Day 292: Only Lovers Left Alive

"I don't have any heroes."

Jim Jarmusch has always been a darling of the indie scene, and unlike so many of his contemporaries (Steven Soderbergh, The Coen Brothers, and Gus VanSant to name but a few), he has never really had a big, breakout, mainstream film. However, unlike a number of his other contemporaries (Alex Cox, Jim Sheridan, and Hal Hartley), Jarmusch continues cranking out projects, to varying degrees of success, with no signs of slowing down. He's probably closest in terms of clout and respect to David Cronenberg, though even he has had major success as a studio director. 

Jarmusch has never been one of my favorite filmmakers, but I've always appreciated his work, with a particular affinity for his output from Down by Law in 1986 through Ghost Dog in 1999. I liked aspects of Coffee & Cigarettes and Broken Flowers, but never even bothered to see The Limits of Control, so all of this is my way of saying that while I like Jarmusch, I certainly don't worship at his altar, and I'm definitely not a fan of his stance as an outspoken Anti-Stratfordian. Having said all that, I was intrigued by his latest film Only Lovers Left Alive, and anxious to see his unique take on an incredibly played out sub genre, the vampire movie. 

Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a musician living in a dilapidated mansion in the crumbling metro area of Detroit. His only contact with the outside world is through Ian (Anton Yelchin), a guy who can procure him anything he needs from rare guitars to a single wooden bullet. Adam also makes trips to a local hospital where he pays a doctor (Jeffrey Wright) to give him stores of non-contaminated blood to feed his vampiric habits. On the other side of the world in Tangiers, Eve (Tilda Swinton) is eking out a similarly solitary life, acquiring the blood she needs from Kit (John Hurt), better known as Christopher Marlowe (yes, that one).

Adam and Eve are married, we discover, but Adam refuses to leave Detroit because of his existential malaise, so Eve is forced to fly to him so they can be together again. Their love is the only thing keeping them going at this point, as Adam has clearly become so disillusioned by humanity, that he can barely keep it together anymore, hence his request for a single wooden bullet. They begin to find some semblance of happiness again, when Ava (Mia Wasikowska), Eve's sister, shows up at their doorstep. Things did not end well between Adam and Ava the last time they were together, and Ava's destructive ways threaten to destroy the peace that Adam and Eve have only just begun to enjoy. 

Despite the obvious parallels between Adam and Anne Rice's Lestat, this is a wholly original take on the vampire myth, and really takes a long, hard look at what eternity must actually feel like for the undead. This is a slow, methodically paced film that is likely to bore many audience members to tears, but it's leisurely pace should not be confused with pacing issues. Any teenage girls wandering in to see another vampire love story, this time with the hot guy that played Loki, will find themselves confronted with what eternal love actually looks like. It's not all furtive glances and pearl clutching, it's a lot of sitting around, playing chess, driving around the once great city of Detroit, and avoiding contact with most of humanity. It's a wonderful antidote for all those fed up with the sparkly, chaste vampires that ruled the multiplexes for the better part of the last decade. 

The film is also, very clearly, Jarmusch's thesis statement on the hopelessness of humanity. The way Adam and Eve casually refer to humans as "zombies," and Adam's rant about how humanity has treated all of the great scientific minds of history is very clearly the rant of a filmmaker disgusted with the average person's ignorance of truly noble pursuits. The biggest roadblock for many will likely be the insertion of Jarmusch's Anti-Stratfordian views into the proceedings, as well as a number of additional casual references to great art having really been created by a handful of undead interlopers. It's a clever enough concept, and certainly not jammed down the audience's throats, but it is there and will upset some in the audience. 

The performances are as excellent as would be expected from such a diverse cast of seasoned veterans and proven younger talent. This is the role that Swinton was born to play. She always seems like an alien presence in everything she does, and it works remarkably in her favor here, giving her performance a verisimilitude that an actress in makeup just wouldn't have had. Hiddleston is also fantastic, doing so much with very little. He keeps everything very quietly contained, except for carefully chosen moments to unleash, and he is brilliant. For someone who cut his teeth in the theatre, and became best known for his very theatrical performances as Loki, he is incredibly tuned in to film acting, and never goes over the top. 

Yelchin and Wasikowska are both very good in their handful of scenes, and Hurt is also wonderful in his two scenes. Wright is great, as he always is, yet he was sorely underused. A film can never have enough Jeffrey Wright in it, and sadly this film proves that axiom to be true. Jarmusch does a lot of interesting things visually, in particular the opening shots of the film that oscillate like a record turntable, instantly setting the tone and letting the audience know precisely what they're in for. His use of music is also fantastic, both in his choice of "popular songs" by artists such as Wanda Jackson and Charlie Feathers, as well as a terrific score by Jozef Van Wissem and SQÜRL.

 

Only Lovers Left Alive fits the very definition of Jarmuschian, and will be like a warm blanket for his fans, eager to spend two hours in the company of creations that are uniquely his own. It will also appeal to those who may not be fans, but crave a quiet, luxuriously paced film that caters to grown-ups. Those with short attention spans need not waste their time or money, but those willing to give themselves over to the experience will find an oddly touching love story that shows what true love really looks like. Love is about time spent in the company of someone you love, not running around doing things that only people in the movies do like horseback riding or hot air balloon rides. This is a literate, well made film that will stroke the intellectual part of your brain, and I just don't get to say that often enough.

