodding you toward.

This is quite a harrowing and well-made documentary, and given its wide distribution, likely to be an effective one. As of this writing, the title is available on Netflix streaming.

Check out my full review here:
SIFF Roundup: “Blackfish”, “The Kings of Summer”

#9: The Bling Ring

Poster for "The Bling Ring"

Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, based on a Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales

Color me dumbstruck. This was a film I hadn’t even planned on seeing (after a press screening for a much worse film went awry), and it was about a group of people that I had virtually no interest in. When a group of bored, privileged teenagers go on a burglary spree in Beverly Hills, pilfering goods from the unlocked houses of Hollywood’s TMZ-elite (including Paris Hilton, whom they robbed a half-dozen times before it was even noticed), I was expecting to be bored by their vapid pursuit of overpriced fashion. And yet, this film not only delivered some of the most fascinating characters and performances of the year, but also a thoroughly well-paced, well-edited, and entertaining peek into the lives of this wild bunch of girls (and a couple boys). Relative newcomers Katie Chang and Israel Broussard are riveting, delivering a friendship (with some chilling subtext) that manages to deftly carry the first two thirds of the film. Broussard’s naïveté and Chang’s cold calculation make for an impressive pairing – and are only made better when placed alongside Emma Watson. Watson is handed the last third of the film, as well as several of the most entertaining monologues I’ve seen this year, delivering vapid nonsense with utter sincerity to whichever members of the press will listen. This film is endlessly entertaining, and also thoroughly understands the twisted pursuit of fame and fortune that this ring is indulging in. They are essentially just a lower tier of the class of people that they are stealing from, even to the degree that in the end, their high-level transgressions don’t especially matter (a theme made clear when Watson’s character briefly shares a cell block with one of her victims, locked up for DUI).

See this film and be pleasantly surprised along with us. Listen to our discussion of the film here:
FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #35 – “The Bling Ring” (dir. Sofia Coppola)

#8: Side Effects

Poster for "Side Effects"

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Scott Z. Burns

Following 2012’s Contagion, director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns team back up to deliver an impressive thriller of a different sort. Side Effects feels at home alongside the best of Alfred Hitchcock, and regrettably, I can say little else about the film without damaging its appeal, except that I rewatched it this past month, and can confirm that it holds up well to repeat viewing.

As of this writing, Side Effects is available on Netflix streaming. And like last year’s #2 pick, The Imposter (also available), you would do well to watch it without reading anything else in advance.

#7: Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari

Still from "Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari"

Directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko, written by Denis Osokin

I feel a bit bad including a film that is unlikely to find distribution in the United States, but I am compelled to include this film because it is nothing less than a master class in short-form storytelling. Taking the form of 22 vignettes about an ethnic and religious group living in a Russian republic east of Moscow, this film is not only beautifully shot, but manages to tell a series of fascinating stories that each deliver a clear beginning, middle, and end – even if you sometimes have to dive deeply into the subtext to find it. This film is alternately funny, touching, and bizarre – and at all times, it remains exhilarating.

Read my full review here:
SIFF Review: “Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari” (dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko)

#6: Her

Poster for "Her"

Written and directed by Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze‘s Her features a man named Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falling in love with an artificially intelligent operating system named Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johannson). And I must say, when one of Samantha’s first lines is telling the film’s depressed, antisocial protagonist to “maybe try and get out of bed?”, I was quite nervous that I was about to see Manic Pixie Dream Bot: The Movie. But what the film delivers instead is an impressively mature take on romance. Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before it, the film explores romance through the lens of the failed relationship, between Theodore and his soon-to-be-ex-wife Catherine (Rooney Mara). But unlike that film, the relationship merely feels like a backdrop to the well-realized sci-fi love story on display here. And the sci-fi world itself is an equally impressive backdrop. The visual effects (which mostly consist of greatly increasing the number of skyscrapers in Los Angeles) are subtle and well-rendered, and what’s more, the science fiction elements left me walking out of the film asking all kinds of questions about how this world operates. And these were the good kinds of questions – the ones that are provoked by a sci-fi world that feels so lived in that I assume that each of my questions has an answer. And by the end, many of these questions are about the nature of Samantha herself, as well as her relationship with Theodore. This is an always-on girlfriend, who will immediately answer the phone and start a conversation whenever you want – and as such, it would be easy to assume that she has no inner life of her own. But as the film goes on, it becomes clear that Samantha’s inner life is far more elaborate than is immediately apparent. The film’s most impressive theme regarding artificial intelligence is that any entity that is designed to replicate human emotion will be unlikely to end up a perfect match in capability to actual human beings. When an artificial being fails to quite measure up to a human being, we refer to this disparity informally as the Uncanny Valley. But when such a being measures up to the capabilities of a human and then some, what do we call that disparity?

