'Approaching the Unknown' Won't Have the Search Team Called
Apparently, movies have yet to learn by now the dangers of sending but a few scarce humans–in this case, just one–beyond Earth's reaches and into the vastness of space to save humanity from some planet-threatening problem. Of course, this risk of the 'what can go wrong does go wrong' variety, drives a time-tested plot of which audiences are readily entertained; just look at recent cinema, "The Martian," "Interstellar," and "Gravity" for proof.
The real danger that movies should be wary of is building a story around this premise alone, and without adding anything new to the equation. The result, which the latest solo-in-space-survival flick "Approaching the Unknown" shows, is that audiences will fail to care if that character is fated to drift further and aimlessly out of orbit and into the forgotten beyond. While there might be enough familiar elements to satisfy those who are looking for something akin to background-watching, "Approaching the Unknown" doesn't have enough original elements to generate the inertia of interest necessary to captivate viewers in its own right.
The astronaut whose fate we are tied to is William D. Stanaforth (Mark Strong), on a one-way, sacrificial trip to Mars to colonize the planet for the rest of humanity–if he doesn't perish before arriving. A former military man with instinctual intelligence and steely conviction, Stanaforth is also loaded with lazily tacked-on self-affirmations ("I'm not going to Mars to die; I'm going there to live."), making him a comparable but cliche fixture to spend a full ninety minutes with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQx2eosUlXY
Strong, last seen in this year's underperforming Sacha Baron Cohen spy-spoof "The Brothers Grimsby," lends his action-hero looks and serious resolve to playing Stanaforth and it's to the actor's strengths that he brings the character to life. While he seems like the perfect person to have in a real-life situation–brilliant enough to discover a process to create water from dirt and fearless enough to disobey orders to manually fix his ship in a bind from Earth-residing NASA engineer and old pal Louis 'Skinny' Skinner (Luke Wilson), his cold exterior doesn't lend itself to drawing the audience in, and proves the whole thing could use a little more humor and heart.
You can tell before it's over that "Approaching the Unknown" is a movie that didn't spend its efforts trying to differentiate itself from other sci-fi movies as it does attempting to cash in on their successes. Sure, a few flashback scenes of Stanaforth convey his detachment from non-existent family and friends back home, but there's nothing beyond his person that amounts to be developed. You're probably already braced for when the solitarily-confined character loses his grip on reality, talking to himself and hallucinating characters from his emotional past. But all of this within the first twenty minutes? It fast-tracks all of what the movie has to offer in the blast-off stage alone.
While "The Martian," "Interstellar," and "Gravity," show that battling elements and confronting the certainty of death can do more than simply entertain audiences (each being commercially and critically received and Awards-positioned), Strong's strengths aren't in the department of amiability and warmth, unlike Matt Damon in "Martian," or Matthew McConaughey in "Interstellar (or even Tom Hanks in "Apollo 13"), actors whose ingenuity comes second to their naturally likable selves. It seems the bigger irony that first-time writer/director Mark Elijah Rosenberg doesn't get right in his directorial debut is that the greater the dazzling technology, the greater a natural human presence must be there for us to relate to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the search team will be getting called for this failed mission.
"Approaching the Unknown" is rated R for language. Now playing in select theaters and On Demand.
'The Lobster' and the Absurdity of Modern Love
In this modern age, where more and more human relationships are being facilitated online – apps like Tinder making romance and falling in love almost binary in nature – is it any wonder why we might now feel like we’ve lost just a bit of our collective humanity, and why the whole thing might even be seen as, laughable?
In the new ambiguously titled film “The Lobster,” director Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) sends
up this idea to make a darkly absurd, yet hilarious and thoughtful look at the amount of similarly programmed, artificialized, confining rules and structures that humans have put into place to connect with others. In stretching the joke to its most absurd, silliest places, “The Lobster” makes for a wonderfully stylish satire with its poignancy and lasting punch. For our interview with Lanthimos, visit www.cinemacy.com.
“The Lobster” takes place in a dystopian, near future world, where single people (according to the laws of ‘The City’) are arrested and taken to ‘The Hotel,’ where they must find a romantic partner in forty-five days or else (cue the absurd twist) be turned into an animal and released into the woods (it's not so cruel – they get to choose which animal they would like to be turned into to live out the rest of their days).