GO Rating: 3.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Spotlight: How to Fix the New "Star Trek" Film Series

It's no secret that I hated Star Trek: Into Darkness. I've made no Dr. McCoys about this, it was a lazy, calculating, horrible attempt at fan service that backfired in spectacular fashion. The 2009 reboot made it seem as if things were headed in a new direction, and the film adeptly walked the line between homage and innovation. It wasn't a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but it managed to simultaneously update the franchise while honoring its rich history. Expectations were high for the follow-up film, and Abrams managed to keep the project shrouded in secrecy (a tact he admitted was "a mistake") yet he's going down that road once again with a different franchise, which is likely a subject for another article entirely. The result was a rousing good time for anyone that didn't count themselves among the die-hards, whose opinions on the film ranged from disappointment to outright rage, dubbing it "The Worst Film in the Star Trek Franchise." It's as if none of those fans have seen 5, 7, 9, or 10, but I digress. Even Karl Urban expressed his frustrations with the film. 

I'm not among the doomsayers in regards to the green-lit third film of this reboot, but I am also pragmatic in regard to the fact that there are some major flaws that need to be addressed. There are certain things that cannot be amended. Orci & Kurtzman are still the writers, J.J. Abrams will still be involved, and the many mind-numbing additions to the franchise such as curing death and transwarp drives are too big to just ignore. There are steps that can be taken to fix the films, and here is my list of the top 5 priorities for fixing this, not necessarily broken, but certainly damaged franchise that I love and hold so dear...

1. Captain Kirk needs an overhaul

The Kirk of Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman universe is the Kirk of the original Star Trek motion picture series. Brash, defiant, arrogant, and always right no matter what (with the exception of Wrath of Khan), this Kirk had enough braggadocio to fill the entirety of outer space. Casual fans seem to forget that this was not the same Captain Kirk that trekked the stars for three years on the TV series. While that Kirk definitely had a blatant disregard for the Prime Directive, and managed to Kobayashi Maru his way out of more than one unwinnable scenario, he was also a master planner who broke the rules because he knew that the end justified the means. This new Kirk acts without thinking, doesn't listen to anyone, and always has the best solution to every problem. He was able to see the transwarp drive in Khan's ship, he knew Khan would attack Starfleet, he knew that Scotty could deus ex machine him and Khan onto the Vengeance, and he probably knew that Bones would figure out a way to bring him back to life. Before you jump down my throat, I'm not saying that's in there, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was in an earlier draft of the script.

Now I know what you're thinking… This Kirk is young, he doesn't have the experience and worldliness of Shatner's Kirk, so get off his back. That's all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that these filmmakers have decided to give him all of the qualities the older Kirk possessed with none of the wisdom of his age. It's like they took all the worst parts of what made Kirk such a role model for the act now, plan later set, and hoped that the "he's still a young captain" excuse would be enough to keep the ship afloat. I'm not buying it, even for a dollar. Kirk needs to stop using his crew and start relying on them. Hopefully all that nonsense involved in him resurrecting at the end of the film has given him a bit of wisdom in this area, but if the movie has another cold open where Kirk is right back to his old ways, that entire climax and denouement will have been for naught. They got their way, now they need to run with it and not look back. 

2. No more attempts at fan service

The most shocking realization that I and the other hardcore Trekkers came to in the days and weeks following our first viewing of Into Darkness was that for all that stuff about it that we hated, the filmmakers had put it in there as an attempt at fan service. They thought that four years of us saying "don't put Khan in the next film," really meant, "use Khan, we demand it, even though we're saying that we don't." They also thought they were being clever by reversing Spock's and Kirk's roles in the climax, but to call that an unearned gesture is an understatement. When Kirk and Spock shared that tender moment before Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan, the fans had had 16 years to get to know the characters, three seasons of television and one and three quarters feature films, and it felt like the logical extension of their relationship coming full circle with Kirk learning an invaluable lesson from Spock about sacrifice and the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the one.

You don't get such license four years into your reboot, I'm sorry. Stop trying to give the fans what you think they want and just focus on telling a good story. Stop concerning yourself with what the fans think, which is exactly what this Twitter battle between writer Bob Orci and angry fans proved. They could really care less about what fans think in much the same way that they think the fans actually want the opposite of what they're saying aloud (and for the record, biggest box office in franchise history does not equal best film in the franchise. Star Trek IV proved as much in the first go around). Don't concern yourself with fans who won't be happy no matter what you do, concern yourself with those of us who want you to stop trying to appease everyone, and write a damn film with a story worth telling. That's writing 101 folks. 

3. More Bones & Scotty

The biggest asset in these films has been Karl Urban and Simon Pegg as Bones and Scotty respectively. Stop relegating them to the sidelines. I know what the more cynical fans will say, "they were never used well in the original films and TV show;" Okay, fine, does that mean that we can't fix that glaring problem? If this new franchise reboot has proven anything, it's that trying to duplicate the original in any way has spelled disaster every step of the way. Blaze a new trail, give these guys something to do other than run around spouting off catchphrases or participating in comically absurd plot scenarios. Your Chief Science Office and Chief Engineer can certainly do more than that. Take a page out of the TNG playbook for this one. They always managed to give Geordi and Data something to do, even if it was in service of a less than stellar plot device like Geordi's visor hijacking in Generations.    

Bones and Scotty both have that wisdom of age and experience that this Kirk so desperately needs, so rather than having Bones doling out metaphors and "Damnit Jims," allow him to challenge Kirk, to defy him, and prove him wrong. Allow Scotty to do more than just provide subpar comic relief with a weird alien sidekick. Transparent aluminum was another fairly ridiculous subplot in IV, but it gave the guy something to do other than defusing potential bombs with Tits McGee. These characters have an important and integral role in this franchise, now start acting like they do. 

4. Fix the Klingons and make them the primary antagonists

The "Blingons" (as some have called them) that we glimpsed for thirty seconds in Into Darkness were an encapsulation of everything that was wrong with the film. Here's something from the old show and movies that won't be cool to kids today unless we jazz them up with a bunch of piercings and a makeup job like something out of Enemy Mine. The Klingons have been used incredibly well throughout Star Trek history, never better than they were in Star Trek VI, and they provide a wealth of material for the Enterprise crew to combat. Their entire philosophy is in direct opposition to Starfleet, so why not have them play more of an active role in trying to dismantle it? Just casually inserting them into the plot the way they did in Into Darkness was not the best use of this race. 