Apparently, we call it romance – and certainly one of the most fascinating ones of the year.

#5: The World’s End

Poster for "The World's End"

Directed by Edgar Wright, written by Wright and Simon Pegg

I saw The World’s End in close proximity to Neill Blomkamp‘s Elysium, and was quite surprised when the former turned out to be the better sci-fi action film. Ostensibly, this is a film about five middle-aged men coming back together to go on a 12-pint pub crawl in their hometown, but coming as it does from the creators of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, there are some genre trappings at work in this film that are not immediately apparent. But what makes this movie work so well is not just the well-rendered frenetic action, but the solid, character-driven comedy at the center of it. Gary King (Simon Pegg) is an immature and infectious partygoer bordering on the sort of serious self-destruction that is rarely seen in comedy (much the same as Russell Brand’s character in Get Him to the Greek), and Andy (Nick Frost) is the straight man and former childhood friend who wants absolutely nothing to do with him. This reversal of the Pegg and Frost dynamic from the rest of the Cornetto trilogy works rather well, particularly with regard to Frost, whose surly demeanor becomes more and more justified as the history between these two characters is made clear. Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, and Eddie Marsan round out the cast, and it is one of the film’s great strengths that each of these characters (even the latter two, who are definitely the least prominent) have well-established roles, desires, and history within the group. Indeed, the history between the members of this group – particularly Pegg and Frost’s characters, weighs heavily on the proceedings at all times. In much the same way as Shaun of the Dead, this film is a farcical sci-fi comedy that manages to make its characters matter – both to each other and to the audience.

Listen to our discussion of the film here:
FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #37 – “The World’s End” (dir. Edgar Wright), “Mud” (dir. Jeff Nichols)

#4: Stories We Tell

Still from "Stories We Tell"

Written and directed by Sarah Polley, with narration by Michael Polley

Actress and writer/director Sarah Polley is no stranger to putting personal stories on film (2011’s Take This Waltz had some undeniable connections to her personal life), but this documentary definitely takes it to a new level, turning the cameras upon Polley herself, as well as her family and friends. The mystery of Diane Polley (Sarah’s deceased mother) is at the core of this film – and believe me, it’s a doozy. With this woman dead and gone, all that her loved ones have left are their own memories and perspectives – and the narratives that they construct from them. If this sounds boring and navel-gazing, the film demonstrates an impressive degree of self-awareness about that expectation. It never insists that anyone outside of the Polley family will find this personal story interesting (in fact, several members of the family explicitly question this), but the fact is – the story is interesting, as are the family members themselves. Of particular interest is Michael Polley, Sarah’s father, who is a riveting on-screen presence, and alternates between reading a prepared third-person account of his life experience, and reacting (in an on-camera interview) to the very same events as they appear on-screen through archive footage. Structurally speaking, this is one of the most complex documentaries I’ve ever seen, but it never once feels gimmicky, or fails to maintain interest. In the end, the film is all about the evolving personal narratives that we tell ourselves in order to make sense of our lives – despite our faulty memories and incomplete facts.

Since I haven’t seen this film since May, rather than trusting my memory any further, I’ll just defer to the story I told about it at the time:

This film is nothing short of a masterpiece – hilarious and heartfelt, and brilliantly blurring the lines between documentary and reenactment. It is an act of courage and personal conviction, delivered with an admirable measure of humility.

Read my full review here:
SIFF Roundup: “We Steal Secrets”, “Stories We Tell”

#3: Mud

Poster for "Mud"

Written and directed by Jeff Nichols

Jeff Nichols’ Mud is a coming-of-age adventure story featuring a pair of Arkansas boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), who discover a mysterious man named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) living in a fishing boat stranded on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River. Following some drama with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), Mud is in hiding, and the boys gradually begin to help him – both to try and make contact with his lady love, and to escape.

