Review: 'Predestination'
Robert Zemeckis was once asked about his films' shared common interest with “time”: his Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump’s journey through the 20th century, Contact’s pre-Interstellar explorations of the time-space continuum and, even, A Christmas Carol’s ghosts of past, present and future. He simply stated that "film is the artistic medium that inherently explores time, narrative is the illusion of time, and the motion picture is the clearest way to manipulate it." This may seem obvious, but it is Zemeckis’ clear understanding of the medium that explains the current wave of time travel science-fiction in this decade. Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Interstellar, Rian Johnson’s Looper, Duncan Jones’ Source Code, Andrew Niccol’s In Time, Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow- the list goes on. In an Obama-era so concerned with changing humanity’s course for both better and worse, the idea of changing time has never been more relevant.
Predestination, the new picture from Australia's directing duo Peter and Michael Spierig (Daybreakers) is a pleasant addition to the trend- a small, but super piece of genre filmmaking. It is a very thoughtful, progressive piece in both narrative and technical craft- hardly the C-list action feature that is promised from the marketing. But it is all the more better for that. It is the rare science fiction film that- unlike a few of the aforementioned films- diverts from big set pieces, destination locations, studio think-tank climaxes and finds that careful balance between spectacle and sentiment.
Ethan Hawke- fresh in the awards season boat with another ‘time travel’ piece in Boyhood - plays his part with his usual charisma. He is the rare ‘everyman’ actor who finds value in such quirky, concept-driven independent features...
Based on the 1950s short story ‘All You Zombies’ by the ‘dean of science fiction’ Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers), the film’s first half is essentially a conversation between a Temporal Agent (Ethan Hawke)- or time traveller- and a mysterious writer who writes as "The Unmarried Mother" (Sarah Snook). It has noir-like tendencies both aesthetically in its very deliberate mood and lighting, but also narratively as the story unfolds. As ‘The Unmarried Mother" tells a bizarre but fascinating life story, the Temporal Agent allows John to go back in time and adjust what went awry. It turns into the “thinking man’s” science-fiction- a puzzle of a narrative that is as easy to follow as it is baffling. To summarize anymore would be unfair to the film.
Like any science-fiction film, there are many logical holes. The physical process of time travel, for instance, is rather clumsy to really believe and the physics and consequences of the time travel ‘business’ are skated over. However, these concerns are inherent in any ‘science-fiction’ films- or at least when complex science is simplified for narrative constraints. Its relatively small-scale production also shows at times in weak shot coverage and all-too-simple set design. Predestination isn’t about ‘science’ and ‘time’ though - it’s a much deeper and better film than that. It refrains from answering all questions because it knows that it cannot answer them. The Spierig’s don’t attempt to answer bigger questions, they just look to explore the human inkling to discover time and narrative.
Ethan Hawke- fresh in the awards season boat with another ‘time travel’ piece in Boyhood - plays his part with his usual charisma. He is the rare ‘everyman’ actor who finds value in such quirky, concept-driven independent features (i.e. The Purge) and makes the realities they explore much more tangible. However, he often steps into a supporting role to his co-star Sarah Snook- who shows off such an uncanny range in an oddly demanding role. It is a glimmer of humanity in what could have been a cardboard genre exploration- yet the actors are the pulse of the entire film, making a thematically groundbreaking narrative for the genre.
In the greater cinematic ‘time-space continuum’, Predestination is bound to be lost among louder, flashier contemporaries. It is really quite strange to review films like this one because their success depends on the puzzle, not the full solution. There is more to the film than ‘time travel’, complex narrative, charming acting and retro-cool production design. It is not perfect and perhaps its cult status is imminent, but Predestination is a film that proves that film may be the best science in exploring time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PmIJrthe-4
Review: 'Into the Woods'
Following a screening of his new film, director Rob Marshall called Into the Woods “a fairy tale for the post-9/11 generation.” Now, this “...for the post-9/11 generation” descriptor borders on cliché, however, he is on to something. After decades of gestation and development, the film adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s beloved 1986 musical arrives as a banner film of Hollywood’s nü-fairy tale revival - a revisionist movement of classic fairy tales re-imagined as tales of angst and darkness for the young adult - or “post-9/11” - crowd. Mostly, studios have muted the fireside whimsy that made the Brothers Grimm of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales so fun and memorable for tales of great battles and hormonal melodrama. Rather than reinterpret and redress, Into the Woods looks beyond the “happily ever after” untold by the troubadours of lore.