Here's an idea on how to fix this, and it borrows liberally from III & VI… The Klingons stage a ploy to frame the crew of the Enterprise for the destruction of one of their strongholds, which was actually the result of an Arab Spring-esque uprising among a faction of Klingons that do not want war. Starfleet demands Kirk and his crew return to Starfleet Headquarters to face punishment, where the Klingons launch their first attack. Not realizing that this was a ploy to get them to attack Kronos, Starfleet orders a full on assault of the planet that launches them into war with the Klingons. Kirk and his crew are the only ones that know of the faction of Klingons trying to stand up to their militaristic leaders, and must try to form an alliance with them, forever dividing the Klingons against themselves. It's not perfect, and it honestly took me about ten minutes to think up, but infusing the politics of the day with the adventures in space has always been what Star Trek does best. 

5. You set up an alternate universe, now go use it!

The most brilliant thing about the 2009 Star Trek was that they established a timeline completely separate from the original series and films' timeline. So why didn't they use that in Into Darkness? Rather than give us a completely new villain, or a confrontation with an alien race invented after the creation of TOS, they pulled out Khan, dusted him off, and crapped all over him. I'm not saying I want to see this crew battle the Borg, but if my choices are between that and rehashing yet another plot that's already been done before, I say Resistance is Futile! They've opened up a literal world of possibilities, so to go back to what's already been done was more than nonsensical, it was insulting. The fans accepted this splintered timeline as a way of quite literally boldly going where no one had gone before, only to witness two hours of backtracking. 

Above and beyond anything else, use this new timeline as a way to explore new ideas. How about exploring new life forms and new civilizations? They're on their five year mission now, supposedly, so why not trek the stars a bit, see what's out there. The last two films have been too tied to Earth, and while there is room for a storyline to start or even conclude on Earth, with an entire galaxy awaiting you, and an infinite number of possibilities contains among the stars, not taking advantage of all those possibilities would be a cheat and a cop-out. I am as optimistic about the future of this franchise as I've ever been, but unless they learn from their mistakes, they are sadly doomed to repeat them. And after all, isn't that what Star Trek, at its core, is really all about?

[Photos via 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Day 291: Under the Skin (2014)

"Free me."

One of the most auspicious debut films of the last twenty years was Jonathan Glazer's gritty crime film Sexy Beast. Featuring (arguably) the best performance of Ben Kingsley's career, and formally introducing Ray Winstone to American audiences, Sexy Beast was the work of a new master filmmaker, and a wonder to behold. With his follow-up film Birth, Glazer showed that he wasn't willing to be pigeonholed, trading in the violent world of low-level hoodlums for an enigmatic melodrama about a boy claiming that he is Nicole Kidman's reincarnated husband. It's been ten years since that film's release, and Glazer has finally returned with his third film, the sci-fi mood piece Under the Skin. Could it live up to the hype that's been built during his ten year hiatus, or would it show signs that this once promising director has officially gone off the deep end? Read on to find out...

Opening in total blackness, Under the Skin wastes no time in alerting the audience that this is not run of the mill fare. A cacophony of sounds and strange images become the eye of a woman (Scarlett Johansson). She is brought the body of another woman from whom she strips the clothes and takes them for herself. She then travels the Scottish countryside looking for men who have no discernible attachments to anyone else, and lures them into her van. She then seduces them and invites them back to her place. This pattern is repeated with varying degrees of success.

To say any more about this film would be to do it a disservice. For the first time in ages, a film gives literally zero indication of where it is headed, and it is up to the audience to not just figure it all out for themselves, but to interpret exactly what is happening. The only things that we know for certain are that she appears to be an alien of some sort, and she's on a mission to capture men, but for what purpose remains unclear, even to the bitter end of the film. There are likely a dozen interpretations as to what it is that she's using these men for, but to share any personal opinions might only serve to lead you in a certain direction when you see the film for yourself, which I cannot recommend you doing any higher. 

The film is neatly divided into two distinct halves, and the juxtaposition of her assured demeanor in the first half with her curiosity in the second gives the film all the meat it needs to serve as something greater than just a collection of nicely composed images. Make no mistake about it, this is a director's showcase as much as any film that's ever been made, but the story isn't treated as some sort of ancillary afterthought as many directors who traffic in sensational imagery often do. Based on a book by Michel Faber, the film version jettisons any and all explanation, leaving it up to the individual viewer to ascertain precisely what they think is happening. This sort of thing has been attempted many times before, but never with the calm assurance that this film has in spades.

Slow but never boring, the film lures you in with its beauty, much the same way the main character lures unsuspecting Scottish men into her van and home, and suspends you in confusion as you seek to understand precisely what is going on, only to discover that you're not going to be spoon fed any sort of explanation, so you'd better start making sense of it all in whatever way works best for you. The film bills itself as science fiction, but plays more like an unrelenting horror film in which you're never entirely sure where the threat is coming from, but you know it's getting closer with each passing moment. Mica Levi's score aids in setting this mood remarkably well, and never allows the audience a sense of relief. It's a truly incredible pairing of image and sound.

Without giving too much away, there is a fantastic scene set on a beach near the twenty minute mark in the film. It contains one of the most haunting images ever put on film, and will shake you to the core with how simplistically effective it is. When coupled with an extended encounter our main character has with a disfigured man in the center piece scene of the first half, it almost certainly feels like a masterpiece in the making. The film's second half ambles a bit too much, and traffics a bit too heavily in ambiguity when compared with the first, but not enough to derail the entire film. 