It’s a curious footnote that actor Michael Shannon, who plays a small part in Mud as Neckbone’s uncle and legal guardian, was only present for a few days of filming due to his commitment to play the villainous General Zod in Man of Steel. If we’re speaking purely in terms of scale, the latter film certainly has more at stake, with all of the main characters, Metropolis, and indeed, the entire planet, under threat of destruction. And yet, in Mud, wherein ostensibly only the life of the title character is at risk, the stakes feel not only higher, but ultimately more substantial.

If this were simply about saving the life of one character (and one who strains the audience’s sympathy over the course of the film), perhaps it might not seem so important. But what makes Mud feel so weighty is that it is a heartfelt and honest story about romance. What’s at stake are the future romantic notions of the film’s young lead, Ellis, who is in the process of learning a series of dubious lessons in love. Ellis still believes in true love, but if Mud and Juniper (or his divorcing parents) are the best examples of romance that he can muster, his innocence in this regard might just be ruined. Sheridan’s performance certainly carries the emotional weight of the film, even as McConaughey continues his trajectory over the past few years toward becoming one of the best working actors today. This is a stunning adventure film with a fantastic musical score (from previous Nichols collaborator David Wingo), and is chock full of solid performances – both from the actors I’ve mentioned, as well as supporting players such as Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, and Sam Shepard.

Listen to our discussion of the film here:
FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #37 – “The World’s End” (dir. Edgar Wright), “Mud” (dir. Jeff Nichols)

#2: 12 Years a Slave

Poster for "12 Years a Slave"

Directed by Steve McQueen, screenplay by John Ridley, based on the memoir by Solomon Northup

This film is essential viewing, plain and simple. It offers a critical understanding of an important period in American history, and does so through the lens of a man who was kidnapped into slavery during a time when the only thing that separated a free black man from a slave was a piece of paper – and one that could be snatched away as easily as that person’s life. As is typical for director Steve McQueen, this film looks gorgeous (even in its depiction of disturbing subject matter). And Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender each deliver incredible, career-defining performances.

Beyond that, I’ll defer to our podcast discussion below, and admit that this would probably be swapped with my #1 selection below if not for the fact that I likely will not want to see it again nearly as much. This is essential viewing, and with the exception of a minor gripe about Hans Zimmer‘s score, I consider it an absolute masterpiece. And yet, like Schindler’s List before it, it’s not likely to be a film I’ll want to revisit too often.

Listen to our discussion of the film here:
FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #38 – “12 Years a Slave” (dir. Steve McQueen)

#1: Gravity

Poster for "Gravity"

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, written by Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón

The opening title card of Alfonso Cuarón‘s Gravity announces, in no uncertain terms, that life in space is impossible. And as hard as that is to believe in the glorious age of information and space exploration in which we live, the film does a marvelous job at conveying just how much we might be kidding ourselves with all this manned space travel nonsense. And yet this film, featuring a simple and small-scale story of astronauts Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) dealing with a crisis in orbit, nonetheless feels huge, significant, and ultimately optimistic. It is a modern day epic myth, full of larger-than-life figures riding chariots in the sky – and also one of the finest hard science fiction films ever made.

Read my full review here:
Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” – Life in space

Honorable Mentions:

  • Captain Phillips (directed by Paul Greengrass, screenplay by Billy Ray, based on an article by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty)
  • Blue Jasmine (written and directed by Woody Allen)
  • Don Jon (written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
  • American Hustle (directed by David O. Russell, screenplay by David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer)
  • Blue is the Warmest Color (directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, screenplay by Abdellatif Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix, based on the comic book by Julie Maroh)
  • Dallas Buyers Club (directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack)
  • The Kings of Summer (directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, written by Chris Galletta)
  • Iron Man 3 (directed by Shane Black, screenplay by Shane Black and Drew Pearce, based on Marvel comics by a characteristically large number of people)
  • Fast & Furious 6 (directed by Justin Lin, screenplay by Chris Morgan, based on characters by Gary Scott Thompson)
  • We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (written and directed by Alex Gibney)