Much like the play, the film adaptation of Into the Woods follows an ensemble of fairly tale all-stars as they find themselves crossing narratives in the titular woods. It all begins when a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) are visited by a witch from next door (Meryl Streep) who sends them on a quest through the forest to procure a series of items needed to reverse a curse upon herself and the baker’s family. While on their quest, they come upon a Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) unsure of her love for the prince (Chris Pine), a pair of adolescent troublemakers Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) and Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and numerous other Grimm all-stars.
Into the Woods is not as dark as, say, Disney’s recent smash Sleeping Beauty revival Maleficent or the lifeless Red Riding Hood and Snow White and the Huntsman. It almost alleviates the tonal issues that marred Sondheim’s original play, finding a proper balance between family fun and its more adult thematics. But the film’s final act retains the same feeling of ‘afterthought’ as Sondheim’s second act. It is obvious that this is quite intentional - again, exploring the idea of post-fairy tale narrative - but this idea drags out the film, like the play, a little too long. Luckily, the music keeps the energy high and bubbly. Maybe it is a triumph of the play more so than the film, but Sondheim’s gift for melody and lyricism is well apparent. Marshall handles the musical numbers with careful, but dynamic coverage, reminding us of his triumphant debut with the Academy-Award winning Chicago. All in all, Marshall’s adaptation is the most fun fairy tale round-up since the original Shrek.
The ‘post-9/11 fairy tale’ maybe be bold, if not over-reaching, but it succeeds in the essential balance between light and dark that recent adaptations have missed.
The cast is pitch perfect - no, not an Anna Kendrick pun - as well, playing off of each other with infectious enthusiasm. Meryl Streep’s Witch should cruise her way into Best Supporting Actress discussions (surprise, surprise). Blunt follows Edge of Tomorrow with another star turn for a banner year. The real stars are the male leads in James Corden, Chris Pine and even young Daniel Huttlestone. Corden’s central Baker manages the narrative’s - often hard to follow - trajectories with impossible charm. Pine, on the other hand, utilizes his ‘leading man’ glamour as the Prince close to self-parody without ever losing a single ounce of charisma, while Huttlestone’s adolescent energy provides a youthful electricity to keep the kids involved. The only poor player is a very uncomfortable cameo from Johnny Depp as the Big Bad Wolf singing the song ‘Hello Little Girl’ - an uneasy tune, even in the play, that is only made worse with Depp’s laughable wardrobe.
It is just one weakness in a film that defines the idea of a holiday film. Nearly two decades in development, Into the Woods could not have arrived in theaters at a more appropriate time for Disney. It is elaborate and convoluted, but also brimming with wit; it is utmost modern but retains the classic sentimentality of its characters. It is a pinnacle of the nü-fairy tale genre. The ‘post-9/11 fairy tale’ maybe be bold, if not over-reaching, but it succeeds in the essential balance between light and dark that recent adaptations have missed.
Into the Woods is in theaters now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Byk9Is3TjY
Review: 'A Most Violent Year'
With his third feature, J.C. Chandor again proves he is one of the most exciting, young voices in American cinema - a filmmaker with a keen, much-needed understanding of character and refreshing patience for organic narrative. A Most Violent Year is a much different animal than his previous two films: 2011’s talky Wall Street drama Margin Call and last year’s wordless, one-man disaster drama All Is Lost. However, it borrows the same anxieties about fate and power and explores them on his broadest stage thus far.