The comparisons will certainly fly about between this film and the work of Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and Nicolas Winding Refn, but this is clearly the work of an individual in much the same way all of their films are. It takes pages out of Kubrick's playbook, from the long tracking shots of The Shining, to the trippy visuals of 2001, but it never slips into outright mimicry, which is the most refreshing thing any filmmaker seeking to be compared to Kubrick can do. It also shirks the most basic tenet of Kubrick's best films, and that is an insight into the mind of the protagonist. With no narration, very little dialogue, and a heavy reliance on image and sound to convey its story, this film could never be mistaken for one made by Kubrick, and its infinitely better as a result. If the film has any kindred spirit, it is Nicholas Roeg's masterful 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the comparisons are even more apparent in the second half. 

Scarlett Johansson continues to surprise every time out of the gate lately, and her expressive face aids her in unbelievable ways in this film. The humor that is present in the film's first half grows out of her ability to go from charming to deadpan at the drop of a hat, and she's able to do so much with very little. It's almost the perfect companion piece to Her which relied solely on her voice, and when taken together, prove that with the right material, she's one of the best actresses working today. The litany of men she interacts with never hang around long enough to make much of an impact, with three notable exceptions, but with no names given, they become intentionally interchangeable, and all serve their purpose incredibly well. Their Scottish brogues also provide the film with some humor, and give a fantastic sense of what it might be like to be an alien trying to comprehend the English language. 

Under the Skin is not a film for everyone. It will baffle and annoy some filmgoers, and its refusal to conform to any established rules of filmmaking will make it a downright maddening experience for some. Those willing to give themselves over to the experience will find a refreshingly original and gorgeously realized film that will be dissected and studied for years to come. If it feels groundbreaking, it's because it most certainly is, and it is bold enough to stand its ground and wait for the right viewers to come to it rather than the other way around. My only hope is that we don't have to wait another ten years for Glazer's next film, but however long the wait ends up being, it will be well worth it for the sharp left turn he's sure to make yet again.

GO Rating: 4.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 290: Nymphomaniac Vol. 2

"For a human being, killing is the most natural thing in the world. We're created for it."

Now that the cat's out of the bag on Lars von Trier's latest experiment and expectations have been adjusted accordingly, Nymphomaniac Vol. 2 has hit theaters and on demand with all the welcoming grace afforded a fart in church. More obligatory than anticipated, at least by this critic, the second part of this film wraps up this sex and shame filled odyssey, providing some much needed closure that will allow anyone foolish enough to have stuck it out this long to move on with their lives. Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 couldn't have set the bar any lower, so could this film manage to redeem the lackluster first half, or are we just circling the drain for two more hours? Read on to find out...

Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) dives right back into her story, telling Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) about her first orgasm at age 12. This is juxtaposed with the point in her marriage to Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf) when she became unable to achieve one, leaving her to wonder if she will ever attain pleasure from sex again. She and Jerôme have a child together, but with him constantly out of town on business, she quickly discovers that she's not cut out to be a mother. Her quest to get her groove back, so to speak, leads her to a man named K (Jamie Bell) who specializes in a special brand of deviancy that might hold the key to Joe feeling something below the belt again.

Her frequent visits to K find her increasingly distant with her son, and she is often leaving him unattended to pursue her selfish desires. When Jerôme arrives home to find their son alone, he tells Joe that if she goes to see K again, he will take their son and she'll never see them again. She accepts his deal, sending her further down a path of self-destruction. She soon takes a job as a debt collector, working for a rather unscrupulous boss (Willem Dafoe) who is pleased with her work, but suggests she take on an apprentice. P (Mia Goth), the girl he chooses for her, turns out to be a quick study, but a chance encounter between P and someone from Joe's past causes her old and new life to collide in unexpected ways.

If there's anything positive to be said for Vol. 2, it's that it is not as egregiously offensive as Vol. 1. That's a fairly small consolation, however, because it does little to redeem how absurdly awful the first half of this nonsense was. It's a more interesting film, but von Trier is still more concerned with shocking his audience into submission rather than telling a good story. Some of the film's scenes are at least mildly entertaining, but they're all thoroughly forgettable, particularly when the highlights are rehashed in a late film montage, and you get the distinct feeling that it's been days rather than hours since you've seen some of them. For a film so concerned with shock value and doing things that no one else has done before, it's a sadly forgettable affair in the grand scheme of things with little to no resonance.

Such is the folly of undertaking such an endeavor simply to do something that's never been done before. All great art has come from a place of someone wanting to say something rather than just wanting to say something different. Form should always follow content, but von Trier fails to realize this, and it's why many of his most ardent supporters have abandoned him in the wake of his nonsensical, late career tailspin. He puts the "art" in artificial, and it's taxing. There's no longer any substance to be found in his films, and all the intellectual gobbledygook in the world doesn't make your film profound and meaningful if there's no there there. And it's not as if the film isn't personal. It reeks of a cry for help from a man desperate to bare his soul, and the saddest indictment of all is that in doing so, he's almost conclusively proved that he doesn't have one. 

While Vol. 1 was front loaded with terrible performances, Vol. 2 at least has a handful of good performances, although none of them stick around long enough to make the film palatable. Willem Dafoe is good, as always, but with only two scenes, he fails to land much of an impact. Udo Keir has all of one line of dialogue, but it's always fun to see him show up in a film. Jamie Bell fares the best of the characters with any substantial screen time, having grown into quite a fine young actor and making good on all the promise he showed fourteen years ago in Billy Elliot. Gainsbourg & Skarsgård continue their comatose tête á tête, which is about as informative as reading a litany of wikipedia pages and nearly as titillating.

Anyone who's seen Antichrist will recognize a very obvious callback to that film's opening scene, but von Trier does nothing interesting with it beyond simply reminding audiences of another one of his terribly repulsive films. All the visual flash and pizazz in the world is meaningless without any substance, and this is the height of vapidness. This film is dead behind the eyes, and all the blustery, self-aggrandizing talk between Seligman and Joe does is further prove the point that metaphors are best left in the subtext and become drained of all meaning when spelled out for an audience. It's not just that the emperor is wearing no clothes, it's that at this point, he's not only aware of it, he's proud of that fact.