2013 Movie Catchup: “The Way, Way Back”, “The Conjuring”, “The Hobbit 2”

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The Way, Way Back
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It’s not that The Way, Way Back is a bad film. But it really brings nothing new or interesting to the table. The film tries to succeed as a poignant coming-of-age tale, but really just feels like an exercise in dishonest nostalgia. Nearly every scene in this film is crafted in such a way as to glorify the motivations of its brooding, pure-at-heart teen protagonist, Duncan (Liam James), who I must admit is such a bland presence that I couldn’t even remember his name as I wrote this a day later. At all times, the film embraces his perspective, and while the awkwardness and pain of his dysfunctional family situation play with a modicum of plausibility, the details just seem a bit too perfect, like Duncan is the unreliable narrator spinning this particular yarn. Was his mom (Toni Collette) really this much of a doormat? Was the mom’s boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) really this much of a monster? Was the genial water park manager Owen (Sam Rockwell) really this hilarious and likeable? Did Duncan really win the respect of some neighborhood hooligans (as well as the preposterously on-the-nose nickname “Pop’n’Lock”) in a dance contest scene right out of the 1980s?

Many of the performances above (with the exception of the lead) were quite nuanced and interesting, particularly that of Carell. But at no point does the film shake the sense that it’s just trying way, way too hard- whether to be a better coming-of-age dramedy like Adventureland, or at least a more interesting one like The Spectacular Now. And I doubt that’s the kind of nostalgia that The Way, Way Back wanted me to experience.

FilmWonk rating: 4 out of 10

The Conjuring
Still from

In the world of James Wan‘s The Conjuring, ghosts and demons are real, all of this was based on a true story, and Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are a couple of well-meaning, true-believing, honest-to-God ghostbusters with actual powers to vanquish genuine supernatural phenomena. For some reason, the film’s insistence on its own historicity initially rubbed me the wrong way more than usual, perhaps because we almost immediately get a scene in which Ed and Lorraine have a discussion alone together, and we the audience learn that yes, they really do believe that they’re vanquishing demons. But the film’s lack of interest in questioning the credibility of the real-life “experts” is matched by its interest in establishing them as interesting characters.

In the end, what makes this movie work so well is not just Wan’s well-developed sense of how to construct a taut supernatural thriller, but Wilson and Farmiga’s performances and credible, long-term affinity – both for each other, and for the important work that they believe they’re performing. By the time the film ends, when Lorraine insists to Ed that God brought them together for a reason, it has earned the audience’s credence that the couple genuinely believes this. Their faith, for lack of a better word, is inspiring, even if the “true story” is bewitching, fictitious nonsense like any good haunted house story.

FilmWonk rating: 7 out of 10

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
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I began my review of the thoroughly underwhelming first Hobbit film by questioning the need for its existence. But by the time the franchise’s equally lengthy second entry was near, I had not only come to terms with its existence, but I was weirdly, horribly excited for it. Whether the music, the 48fps 3D, the non-canonical addition of Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and a brand new elf-maiden named Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), or the intense, shouty dude (Bard the Bowman, played by Fast and Furious 6 villain Luke Evans), something about this trailer got me right on board for it, and by and large, the film is a far superior entry to its predecessor.

It is still problematic in a number of ways. The dwarves – with the exceptions of Thorin (Richard Armitage), Balin (Ken Stott), Bombur (Stephen Hunter), and newly crowned heartthrob Kili (Aidan Turner) – remain interchangeable and undifferentiated as ever. The film’s insistence on sending away Gandalf (Ian McKellan) to fruitlessly poke at the mystery of the Dark Lord Sauron’s inevitable return is a complete waste of time – and when the film dispatched a septuagenarian wizard to the top of a mountain for a meeting that lasted literally two minutes, I couldn’t help but wonder if it knew exactly what the hell it was doing.

But this film did a lot of things right – by and large, it managed to make me believe it was making real progress toward telling a complete story. The action setpieces hung together much better this time. Everything surrounding the elven realm in Mirkwood – from the arachnid craziness on the way in, to the white-water rafting ride on the way out – was a ton of fun. And don’t let anyone tell you that Bowling With Bombur is any dumber than Legolas single-handedly dispatching an oliphaunt in Return of the King. Sometimes, a film just has to go a little crazy for the kids, and this sequence completely succeeded. As for the dragon Smaug (voice of Benedict Cumberbatch), I don’t have a lot to say, except that it was all very well-rendered, the scale of the sequence was impressive, and it ended with a bizarre thud. Despite an impressive performance by Evans, none of the Laketown sequence was well-established enough to make the stakes of the film’s ending (i.e. the town might soon be destroyed by a dragon) matter to me in the least. All it really made me do was lament the film’s criminal misuse of Stephen Fry, who is doing little more than a half-baked impression of Lord Denethor of Minas Tirith.