John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, and Colin Farrell need to find a mate in "The Lobster."
In the lead role, Colin Farrell packs on a pudge to play the wireframe-wearing sad sap David (the only named person in the film, the rest of the characters being defined as Nosebleed Woman, Loner Leader's Father, and so on), who, in the film’s first scene, is seen as just the latest victim of relationship-ending heartbreak. Farrell, pivoting 180 degrees from his macho and hard-boiled character in HBO's less-than-satisfying second season of "True Detective," gets laughs right off the bat. Farrell proves, with his bushy mustache groomed over his tight-lipped mouth, that he can do the deadpan comedy in spades.
After seeing David unlucky in love, we are introduced to The Hotel, where David and the rest of the other singles are housed and watched under scrutiny by the staff. It is here where we learn the rules of this world – singles check-in at the front desk, exchange the clothes on their back for navy sport coats and flower-printed dresses, are logged into the system, and learn that they must find, not so much "love," as a romantic partner, a mate for life, within 45 days.
Understandably, all singles are largely silent and awkward in their behaviors, including Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly, who attend The Hotel's hilariously awkward staged talks regarding the dangers of living alone and attending the just-as awkward dances. Singles are also shuttled to the surrounding forest with tranquilizer-loaded hunting rifles, to tag and bag the rogue singles living outside of The City's laws. Successfully neutralizing a “Loner” will add another day to their stay at The Hotel, upping the chances of finding a mate. It's a route that leads David to the Loners, including the Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), a fellow single who lives under the rule of the Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux). The twist here is, even outside of The City’s watch and The Hotel's confines, living in the forest as a devoted single shares its own equally inhibiting and just as dumb rules. It is here that Lanthimos drives the point home, societal structures that are put in place in the effort to control one’s relationship status is a doomed, fool’s errand.
"The Lobster,” is wildly unexpected, unique, and plays the absurdity of this world with winning deadpan humor throughout. It affirms the reality where people are turned into animals, but even they have boundaries, as a single is wisely advised by a superior that a camel and a hippopotamus wouldn't end up together, because "That would be absurd... think about it.” The modern age intelligentsia poking fun at the state of human behavior to control nature's effect in utilitarian effort is entirely Twain-like, and makes for one of the year’s most unforgettable stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU29VfayDMw
1 h 58 min. Rated R for sexual content including dialogue, and some violence. Now playing in select theaters, including the ArcLight Hollywood.
Documentary 'Elstree 1976' Is a Tribute to the Unknown Faces of 'Star Wars'
Amidst the recently renewed "Star Wars" mania, with the beloved franchise's acquisition and and re-boot by Disney with last year's behemoth blockbuster, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, new stories, worlds, and characters have been introduced to new audiences. But a long time ago–or rather, "About forty years ago, in a suburb of North London..."–a then, fresh-faced and unknown cast of actors and extras took jobs to make a movie that would later send ripples through the universe, which are still felt today, and for future generations to come.
Those actors have gotten their fifteen minutes of fame extended in Elstree 1976, a new, dutifully made and honorably praising documentary that gives the background and lesser-known actors face-time in the spotlight. With its running time of one hour and thirty minutes, it's a stuffed movie with a number of actors telling their stories of how Star Wars affected their lives, which, with its heavily nostalgic, leaning on somber tone, should excite only the most die-hard of fans.
"How many actors can say they've got their own action figures?" It's a fair question, and one that writer/director Jon Spira digs into with his documentary (fundraised by Kickstarter), comprised of sit-down interviews of the people that lent their faces (and some only their bodies) to a movie that would become the most popular of all time–even if those people didn't know it at first.