Taken as a complete piece, Nymphomaniac is one of the most soul draining and wearying films ever made. It doesn't look, sound, or play like a film. Instead it feels like some nonsensical work made by a first year film student given access to limitless resources, all of which have been squandered in the pursuit of a medium that person has no business laboring in. The wheels are off the von Trier express at this point, and it seems as if critics are content to placate him by praising his desire to push buttons over saying something, anything, meaningful. In the rush to celebrate individualism, it seems that many have lost sight of the fact that it's a thoroughly empty gesture when one considers that there's nothing noteworthy about standing out merely to stand out. You have to say something worth listening to, and after listening for four hours I have heard, quite literally, nothing. 

GO Rating: 0.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 289: Bad Words

"You can't find one little chicken tikka to get your shrimp tandoori all up in?"

After several years in the wilderness, former child star Jason Bateman got his career back on track in 2004 thanks to his starring role on the cult favorite sitcom Arrested Development. Since that time, he has become something of a go-to straight man for comedies looking to pair him with an ever increasing array of wacky stars from Charlie Day in Horrible Bosses to Melissa McCarthy in the terrible Identity Thief. Now making his directorial debut with the spelling bee comedy Bad Words, Bateman has gifted himself with a role that is a 180 from what we're used to seeing him do, giving him the chance to show what he can do when playing a thoroughly unlikeable character. Did it pay off? Read on to find out… 

Guy Trilby (Bateman) is a forty year-old proofreader who has decided to exploit a loophole and compete in the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee competition since he never passed the eighth grade. After a regional final win that allows him entry into the national finals, Guy brings his wholly unpleasant demeanor to the biggest stage imaginable, and his remorselessness shows no signs of cracking in the face of mounting pressure to drop out. Guy is accompanied on his journey by a journalist (Kathryn Hahn) whose website is sponsoring all of his endeavors thanks to the promise of an exclusive story on his quest to compete in such a prestigious tournament.

At the Nationals, Guy also meets a fellow competitor, ten year-old Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand), who seems to want a friendship with Guy despite Guy's total reluctance to even speak to him. He ends up caving when he discovers that Chaitanya is in a hotel room by himself that's stocked with a mini-bar, and Guy's own selfish ends can be met. They strike up an unlikely friendship when Guy begins to see something of himself in the boy, particularly how he is treated by his emotionally distant, yet controlling father. Raised with no knowledge of who his own father was, Guy takes Chaitanya under his wing, teaching him to live it up, but their newfound friendship may spell disaster for their equally competitive natures in this major event. 

As a showcase for Bateman's unique comedic sensibilities, Bad Words is about as good a comedy as you can hope for. Devoid of the endless Apatovian riffing that has begun to seep its way into every mainstream comedy, including last year's The Wolf of Wall Street, it's refreshing to see a tightly scripted comedy that feels like the best possible version of this story, rather than a variation on a dozen other outcomes. It's also a breath of fresh air to have a protagonist whose sole mission is to destroy the livelihoods of the most innocent members of our society, and not be required to have a "come to Jesus" moment where he changes his fundamental personality flaws. While that's not to say that the film doesn't have a truly soft core beneath its hardened exterior, it's also nice to deviate from convention and subvert the audience's expectations even a little bit.

Andrew Dodge's script was one of the top scripts on the 2011 "Black List" of best un-produced screenplays, and much like another famously under appreciated black list script, The Beaver, this film embraces nastiness and turns it into its greatest asset. This is not a film for everyone, but those who love Bateman's brand of comedy and films with an air of mean spiritedness will find a lot here to enjoy. It's also a scathing critique of the current wave of helicopter parenting and parents' desire to breed a generation of winners, no matter the cost to their child's psyche. While it could have used a little more of that, it's a minor complaint for a film that really goes for broke in being offensive to everyone. It firmly subscribes to the adage that if it's okay to make fun of someone or something, it has to be okay to make fun of everyone and everything, and that's something that more films could use a dose of.  

Much like Bill Murray's terrific performance in Groundhog Day, there's no guarantee that Guy is going to do the right thing in the end, particularly once his motivations for competing in the tournament come to light. The highest praise I can offer Bateman is that he is his generation's Bill Murray. He possesses Murray's ability to be simultaneously charming and repulsive, and he is so wholly devoid of vanity as an actor that he radiates with the enviable comedic ability to make you root for him no matter what he's doing. Hahn is also very good, keeping pace with him at every step, and Allison Janney and Phillip Baker Hall do great work in very small roles. The real revelation of the film is young Chand, who delivers a performance well beyond his years, and takes just as well as he gives. Both Bateman's character and the actor have found a kindred spirit who can volley and spike the ball home, making him something of a fantastic discovery. 

As far as the direction goes, Bateman does a nice job of keeping the film portions suitably devoid of color and life, and contrasting it with the television footage of the Spelling Bee which is brightly lit like a Public Television broadcast would be. It's a nice dichotomy, and one which he exploits well. He doesn't go for a ton of visual flair, which is also refreshing, considering how many first time directors want to show off like kids in a candy store. He keeps things moving and values the words as much as he does the technique, doing his writer proud by placing such a high emphasis on the dialogue. It's not the flashiest debut feature of all time, but it's certainly a very good one.  

Although it does fall into a somewhat predictable pattern in the final ten minutes, Bad Words is still enough of a rebellious film to recommend. Formula works, that's how it became formula in the first place, and the smart writers and directors of this world are the ones who use it to their advantage, rather than letting it dictate how things should play out. It's not a perfect film, but it is hard-edged and cynical, with enough predictable redemption to make it agreeable to a large audience. It's a shame it hasn't found that audience, but like the best films that ride that line from Kingpin to all of the films of Mike Judge, it will find its audience with time, and they will cherish it for years to come.