As its promotional material so explicitly points out, A Most Wanted Year takes place in New York in 1981 - one of the more crime-ridden eras in the city’s history. It begins as heating oil distributor, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), puts down a deposit on a waterfront parcel of land that will represent a huge step forward for his business. Before the deal closes in thirty days, Abel must deal with moving his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) into a new home, a mysterious hijacking scheme involving his trucks, a pesky district attorney (David Oyelowo) looking into the heating oil industry.
This setting - so gorgeously captured by up-and-coming cinematographer Bradford Young - is a city both alive and on the frays of collapsing into past despair. This so brilliantly mirrors Oscar Isaac’s Abel - a man brimming with confidence and charisma, but also dread and disquiet. He is a man who sees the folly in the American Dream just as much as he so badly wants to believe in it, a husband and father who loves his wife just as much a he is intimidated by her. Oscar Isaac’s fantastic control of his complexity and nuances is work deserving of both screenplay and acting accolades this coming awards season.
But, if anything, A Most Violent Year is still a successful exercise in narrative control - a film carefully maneuvered to stay at a very slow, but very gripping boil.
The supporting cast is also stellar. Jessica Chastain is the kind of female lead that we need more of in American cinema. Chic, shrewd and strong as Abel’s wife Anna, she not only commands respect but becomes the authority of the film - that rugged gangster's daughter edge that Abel tries so carefully to control as a businessman. Albert Brooks and David Oyelowo give great turns as lawyers respectively helping Abel’s business grow and taking Abel’s business down. They all occupy their roles with such humanity; not in the sense of goodness, but in the sense of balance. The understanding that all good comes at a cost. ‘Have some pride in what you do,’ Abel boldly declares to a caucus of his heating oil competitors. And every character and performance in A Most Violent Year expresses just that: people with pride in their occupation, people on a quest to do something good in a city that makes it hard to do so.
While the film’s slow-burning tension is its greatest strength - it can also bring the film down. For the most part, the film moves with an impeccable pace - letting the characters make the choices for themselves and not letting narrative construction get the best of the movie. In this way, Chandor reveals his greatest strength as a screenwriter and, consequently, a director. His uncanny trust and interest in watching his characters respond to their environment as opposed to calculating their decisions. And while the unpredictability of the film’s trajectory is thoroughly gripping, it does get restless. It suffers from an acute multiple ending syndrome, not really knowing where to conclude its saga on a timely note and it begins to meander slightly in the third act.
A couple superfluous subplots briefly distract what begins - and ends - as a tightly-wound thriller. But, if anything, A Most Violent Year is still a successful exercise in narrative control - a film carefully maneuvered to stay at a very slow, but very gripping boil. It is another golden example of J.C. Chandor’s ever-promising skills as a filmmaker and a fascinating entry into a wide open awards season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZU7U3k3gHY
Review: 'Revenge of the Green Dragons'
In 2006, Martin Scorsese finally collected a long overdue Best Director statue for helming The Departed, an American remake of Andrew Lau’s acclaimed Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs. Eight years later, Scorsese has returned the favor by adding some much-needed pedigree to Lau’s second English language film, Revenge of the Green Dragons. Unfortunately, Marty’s illustrious name does little to save such a miserable crime saga away from the bottom feeders.
Inspired by true events, Revenge of the Green Dragons follows the Reagan-era rise of two young Chinese-American immigrants: Sonny (The Twilight Saga’s Justin Chon) and Steven (YouTube® star Kevin Wu). As teens, the boys are shepherded into the infamous Green Dragons gang and soon win favor and superiority among its members by killing folks, stealing their cash, killing more folks and acting all other kinds of reckless around Queens’ Chinatown.
To the audience’s benefit, the film moves quick - but proves a disadvantage to a film that needs less characters and a little bit more development on its main players.