"It didn't seem anything special to me. I thought it was a low-budget film to begin with," says one Star Wars actor, and it's the same sentiment that all of the interviewees generally share. Of course, it was–absolutely nobody could have predicted that success, with its wacky sci-fi costumes and set pieces and space-serial story about the "the Force." But after the Death Star's space dust settled, 25% of the planet's 8 billion inhabitants have been statistically polled as having seen the classic space opera; reasoned in the movie, meaning roughly 2 billion people have seen these lesser known people filling in the rest of the roles and spaces surrounding such actors as Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker, Alec Guiness' Obi-Wan Kenobi, Carrie Fischer's Princess Leia, and the director himself, George Lucas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IhEuYdArz4
The talking heads who tell their stories range from the more well-known unknowns of their personal career–Jeremy Bulloch, who donned bounty hunter and fan favorite Boba Fett's costume and helmet in The Empire Strikes Back, is in front of the camera. So is David Prowse, the bodybuilder-turned-actor inside Darth Vader's iconic black helmet and suit (those may know, that legendary James Earl Jones only provided his voice to film's most iconic villain), is also interviewed here (fun fact: that's also Prowse as the muscly caretaker who carries a beaten-up Alex inside from the rain in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange–just one piece of even more obscure trivia that the documentary digs up).
And then there are the fully unknown actors, who, blink-and-you'll-miss-them, are featured here, which should put a smile on viewers' faces as they recognize the freeze-framed interviewees' faces, blurry in the background and otherwise, as they pop up in the original movie. Take Garrick, whose role as a Rebel fighter came with his own action figure, created with his full 70s-moustache likeness, yet now self-deprecatingly refers to himself as an "ex-'X-wing' pilot." Laurie, a female stormtrooper, offers her story as well. Derek almost became a male prostitute before his casting in the movie.
Elstree 1976, whose title of course, the most fervent of fans will know refers to the sound stage and year of production on what was then called The Star Wars, squeezes out just an ounce more of fun facts, history, behind-the-scenes footage, and trivia that even the most passionate of fans might not know. There's the story of the actor who played the X-wing pilot who made his run to destroy the Death Star at the end of A New Hope, who, when he couldn't remember his lines, had the script taped down to his legs, making it look like he was looking at buttons and cockpit-gadgetry instead of the lines themselves. Fans will also delight in seeing the Stormtrooper, who can famously be seen hitting his helmet on a closing blast door, recount that moment as well.
Elstree 1976 also reveals the rift in the "Star Wars" actor community itself, there are a few who more than wish that their fame was as high as the likes of Kenny Baker (who operated the R2-D2 costume) and Dave Prowse as Vader, whose actual faces were never seen in the film. "Our faces were actually in the movie!" say some of the impassioned, unknown actors. As Han Solo's space-gangster friend Greedo, Paul Blake states how, earlier in his career, he had played the part of Macbeth, as well as performed in the Royal Court Theatre in London. "Today, my tombstone will read 'Here lies Greedo'–and that's fantastic!" Blake says. "I have to say, that after thirty years of living with that, I couldn't ask for a better epitaph, really."
We all know that movies are just that–fantasy. Elstree 1976 provides a unique view into the 'Star Wars' universe that reveals the stories behind the fantasy, feeling excitable at some moments, but mostly dutiful and slow in the end. Perhaps some Cantina bar-inspired musical score would have given this doc just the right amount of lightness and fun that it needed, instead of an underlying score that recalls the sullen sunset-gaze of Luke Skywalker in the sands of Tattooine–staring out at a world that immortalizes few and passes over the others.
1 h 30 min. 'Elstree 1976' opens in select theaters and On-Demand this Friday.
In Heartwarming 'The Meddler,' A Mother's Love is Honored
Sometimes, the end of the world comes about in two ways. There's the scenario in which the actual apocalypse strikes, bringing about the general destruction of planet Earth and its beings. And then there is the time when one loses a parent.
In her first and now second back-to-back feature films, writer/director Lorene Scafaria has explored both end-of-days events, as well as the common theme of having her characters forced to find levity and comedy in, and finding the will to carry on amidst, the face of such devastating events – but only taking real-life experience from the latter.
In Scafaria's follow-up to her directorial debut, 2012's Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist scribe offers an altogether joyful and uplifting tale of human life realism that, though still tinged with some mournful and heartbreaking tone, explores with such heart what happens after someone's world ends, the new reality that must then be accepted and the snags in life that come with it.