GO Rating: 3.5/5

[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 288: Noah

"We are men! And men are invincible!"

Director Darren Aronofsky has always been known for his ambition. No matter the scope of his projects, he has pushed his actors, his crew, and himself to achieve ever higher results that will equal the ambition he has for the film. His desire to turn the story of Noah and the ark into a film has been a lifelong quest, and Paramount Pictures has gifted him with a tremendous budget to actualize his vision. That fact alone makes this one of the most anticipated movies of the year, mainly because Aronofsky's fans are eager to see how well he does with seemingly no restrictions.

So could the film rise to the level it seemed to be aiming for, or would his reach exceed his grasp? Read on to find out...

Since there's no better place to start than with the text, "In the beginning there was darkness…" Aronofsky opens his film with a summary of the first five chapters of Genesis, leading up to Noah's entry into the saga. As a teen and descendent of Seth, the third son of Adam & Eve, Noah witnesses the murder of his father by Tubal-Cain, a descendant of Cain. Smash cut to Noah as a man, now played by the burly Russell Crowe, father to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and husband to Naameh (Jennifer Connelly). Noah uproots his family after having a vision from The Creator that the world will be consumed by a great flood. Noah travels to visit his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), from whom he expects to receive more divine news of what part he might play in this saga.

On the way, they encounter a young girl named Ila, whom they essentially add to their clan since the rest of her family was murdered while mining for zohar, a magical mineral that can create light. They also happen upon a band of fallen angels called The Watchers, who have taken the shape of giant rock monsters, and eventually rally to protect Noah when they realize that he is on a mission from The Creator. When Noah receives another vision, that he is to build an ark in which he and his family will protect the innocent creatures of the Earth (mainly animals) in the flood, The Watchers help him to construct the vessel. However, when the self-appointed king Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) gets word of Noah's endeavor, he seeks to either destroy the ark or commandeer it for himself and his followers.

The thing that is most immediately striking about Noah is that it is not short on ambition, vision, or flat-out insanity. This has got to be one of the most far out, big budget studio films ever produced. It plays exactly how one would expect an art house film to look if it had a budget in the nine-figure range, and that's never a bad thing. Whenever a major studio can fund the strange and singular vision of an artist such as Aronofsky, they should take that opportunity and run with it, which they most certainly did here. The biggest issue in doing so is that it may not appeal to a large audience, and that's likely Noah's biggest downside. It has moments that are so insane, you wouldn't believe them unless you saw them for yourself, and as a critic, I just don't get to say that often enough. This is the best possible outcome of giving an auteur a ton of money.

The film is not without its faults, and they are legion. The characters are very poorly sketched, and really betray Aronofsky's previous work which was always heavily focused on character. The only exceptions to this would be Noah, Tubal-Cain, and Ham, Noah's middle son played as a young adult by Logan Lerman. These three characters have arcs (no pun intended), but everyone else is horrendously one-dimensional and end the story almost exactly as they began it. The film also takes a steep plunge at the end of the second act, and never really recovers. Aronofsky and his co-writer Ari Handel decided to give Noah an Abraham and Isaac-esque subplot that doesn't really pay off, and comes precipitously close to ruining the entire narrative. It was as if they let the sharks off the ark first just so they could jump them.

The film will have a very hard time appealing to the more traditional Biblical audience, as it doesn't devote any time to preaching to the choir. Christian audiences in particular have gotten so used to these pandering, nonsensical, formulaic movies that just want to make them feel good about what they believe, that they won't have any idea what to do when they see lumbering rock monsters and magical minerals in action. It's a real shame, too, because much like Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, this is a film that can bolster the faithful by challenging their deeply held beliefs, and allowing them to come out on the other side of the experience emboldened and proud to know that they can still believe what they want to believe, and a movie hasn't changed all that. In other words, the people that need to see this movie the most, likely won't, and that's a real tragedy.

The film looks immaculate. The dirt and grime of the period feels incredibly real and honest, and the visual effects are a marvel. The choice to animate The Watchers like Ray Harryhausen-esque stop-motion creatures was a stroke of genius, and makes their somewhat incongruous appearance that much more palatable. Aronofsky's shot compositions remain among the best in the business, always nailing the big moments and utilizing the 1.85:1 aspect ratio like a master. A sequence on the ark where Noah recounts the creation myth is spectacular and breathtaking, and is the kind of thing that you just don't see enough of in a mainstream film. It's a fantastic set piece and truly delivers on what Aronofsky had set out to do, and the biggest letdown of all is that the film really never gets back on track after this sequence.

The performances are all good, though sadly there are no real standouts. Crowe fares better here than he has in some time, but his third act is the weakest of all the characters, particularly as you're left to watch him fall back on his hammiest instincts. Connelly is good, as is Emma Watson as the grown-up Ila, but they aren't really given much to do other than look pensive or cry. Hopkins is a delight, though he really could have amped up the nuttiness a notch, particularly considering how crazy he seems to have gotten in the last five years or so. Winstone fares the best out of the entire cast, and gives the film a true antagonist that matches the film's scope. He's definitely underutilized, which is high praise considering how much he does with the handful of scenes he has.

Noah is not an unqualified success. It's riddled with pacing issues, underdeveloped characters, and a third act that feels firmly out of step with all that preceded it, but I can't help recommending it for no other reason than it has to be seen to be believed. It's borderline insane, but the moments that work, work well, and the moments that don't, fail so spectacularly that one can't help but admire a filmmaker willing to take such enormous risks. If only every major studio film could be this unique and uniquely crazy. The multiplex would be a much more fun place to spend some time if every film felt more like this one than the interchangeable lineup of noisy, empty, spectacle-driven films currently crowding the marketplace. It's not a great film, it has far too many flaws to be great, but it is an experience that everyone should have, and whether you like it or not, at least you'll have had a reaction to it. That should be every filmmakers goal.