It would be easy for a non book-reader to look at the preceding paragraph as complete gibberish. And yet, this seems like a good time to point out the patent hypocrisy in many of The Hobbit films’ detractors. They criticize Peter Jackson in one breath for cynically inflating a 300-page children’s book into a meandering trilogy of films, and in the next, they can’t stand the notion of well-established characters from the existing Lord of the Rings universe stepping in to help round out the runtime and storytelling a bit. For the record, I thoroughly enjoyed the inclusion of pre-Gimli, dwarf-racist Legolas (and Evangeline Lilly feels like she was born to live in Middle Earth). But more importantly, I cannot and do not accept the notion that fidelity to half-remembered source material from one’s preadolescence is an intrinsic good. Are these bad films? Quite possibly. And feel free to blame Jackson and his team if you think so. But blame them for being poor screenwriters, not poor adapters. Because no matter how these films turn out, no one will come to your house and take away your dog-eared paperback copy of the source material. And we might just get something halfway entertaining out of this before the end.

FilmWonk rating: 6.5 out of 10

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #38 – “12 Years a Slave” (dir. Steve McQueen)

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Poster for "12 Years a Slave"

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel witness the harrowing new film from director Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave, based on a memoir by kidnapped slave Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Featuring one of the most sprawling and talented casts of the year, this film proved to be absolutely essential viewing. Check out our discussion below (53:09).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 9.5 out of 10

Show notes:

  • Music for tonight’s episode includes the tracks “Roll Jordan Roll” and “Solomon” from the soundtrack and score to the film. To hear the other Hans Zimmer track that came to mind during this film, check out “Time” from the original score to Inception.
  • “The banality of evil” is a historical concept and phrase from Hannah Arendt‘s Eichmann in Jerusalem, and is not without controversy. Curiously, Northup expressed a similar idea near the end of his memoir, which can be read at the end of the NY Times article below.
  • Eric Herschthal wrote a fascinating article for the NY Times on the veracity of the memoir and real-life story: The Passion of Solomon Northup
  • The audio lecture series we referred to from The Great Courses is “The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World,” from Colgate University history professor Robert Garland.

Listen above, or download: 12 Years a Slave (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

Gavin Hood’s “Ender’s Game” – Don’t be expendable

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Poster for "Ender's Game"

One of the major shortcomings of the first Harry Potter film is that it asked the audience to come along on a hero’s journey with a character who has no apparent reason to be respected or taken seriously. Any of the self-awareness and nuance that might have been present in the source material is absent, and what we’re left with instead is a boy being led into a wondrous world and constantly told how special he is, while doing nothing whatsoever to justify that claim. Such are the difficulties of a franchise adaptation, wherein the hero is whoever the script says it is, and named characters are introduced and discarded seemingly on a whim, leaving newcomers wondering why they bothered to show up for the barest threads of story that might not pay off until the second or third blockbuster in the series. Gavin Hood‘s adaptation of Orson Scott Card‘s Ender’s Game surely demonstrates a few of these shortcomings with regard to cast and story structure, but impressively, none of them are present in the character of Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) himself.

Fifty years after a devastating invasion by a race of fearsome alien bugs called Formics, Earth is arming for a full-scale attack on the invaders’ home planet. Fleet Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) and Major Anderson (Viola Davis) are tasked with training a gang of child pilots to command the fleet, winnowing from their ranks a single cadet who might become the savior of the human race. The question, from the film’s outset, is never whether this fleet commander will be Ender Wiggin, but rather, why? And it is in answering this question that the film is most effective. Ender is placed in one situation after another that tests his mettle, strategic mind, and ruthlessness. Much of this is under the unseen guidance and surveillance of the military, but it often occurs through sheer dumb luck. Many of these situations are unsurprisingly softened from the source material, but all of them do an effective job of establishing Ender as a force to be reckoned with – the plausible product of a worldwide search for someone who is so willing to thoroughly vanquish his enemies.