In Scafaria's own tale of personal devastation, the writer and director learned of her father’s passing when in the middle of shooting Seeking a Friend. Shocked, distraught, and altogether dazed, her mother proceeded to fly out to comfort and support her daughter through the production and finishing of the movie, and subsequently, becoming a new part of her daughter's crazed world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbN58_kYZrU
The Meddler is exactly that story, a loving tribute of a film from Scafaria to and about her mother, and how the pair were faced with figuring out how the other fits into their lives. Marnie (Susan Sarandon), a spirited, life-affirming, if only slightly overbearing woman, so well-intentioned and good-hearted that she sees no boundaries or personal space between her and the people whose lives she stumbles into, and inadvertently helps in such genuine and caring ways. Her sunny and eager-to-assist disposition are great for everyone around her, including her daughter's new bride-to-be friend Jillian (Cecily Strong) and retired officer of the law "Zipper" (J.K. Simmons), who also manages to catch her eye – everyone, that is, except for her recently single and anxiety-ridden daughter Lori (Rose Byrne).
Scafaria shows Sarandon’s wholesome meddling, but in such a loving way that Marnie's entire character is one that can't help but be looked at as endearing, sentimental, and caring in that classic, overly-attentive "mom" kind of way (a running joke shows Marnie leaving voicemail upon voicemail to a Lori, only asking her daughter to text her to make sure she's ok). Sarandon here is a true joy – this movie is a vehicle around the star, and she doesn’t disappoint when onscreen (in the beauty department as well), even when the story lacks in urgency or real development.
As a movie, The Meddler is pretty much just a series of situationally-comedic events – she buys an iPad for a baby shower present, accidentally gets stoned when trying to get rid of a younger friend's bag of pot, and walks onto a movie set and becomes an “extra.” The winning factor is that Sarandon herself shows so much life, still so comedically and dramatically deft and sharp, which should tickle the middle-aged-mom crowd out there.
The Meddler, if not the most challenging or complex look at familial loss beyond being a good time, is a highly personal film. Scafaria's near-autobiographical film, that seeks to win over audiences with its funny look at a tragic life, feels tonally reminiscent of writer/director Maya Forbes' 2014 dramedy Infinitely Polar Bear, in which Mark Ruffalo stars as Forbes' manic-depressive father, telling a story of morose nature but with light-hearted and optimistic fever. And like that film, The Meddler wins audiences over by its message of how important it is to continue to smile – to live – in the face of grief. Because the end of one world also means the beginning of a new one.
1 h 40 min. Rated PG-13 for brief drug content. Now playing in select cities.
'The Jungle Book': Animation for a New Generation
It's a weird thing, to be old enough to feel nostalgia for one's own childhood. As the first wave of this millennial generation, and a child of the 90s, I am part of the last generation of people to have watched our movies on VHS cassette. One of those movies amongst a collection of other classic Disney animated films, is the 1967 version of, The Jungle Book.
Thirty-nine years ago a hand-drawn masterpiece debuted (the last animated film that Walt Disney personally oversaw before passing away), I find myself at the famed El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, waiting for this new update to begin. As a critic amongst critic peers, sitting in a mostly family-and-kids packed screening, I put on my 3-D glasses, and after seeing the opening, iconic, Disney castle and logo fill the screen, we are all one theatre, pulled into a truly amazing, fully digitally animated world that is the Jungle Book for a new generation.
This year's remake of the same name, The Jungle Book brings to the screen the same heart-warming story as the 1967 version, but in dazzling and brilliantly rendered CGI animation (parents, don't fear that this new remake is following the trend of "darker" films – save that for 2018's Warner Brothers version of the remake, simply titled, Jungle Book). The marketing promotes that this film is brought to us "from the Studio that gave us Pirates of the Caribbean," which smartly reminds us that they know how to adapt rollercoaster ride-to-movie experience. Upon dissolving from the Disney logo, the camera glides and flies, twists and turns, over and under vines and tree branches in ride-like manner, as we follow digitally animated wolves and animals scaling the jungle, as well as our protagonist and our young man-cub.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4qgAaxB_pc
Mowgli, played by newcomer Neel Sethi, is the only human onscreen for the entirety of the movie (again, this film should technically be considered an animated film), and gives the sort of school-play performance. Our young Mowgli, swathed in the same red trunk undergarment, is surrounded by the familiar animal friends we all know and love as part of the Jungle Book-lore – and who are all cast perfectly. As Mowgli's protective panther Bagheera, who finds and watches over the young child, Ben Kingsley is strong and eloquent with his English dialect, narrating our way in to this new world. As the threatening and snarling tiger Shere Kahn, fellow Brit Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation), whose voice you may recognize from the other Disney hit Zootopia, provides the voice of the villain whose distrust of the man-cub sets the story in motion, claiming the young boy is a threat to all of the animal kingdom, vowing to hunt him down to remove him – permanently – from the jungle.