The boys journey through the Chinatown underworld is an all too familiar path through alleyways and seedy apartments stacked high with Benjamins, superfluous gunfire over said stacks, and a whole lotta shady loyalty. This is all accented by tedious expository voiceover intended to provide scope and significance. Curiously, it fails to affirm, or even clarify, any of the Green Dragon’s motivations. To the audience’s benefit, the film moves quick - but proves a disadvantage to a film that needs less characters and a little bit more development on its main players.
To call Kevin Wu’s Steven an interesting character would be overstating his performance. However, compared to every other player in the film, he is nearly fascinating. Sporting a curly topped mullet and green school-boy varsity jacket, he is the only character in the film who ponders his own recklessness with an ounce of authenticity. His pal Sonny is quite the opposite. Lacking any physical menace, Justin Chon struggles through the lead, leaving the post-production team to exploit manipulative slow-motion and a score of big-haired, 80's guitar wails to (de)accentuate nearly all of Sonny’s big moments.
The rest of the cast shouts expletives and terrorizes the neighborhood like middle school hooligans. Revenge of the Green Dragons is essentially an ugly montage of sloppy violence overcompensating for such poor performances, massacring any good story for gun shells. In fact, the film indulges in the Green Dragons criminal revelry with a very uncomfortable callousness, especially when it involves Sonny and Steven as children. At least Ray Liotta eventually sleepwalks into town to lock the Dragons up.
To its credit, Revenge of the Green Dragons almost ends on an innovative and rather timely note regarding America’s place for immigrants and the deceit of the American Dream. This, however, falls right before the film actually ends with a character revelation that falls so flat, it's embarrassing. By this point, however, Revenge of the Green Dragons has already fallen to the bottom of the action bargain barrel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2eKchU1GZo
Review: 'Young Ones'
A bizarre post-apocalyptic amalgam of the current geographical and technological zeitgeist, spaghetti westerns and Star Wars, Young Ones is an intriguing, if not ingenious motion picture. Directed by Jake Paltrow - yes, the brother of Gwyneth - it is an unassured science fiction film with loving affection for its inherent influences and invention, set en-route toward fans of science fiction, westerns and even video-store cult films.
It follows the lineage of three men surviving in the dust bowl of the near American future. Each of their stories is told in a respective chapter beginning with Ernest Holm (Michael Shannon), a farmer who tends to what is left of his dirt fields. He holds steadfast to the idea that his land is still fertile despite the lack of any water. Motorbike bad boy Flem (Nicholas Hoult) wants Ernest’s land but also has the eye of Mary (Elle Fanning), Ernest’s daughter who reluctantly tends to their house after their mother is put in a care facility. In the middle of it all is young Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Ernest’s adolescent son who learns to survive on his wits in the barren landscape.
It is clunky, but it brims with imagination and succeeds with proficiency in most of the many - maybe too many - concepts writer/director Jake Paltrow attempts to plant in the film’s bleak landscape.
From the get-go, Young Ones is crowded with postcard scenery. Cinematographer Giles Nuttgens captures the desolate sandscapes with a muted beauty. Though the terrain is unidentified, the South African filming locations evoke memories of Tatooine and the outback of Mad Max. These visions are enhanced further by the film format and hokey transitions that harken back to the original Star Wars trilogy as well. This timeless aesthetic Paltrow and Nuttgens have come close to perfecting is one of the films most effective charms. Paltow’s interest in robotics and technology of the near future may be the film’s most fascinating element. The most evocative image from the film is the robotic donkey that Ernest invests in as it crawls through the rocks and hills. Much like Neil Blomkamp’s two features, Paltrow harnesses the inevitable truth that complex technology will soon be available to all walks of life - a concept that Young Ones exposes very well. The concepts of water politics and resource transfer are uncanny in their relevance to the current drought across the American southwest. While it lacks insight into solutions - that isn’t what Paltrow strives for - the narrative surrounding water trade is again all too close to the near-future. Complex thematic interests may be too broad for such a small film, but they create a fascinating world. It may be just a growing pain, but he seems much more fascinated at the aesthetics of the world he has written, than exploring their implications.