Still from "Ender's Game"

The film is at its visual strongest during the first half, in which the cadets head for an orbital station to train in a team-based war game that bears unfortunate retrospective resemblance to Quidditch. The teams float around in a massive, zero-gravity battle room playing an elaborate three-dimensional game of laser tag. They score points by paralyzing enemy players, and can ultimately win the game regardless of the current score by slotting a single undamaged player successfully into the enemy’s open gate on the opposite end of the chamber. As an aside, I’d like to take a moment here to marvel that this film was not shot or upconverted to 3D. While it is certainly to this film’s detriment that it comes so closely after Gravity for visual comparison, these sequences are undeniably impressive, and it is frankly a marvel that the studio didn’t try to cash in on them further. The suit design and camera work makes it a simple matter to follow the progress and flow of the game, and the chamber itself – covered in windows to open space outside, and filled with floating platforms for cover and strategy – is absolutely gorgeous. If these sequences have any shortcoming, it’s that they all seem a bit rushed. Rather than full story events with a clear trajectory and consequences for multiple characters, they feel more like montages designed to propel Ender (and no one else) into the next act of the story. Ender changes rank more times in an hour than 2009’s Captain Kirk, and it would not surprise me if non-book-readers have a hard time making sense of any of it.

Vague spoilers will follow.

But then, I suppose that’s what it always comes down to with adaptations. I read Ender’s Game nearly a decade ago, and it would be easy to say that this disqualifies me from objectively judging the story’s effectiveness – particularly its final act and twist. But when it comes to an adaptation as long-awaited as this, it’s important to remember that as long as it is still available for public consumption, nothing can take away or destroy a prior work of art. No remake, adaptation, spinoff, sequel, director’s dubious past work, or author’s vociferous homophobia can ever take away the effectiveness of the original work. At best, the new version can serve as a worthy companion piece, and at worst, as an object lesson in the effectiveness of the original story and its original medium. My conclusion, based on a distant memory of the book, is that the film’s revelation is about as effective as it was in the original book. To repurpose a lovely phrase from Looper director Rian Johnson, even if a revelation is obvious, it can trade the cheap coin of surprise for the priceless one of dread. Even if you remove the sci-fi trappings, the plight of Ender Wiggin is being lived out by present-day drone pilots who become bloodless killers in an intensely video-game-like fashion. The film addresses this with a denouement that is about as baffling and unexpected as in the original work, in which the exploration of Ender’s psyche pays off in a way that feels just a bit unearned. But the film is effective enough at establishing that Ender will ruthlessly destroy his enemies and feel bad about it in more than just a token fashion, and it has the decency not to commit and portray an act of immense destruction without lending it the appropriate amount of weight. Remember in G.I. Joe: Retaliation when the entire city of London was destroyed for no reason? Neither do I.

Visually, the final space battle is a bit of a letdown – a thorough demonstration of CGI quantity over quality as one undifferentiated swarm of drone-ships meets another. After demonstrating an impressive grasp of the dimensionality of space in the first half, the film’s final battle feels oddly planar, taking place relative to “horizontal” asteroid belts or planetary rings. But despite the visual chaos on display, the film succeeds in giving us an acceptable reason for it all. There are number of repeating scenes in which the film’s grownups – Ford, Davis, and an elusive turn by Ben Kingsley – debate the consequences of what they’re doing with Ender and the enemy fleet. They speak of genocide and crimes of warfare. They speak of child soldiers and post-traumatic stress. Their interactions eventually get a bit repetitive and strain credulity (would they really compare Ender to both Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte in front of his face?), but it is these performances – along with that of Butterfield himself – that imbue the film’s dense visual annihilation with a modicum of humanity and tears. And that may ultimately be what made me take Ender’s Game seriously. These themes are hurriedly made explicit in the last five minutes, but they are teased effectively throughout the film. Ender is ultimately both the savior and damnation of mankind, and exceeds his elders’ expectations in the most horrific way possible. And for all of his reluctance and humility, the clearest lesson he presents is that if you’re anything but the best…you’re expendable. Is this the lesson the film was going for? Hard to say. But the single, gigantic space-gun wasn’t exactly a soft touch.

FilmWonk rating: 7 out of 10