When young Mowgli decides, for the betterment of his family and the rest of the jungle, to leave his wolf family behind, including his mother Raksha (Lupita Nyong'o, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and father Akela (Giancarlo Esposito, Breaking Bad), he meets the rest of the iconic Jungle Book characters. Credit the film for understanding and playing to all of the characters (and actors) strengths, for the movie blossoms anew in fun in the second act when a lone Mowgli meets his bear pal Baloo, the ever-hilarious Bill Murray.
Murray as Baloo is a delight, and from this point forward, it felt as though the older-aged skewing audience took equal-to-more delight in seeing the lovable bear crack so casually wise as only Murray can. And yes, the iconic songs make the cut here, (Murray's splashy rendition of "The Bare Necessities" feels like it was performed by Disneyland's very own New Orleans Square jazz band) but in good restraint. The movie weaves the songs naturally into the story that's in place, meaning no show-stopping musical numbers here, but that serves the feeling of being a movie all the same. This extends to the other Jungle Book hit "I Wanna Be Like You," sung by the legendary Christopher Walken, as King Louie gets a massive wide-eyed character redesign akin to a slightly more friendly King Kong – slightly.
The Jungle Book is the latest Disney movie from their animated masterpiece canon to get a "live-action" remake (after Cinderella, and look for the recently announced Emily Blunt-starring Mary Poppins). It's a through and through adaptation, almost exact copy and paste of the hand-drawn version, and yet it still feels plumb new, every moment of it captivating and eliciting childlike wonder from all. Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) whips up a new animated experience for a new generation of kids. Your kids' kids adaptation will most likely be the Virtual-Reality experience, but for now, the film impresses with its use of digital animation, along with the magic that made it so great – those simple, bare necessities.
105 minutes. Rated PG for some sequences of scary action and peril. Now playing everywhere.
'The Adderall Diaries' Is Too Dependent on Its Own Stilted Throes of Pain
"Hurt people hurt people," so the saying goes, and nowhere is that sentiment more deliberately chewed over than in the new memoir-turned-movie, The Adderall Diaries. Like its name sounds, The Adderall Diaries only amounts to be a scattered and disjointed series of high-strung story lines and emotions, not feeling so much individually distinguished as it does overly stuffed.
Based on the best-selling memoir by Stephen Elliott, meta celebrity James Franco plays the aforementioned author, a hotshot young New York novelist (who just happens to have the same cool guy look and swagger of a Franco type, right down to the trademark scruffy facial hair and leather jacket). Franco gets to indulge all of his persona's pleasures here, seeing our main character Stephen writing pages of prose (the film uses cuts of typed passages from the memoir to further blend book-to-movie adaptation) on his laptop in his swanky New York high-rise apartment, signing books at book signings and reading passages at book readings, and generally, living the good life.
With life seemingly worry-free, and needing to decide a next book project to pursue (much to the pressure from his manager, played by Cynthia Nixon), Stephen decides to attend a court hearing of a father (Christian Slater) accused of abusing his kids murdering his wife, making Stephen reflect on his own intensely traumatic and abused past, which is when his world come crashing down. Or, no – it's when he meets an attractive young writer in Lana Edmond (Amber Heard) who shares a similarly troubled childhood as an also-victim of abuse (and who also has dark and mysterious body tattoos as a result of it). Wait, no – it's when his father, Neil Elliott (Ed Harris), the man Stephen holds responsible for abusing and neglecting him, comes into town, does it all come crashing down. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's a mish-mash of things going on here that all kind of start and stop in a herky-jerky way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qVMu-qnuNg
Perhaps in The Adderall Diaries' original memoir form, the many number of Stephen's side-stories might have woven together in a lighter, more graceful way, rather than feeling as equally competing against each other as they do here. To its credit, the film does attempt to stitch scenes together with a degree of dreamlike qualities and synthy-spaciousness to illicit this lyrical feeling, its sonic space similar to 2014's novel-to-movie, White Bird in a Blizzard. But the forced accumulation of all these things – including a bout of writer's block that relapses Elliott into taking adderall and pills again – feel's like a relentless downpour of self-pity and vanity.