The hopeless, cutthroat atmosphere is one of Young Ones’ strongest elements. It's rather slow-paced in moments, but as a quasi-western, it unfolds with a careful, slow-burning unease of - dare I say it - John Ford and Sergio Leone. Unfortunately, Paltrow lacks the prowess to really trust in his actors and settings to sharpen the film’s fangs. Michael Shannon does rather well, but dull expository dialogue sets the film back into stale melodrama. Fanning and Hoult are the biggest victims of this - especially Fanning whose character may be the weakest of her young career. While Hoult’s charisma allows him to work a little with the material, Fanning overcompensates to an irritating level. Young Kodi Smit-McPhee is the film’s secret weapon. Anchoring a shaky second act, Smit-McPhee completely commandeers a compelling third act to its explosive conclusion, much like he proved in 2010’s Let Me In, the little-seen, but excellent remake of Let the Right One In. He is an actor who is beyond his years in his understanding of restraint and subtext.
As peculiar as it is, Young Ones is a timeless and - maybe unintentionally so - timely slice of science fiction. It is clunky, but it brims with imagination and succeeds with proficiency in most of the many - maybe too many - concepts writer/director Jake Paltrow attempts to plant in the film’s bleak landscape. Down to its credits, his sophomore feature is a unique beast, an admirable - maybe quite successful - experiment that seems destined for reexamination in the near or distant future. Its potential for cult success is undeniable because Young Ones has a lot to love. It may feel a little mismanaged at times, but hats off to Mr. Paltrow for one of the most inventive features in Hollywood that is all too often bleeding out of innovation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiSU-Mv8eTc
Review: 'The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her/Him'
It's a standard story on paper. New York thirty-somethings' Connor and Eleanor are a couple struggling to keep their marriage afloat after the passing of their infant son. Connor (James McAvoy) is the struggling restaurateur son of a wildly successful restaurateur (Ciarán Hinds). Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) is the ‘faculty brat’ daughter of her NYU professor father (William Hurt) and French-born mother (Isabelle Huppert). Unhappy in her marriage, she walks away from Connor and returns to her family’s home after jumping from a city bridge. Melodrama and heart-tugging should ensue. But first-time director Ned Benson's The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her/Him is bolder, more audacious than that.
Much like (500) Days of Summer or Blue Valentine, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby:Her/Him finds a debut feature reexamining the cinematic relationship. Rather than one film following Connor and Eleanor’s choppy love, Benson splits its narrative into two separate films, :Him and :Her, which each tell the story from each perspective of the relationship. A combined :Them version debuted earlier in September. However, after seeing Her and Him as two separate, subjective stories, any attempt to combine the halves would render useless and unnecessary (Read Ryan's review of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, here). Connor and Eleanor’s relationship together is standard indie romantic fare. But, by delivering each character dealing with the grief and confusion of a failing relationship away from each other, Benson gives us what we rarely see in film: a full picture of life that doesn't compromise or steer the film's audience into one narrative.
A combined :Them version debuted earlier in September. However, after seeing Her and Him as two separate, subjective stories, any attempt to combine the halves would render useless and unnecessary.
That being said, it’s actually rather difficult to look at Her and Him as two separate films critically, because without one the other would be nullified. They are, however, indeed rather distinct. Eleanor’s half is dark, morose and filled with grad-school angst. Connor’s is cooler, lighter and awkwardly balances Eleanor’s dramatic bend with a splash of late 90's indie dramedy. As the title may hint, Benson gives Eleanor’s story more time of day. What Benson’s gimmick also provides for is much greater subtext and far less exposition than one is used to in current Hollywood filmmaking. While his script does meander into vague philosophical quips and one-liners on many occasions, his words are still strong and beautiful.