GO Rating: 3.5/5

[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 287: Nymphomaniac Vol. 1

"Why would you take the most unsympathetic aspect of religion, such as the concept of sin, and let it survive beyond religion?"

When Lars von Trier announced that his next project would be a five hour film titled Nymphomaniac which would feature real, penetrative sex, many assumed that this was the next natural step in his evolution from filmmaker into full-time provocateur. His antics at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival proved that he was on the verge of going off the deep end, and his attempts to backtrack his statements in the wake of his ban from the Festival hardly seemed authentic. Yet somehow, much as America's "l'enfant terrible" David O. Russell manages to get actors to continue lining up to work with him, so too has von Trier re-enlisted help from regulars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, and Willem Dafoe.

Nymphomaniac has finally hit theaters and on demand in the first of two installments, with the second scheduled to debut in less than a month. Could Volume 1 live up to the hype or would it be confirmation that he's officially passed the point of no return? Read on to find out...

A lonely man named Seligman (Skarsgård) discovers a woman named Joe (Gainsbourg) beaten and lying in the street. He brings her to his home and inquires how she ended up there, to which she replies that in order to explain, she must start from the beginning. The film then cuts back to her childhood with a distant mother (Connie Nielsen) and a doting father (Christian Slater), and how she experienced her sexual awakening at the age of 2. At age fifteen, Joe (now played by Stacy Martin) loses her virginity to a boy named Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf) which is a repulsive experience for her. However not long after, her friend B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) turns her on to a game where they compete to see which one of them can have sex with more strangers on a train than the other.

Joe begins a descent into the world of sex addiction, and Seligman takes every opportunity to parallel this to fly fishing, as well as a number of other subjects, all of which he seems to have mastered. Joe gets a job in her twenties working for Jerôme, and begins a flirtation with him that may belie stronger feelings they both harbor for one another. She also continues sleeping with as many men as possible, sometimes as many as ten a day, in an attempt to feed her addiction. 

Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is a bit like a tire blowing out on your car at the start of a cross-country trip: Crushingly disappointing and ominously unsettling. Not only are you now wary of the many miles that lay ahead, you're almost exhausted before you've even gotten halfway to your destination. When von Trier is on his game (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark) he knows how to weave a tapestry of misery that also manages to be a wholly edifying experience. The destination is worth the journey. Here, he seems to be more interested in how far he can push the boundaries while still managing to tell a coherent story, and never giving even a second thought to whether or not his story is worth actually telling. 

His insistence on giving Seligman and Joe such inane dialogue that compares sex to fishing for an absolutely interminable length of time makes you cringe with how heavy handed he's become as a director. When he made Antichrist, it felt as if he was taking a page out of Pasolini's playbook when he made Saló. Narrative, character, and enjoyment be damned, film is a medium with which a filmmaker can chastise an audience and help them experience the truly despicable nature of humanity. Nymphomaniac continues this trend, doubling down on misery and treating sex in a shameful way. In fact, had Steve McQueen's sex addiction film not used the title Shame, it would have been a much more apt sobriquet for this depressing slog of a film. 

None of the performances are any good. Skarsgård's character is an annoying stereotype who serves to spell out the film's themes like an elementary school teacher rather than contribute anything actually meaningful to the proceedings. It's a terribly written character, but it's not aided in any way by his somnambulant performance. Martin does nothing more than look dead behind the eyes as she engages in sex acts with countless men. The gold medal winners by far, however, are LaBeouf & Slater. Sporting respectively the first and second worst British accents ever committed to film, these two former child stars bring nothing more to the table than they've brought to any other film. They're both bad actors crushed beneath the weight of stultifying material. LaBeouf may be attempting to go full on Franco both on film and in his personal life, but he hasn't even a fraction of Franco's talent or self awareness.

The film's soundtrack is nearly as obnoxious as its incessant, rambling narrative, but its weapon of choice is Shostakovich's "Waltz No. 2" as opposed to overbearing fishing metaphors. Had that same piece not been used to such dynamic effect in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, it might feel fresh, but instead merely serves to remind the audience of a much better film about sex they could be watching. The soundtrack also features a deafening use of Rammstein's "Führe Mich" right at the top of the film after several agonizing minutes of silence, instantly letting you know that von Trier is obsessed with extremes rather than balance. He'd prefer to jolt the audience into a startled sense of unease rather than allow the world of the film to envelop them, which is fine when done correctly or in moderation, but at the start of a four-hour odyssey, it feels more like a harbinger of doom than an invitation to a journey.  

It's entirely possible that von Trier's full vision is something that cannot be experienced in segments, and this is just the calm before the storm. Maybe Volume 2 will validate this as the work of a genius whose entire creation must be seen before it can be judged fully. One could also say that maybe hell will freeze over or pigs will fly, so it's best not to work in hypotheticals, at least for the purposes of reviewing a film. Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is a cold, disgusting, hard-hearted film that doesn't really even work as art. It's like a perfume commercial, full of imagery that's supposed to be deep and meaningful, but when you think about it for more than five seconds, you realize that it's nothing more than a shallow collection of masturbatory nonsense. 

GO Rating: 0.5/5

[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 286: Muppets Most Wanted

"You have wocka'd your last wocka bear!"

When 2011's The Muppets hit theaters, fans lined up on two sides of the film. One side saw the film for what it was, a loving reboot of a franchise that had been doomed to a series of lackluster films, made by people with genuine affection for Jim Henson's most beloved creations. The other, more cynical side, chose to view the film as an affront to the characters and seemed unable to comprehend the fact that virtually all of the original Muppeteers have moved on to other things. In short, The Muppets will never be The Muppets again, and they would rather live in a world where nothing new or interesting can be done with these characters. But such is fandom, and the more rabid a fan base, the more dissenters there are in the ranks. 