The writing and directing effort here from Pamela Romanowsky (2012's The Color of Time) feels contrived, and so submissive to Franco's star power that it ultimately buckles under artificiality. For any, and certainly, for all of this to stick, Elliott the character needs to be a man we can truly know, and whose vulnerability can be felt and understood by all. Franco's leather jacket, bad boy with daddy issues character, doesn't so much create the character from the book as it does get absorbed into his own persona.
The Adderall Diaries posits spurts of a larger, more interesting idea – that being the connection of memory, and who we think we are and who we see others as from the recollection of past experiences. The movie's further exploration into broken pasts and the people trying to reconcile that with their present situations is something that should've offered a much more universal feeling of catharsis and understanding, rather than with a heavy helping of self-pitying and brooding. Interestingly, the real-life Stephen Elliott even felt the need to explain the differences between his actual life and writing after having seen The Adderall Diaries, which can only speak to the fact that sometimes, full justice might not be served in the pursuit of claiming "artistic liberties."
105 min. Rated R for language throughout, drug use, sexuality, and some aberrant and disturbing content. 'The Adderall Diaries' is currently available exclusively on DirecTV; It will be released theatrically and available on all other digital and cable VOD platforms starting Friday, April 15.
'I Saw the Light' From Hank Williams' Shadow
Audiences are about to see American music icon Hank Williams in a whole new light.
From director Marc Abraham (whose other feature film credit was 2008’s Greg Kinnear-starrer Flash of Genius) comes I Saw the Light, a Hank Williams biopic that brings the singer’s dark past of booze, infidelity, and generally being an all-around “sonuvabitch” to the big screen.
The main problem with the film, which feels like it slogs with a tired morose from start to finish, is that the story of Williams as a drunk isn’t a particularly interesting one–at least not when it isn’t balanced out with any other redeeming parts of his life as an inspired artist, and one so culturally important to rock and roll on the whole. In choosing to focus on the darker and more unknown parts of the troubled star’s life, we also get a heavy heaping of drunkenness and depression which, when assembled together in awkwardly edited fragments of the singer’s life, fail to make the case that his life was movie-worthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rp3yup-qe4
Based on the book Hank Williams: The Biography, the film stitches together an assortment of moments from Williams' life–an early marriage to Southern Belle Audrey Williams (Elizabeth Olsen), recording sessions here and there, the arrival of a new child, one or two other scenes of Williams actually performing in concert–along with Williams' indulgences in drugs, alcohol, and women. While Abraham may have wished to tell a more honest story of the man under the 10-gallon cowboy hat by crafting scenes that feature one, two, or three people, the economy of the movie just feels too small to hold interest in. Noticeably, most scenes take place in small recording studios, bedrooms, and other tight spaces, which only ultimately expose how empty the story is; when you notice that Williams is wearing the same pajama pants in three separate bedroom scenes, it's probably clear that there should have been more diversity in scenes, or moments of his life, rather than continuing to beat the movie's central focus of dealing with depravity like a dead horse.
As biopics go, and as another rock biopic to profile a legendary American icon country singer, I Saw the Light won’t be able to distance itself from the Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line, which continues to age and arguably stand as one of the finest biopics ever made. Where Cash's devil-may-care attitude was rebounded by his madly crazy love for one Ms. June Carter (with completely inspired performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon), Williams is portrayed as a man troubled by his own demons and nothing more, which makes for an all-consuming character that comes off as just plain selfish.
Tom Hiddleston manages to give a graceful and connected performance, as the English actor embodies the tortured star in a collected manner with the twinkle in his eye for delinquency. However, something about the lean Brit never feels particularly, dare I say it, American, and with such a limiting script, we never feel like we learn much more about Williams than his more scandalous ways. Elizabeth Olsen is along for the ride as Williams' first wife, in what's a two-hander type role, until around the third act when she (and her overly twangy country drawl) fall into the background when her less than faithful husband finds courtship with two other women. What feels like a cliche device of Williams learning of a chronic back illness that slowly deteriorates his body and psyche, putters out to a less than satisfying ending to what was already a drag.