Jessica Chastain reaps the benefit of this the most. She is magnetic and the supporting cast in her narrative is fascinating. Barely given much screen time, her parents’ relationship is nearly as poignant of a portrait of the hardships of marriage as the entire double feature. McAvoy’s supporting cast lacks much depth. Bill Hader seems rather miscast as Connor’s chef pal and his whole staff adds an awkward humor to the Him half after the almost humorless first 100 minutes of the Her half. McAvoy plays Connor well though with brooding optimism that is undeniably charming but comparably unfocused next to Chastain's hard-edged Eleanor.
I had a professor who once declared that if somebody isn’t together at the end of a film then it something isn’t working. To an extent, this is very true. Whether it be the lowball charm of the romantic comedy, the opulent nostalgia of the period romance or the Olive Garden commercial affection of the annual Nicholas Sparks drama, there is a natural human instinct to hope for the couple at the core of the film. That is precisely why The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is a revelation of a debut feature. At the end of the nearly 200-minute drama, you’re not actually rooting for Connor and Eleanor. You are rooting for Connor. And you are rooting for Eleanor. It’s the rare film that is wise enough to realize that love may make the audience happy, but it may not make the characters happy. That is the beauty of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her/Him. It gives its characters freedom, and more importantly, voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ng4MD66WyU
Review: 'Lilting'
"Lilting" is a term used to describe the rising and falling of the voice, mostly in regards to the Irish accent. Merriam-Webster describes it as “attractive," “pleasing,” and “buoyant.” Lilting, the debut feature from Cambodian writer-director Hong Khaoh, similarly explores the patterns of language and communication. It is, however, a quiet meditation on the rather heavy burdens of love, loss and isolation.
The film explores the relationship between an elderly Chinese-Cambodian immigrant, Junn (Pei-Pei Cheng) and her late son’s former lover, Richard (Ben Whishaw, Skyfall). As the two both struggle to overcome the grief of their loss, Richard hires a young interpreter, Vann (Naomi Christie) to ease his own communication with Junn and help her find a connection in an elderly resident of her retirement home, Alan (Peter Bowles).
There is a quiet vulnerability to Whishaw’s lead as he struggles with becoming overbearing in his attempted care for Junn. Cheng's stubbornness as Whishaw's culturally-opposite comes close to flat on occasion, but in her most tender moments, she shines. This central relationship is dynamic and affecting, but the actors’ best moments are in their singularly alone moments onscreen. Cheng's most heartbreaking moment comes in the final seconds of the film's first sequence, a masterful flashback that grasps the most painful moments of loss in a simple cut. Whishaw shines in a similar moment toward the end of the film, and there are many likewise artful sequences that see Khoah skillfully blurring reality and memory.
Much like Pontikos’ soft cinematography, the film is a tender, cozy piece- a fireside conversation about language, loss and love.
However, when the film is fully grounded in the reality, it is far less poetic. The film never drags at a swift 86 minutes, but it begins to feel repetitive and stuck in its own circle. While gorgeous in its muted tones, Urzsula Ponitkos’ cinematography is limited to the most basic of conversational coverage. In more steady, heated conversations, this is just enough- but this lack of variation often accentuates the merely passable dialogue. This culminates in an underplayed climax that, though touching in its final moments, lacks the dramatic power to really reach audiences on another level. The film also has difficulty including the supporting players, Alan and Vann. Junn’s relationship with Alan is amusing but unfocused. As the interpreter, Vann is given an interesting humanity, but her relationship with Richard feels weak and contrived.
Lilting is not a film that attempts to be elaborate or melodramatic. Much like Pontikos’ soft cinematography, the film is a tender, cozy piece- a fireside conversation about language, loss and love. What Hong Khaoh has directed is less of a film than it is a microphone. Lilting is a film that you listen to, a piece that explores not only the barriers of language but the barriers of emotion that can keep us alone. Rather than a dynamic narrative lilt, the film unfortunately only walks a steadily level path.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8HhLd07fYY