I Saw the Light fails to deliver what its title promises, as Williams fails to find enlightenment or meaning in a life of fast living. By the time the story caps at his youthful age of 29, we are only left to wonder what this story's fuller potential could have been if it didn't wish to live in the shadows the entire time.
2 hr 3 min. Rated R for some language and brief sexuality/nudity. Opens this Friday.
We've Been Here Before, in Modern Noir 'Too Late'
This review previously ran during the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival
Having its World Premiere at the LACMA as part of this year's Los Angeles Film Festival, first time feature film director Dennis Hauck, along with a full cast that included lead actor John Hawkes, presented Too Late, a modern day LA-set noir on a grainy, lovely, 35mm print.
Hauck, who introduced the film with his shaggy hair and bearded scruff, looked every part the fictional companion to the film's lead Dick, Private Investigator Mel Sampson (Hawkes), with a stringy, greased mop similar to that of Sampson's solo-riding sleuth self.
Hauck's lax groovy-self is clue enough to serve as a reference point in for any audience to see how the director, who also wrote the script, free-wheeled his own sensibilities into this shoot-from-the-hip noir number, which unfortunately, only supplants limitations into it. While oozing with dutiful detective homage to the likes of Raymond Chandler stories and those smoke-filled pulp noir dime-store novels, tin-thin dialogue and storytelling stands as the dividing line between audiences' being dazzled or dismissive of this midnight flick.
If Tarantino-ringing words fill the entirety of what is spoken onscreen, than Too Late's non-linear storytelling cements it as a drive-in style flick that Pulp Fiction fans can readily wheel around to. However, there's a fine line between archetypal and artificial, and Hauck, with a story centered on the disappearance of a young stripper with a heart of gold, such as the one here named Dorothy (Crystal Reed) who disappears in this seedy Angeleno world filled with equal parts high-powered murderous men, such as dirty-handed crime boss Gordy (Robert Forster) and their always scantily-clad subservients, such as icy stripper Jill (Dichen Lachman), makes this a skirting stroll around the outside edges of what might have been an even juicier crime job, if it wished to be.
And yet, the string of surrounding interstitial characters (including Rider Strong as a comic drug dealer) only exist in relation to our main PI Sampson. Hawkes, a marvel in his character work and character-fleshing, slips into Hauck's sandbox to create a slippery yet cooly collected center of the film. Sampson dodges all of the offered and whizzing pieces that fly by, except there aren't really a ton of flying pieces here for him to really do so, forcing Hawkes to drum up his own inner-cool on his own, which fortunately is a task that his fine actor can do in spades. Hawkes entertains even further in a moment of the film's musical inspiration, as Sampson is urged to pick up an acoustic guitar in a closing nightclub and dilly up an impromptu cowboy-blues ballad, and at the end of a twenty minute long single-take spanning multiple mini-scenes and locations no less.
On this point: most impressive, or at least certainly most defining, is that Too Late is composed of five single-take scenes, assembled in clever order that coyly unearths more of its story with each new moment and scene. The groovy fluidity of craning and gliding cameras moves here and there, settling for a chunk of whip smart banter, and then gliding and tracking to the next composed arrangement and chunk of banter, and so-on and so forth, to give a sense of foreboding fate; as if each new in-scene movement only highlights the inevitability of what is to be revealed next, comic and tragic alike. It's absolutely some of the finest execution in this regard, and as a result, a sense of forward-leaning audience intrigue is felt and creates the needed sense of continually rolling anticipation in its smoky facade of chilled out present-ness.
Too Late is stylishly spun in this real Southern California LA world, on Hollywood Hills cliff-hanging homes, neon-lit strip clubs, and a third act drive-in theater with a ton of visual impress. Too Late has all the cool, dress-up and homage of those delicious noir movies we love so much, even if the biggest crime committed is that it's a little too guilty of knowing and showing it.
Too Late opens limited at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas in Los Angeles on 3/18 and in New York on 3/25, expanding across the country regionally throughout April.