Since the film was a hit, even by the most modest of standards, a sequel was all but guaranteed to happen. With The Muppets director James Bobin back at the helm, and all of that film's creators except Jason Segel involved, Muppets Most Wanted seemed like a can't miss proposition. So was it just that, or did it fall victim to sequel-itis? Read on to find out…    

Picking up quite literally where the last film left off, Muppets Most Wanted opens with the musical number  "We're Doing a Sequel," which skewers the very notion of follow-up films, and instantaneously lets you know that you're back in good hands. The globe-trotting sequel plot that worked so well for the very best of the original Muppet films, The Great Muppet Caper, is rolled out once more, and works like gangbusters. A criminal mastermind frog named Constantine who looks an awful lot like Kermit the Frog, except that he bares a mole above his lip, has just escaped from a Siberian gulag. Constantine's partner in crime, Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais) has just managed to convince The Muppets to hire him as their new tour director, and manages to win over the entire team, except for Kermit, via a plan to tour Europe and bring the Europeans a taste of Muppet fever.

At their first stop in Berlin, Constantine manages to switch places with Kermit, who is captured and brought to the Siberian gulag, run by Nadya (Tina Fey). Kermit's pleas that he's not an evil mastermind fall on deaf ears, as his old crew continues their tour that just so happens to be taking tour dates near highly secure vaults and museums, as Constantine and Dominic's plan is to use The Muppets as a distraction to steal the crown jewels of England. Their plan to frame The Muppets is also going swimmingly as an Interpol agent named Jean-Pierre Napoleon (Ty Burrell) has teamed up with CIA operative Sam the Eagle, and their hunch is that these lovable characters are behind the numerous thefts occurring along their tour stops. 

Where The Muppets succeeded the most was in appealing to as broad an audience as possible, and making the film very family friendly, much like the original Muppet Movie was back in 1979. And much like The Great Muppet Caper was a more adult-friendly film, with a complex plot and jokes aimed squarely over the heads of the under-ten set, so too does Muppets Most Wanted skew older and ever-so-slightly more cynical. While children will still love the film, as my girls most assuredly did, they'll also be bewildered by a lot of the humor that the adults in the audience will be laughing at uproariously. Muppets Most Wanted is a much, much funnier film than The Muppets, but I would hesitate to call it a better film. Gone is the childlike sense of wonder that the first film had, and it's been replaced by rougher edges and more dense character development. Those statements sound absurd, but where that first film was intended to get a new generation of kids hooked on The Muppets, this film is designed to be beloved by the adults who grew up with them, many of whom are now parents, aunts, or uncles themselves. 

It's a double-edged sword, to be sure, but one can't help but admire the gusto with which the filmmakers have decided to go whole hog after something that may not appeal to kids at all. No child in the world is going to laugh at a line like "Citizen Kane only got four jamón serranos," or comprehend the extended tribute to the opening of A Chorus Line, but they'll see and hear the peals of laughter coming from the adults and be swept up into the world that The Muppets, when they're at their best, have always inhabited. That razor thin line between cynicism and "awe shucks" charm makes them an enduring institution, and their fans will be ecstatic that 99% of this film rests right on that line. Were I to have any complaint at all, it's that I think the joke about The Muppets being washed-up and forgotten was played out well into the reboot, and continuing to beat that dead horse is getting a bit old, especially for the diehards. We know The Muppets aren't as cool as they used to be, but we certainly don't need to be reminded about it ad-nauseum in these films. If there is a third film, and I pray there will be, please leave these jokes where they belong, in the trash bin. 

Steve Whitmire is not Jim Henson and Eric Jacobsen is not Frank Oz, but these two men embody their spirits so well that Kermit & Piggy feel as fresh and inspired as they were thirty years ago. They understand that pure mimicry would be an insult to these characters, and that infusing them with their own personalities and honoring the work of their creators is more meaningful and substantial than the thousands of people who can sound exactly like Henson or Oz. It's also beyond fantastic to still have Dave Goelz bringing life to Gonzo and the other characters he performs.

Gervais, Fey, and Burrell are all terrific too, making the most of their roles, playing to their strengths, and selling their characters in a way you'd expect from such seasoned comedic professionals. And of course the cameos are all great, though some are downright odd (P. Diddy, for example), and the three big names playing gulag prisoners are by far the most surprising stand-outs. There's also a particularly funny bit featuring Christoph Waltz, who was originally cast in Burrell's role, that made me cackle, and a return appearance from Hobo Joe (Zach Galifianakis) whom everybody always forgets about. 

The musical numbers, featuring a mix of popular songs and new creations from Oscar-winning songwriter Bret McKenzie, are also phenomenal. "We're Doing a Sequel," "The Big House," and especially "I'll Give it to You," are terrific, and the wordplay in "Interrogation Song" is beyond brilliant. That the finale features one of the most beloved songs in Muppet history is just the icing on the cake. The Muppets have always been vaudeville performers at heart, so it's no surprise that the musical numbers are the highlight of the film. 

While Muppets Most Wanted will likely not be as successful as its predecessor, it feels oddly poetic that it's doomed to be under appreciated. It's a dense film, with a ton going on in every frame, and it's as funny, if not funnier, than most comedies that have been released in the last several years. Time will be incredibly kind to the film, and it will likely be touted as a favorite by fans for years to come. Nitpickers will find tons of nits to pick, but as the saying goes, "haters gonna hate." This is a terrific film that will delight true blue fans and hopefully continue to cultivate a crop of new fans. You really couldn't hope for a more perfect Muppet movie, and this one delivers in spades. 

GO Rating: 4/5

[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 285: Better Living Through Chemistry

"May I say that this pharmacy has the most impressive collection of douches I've ever seen."

The first law of motion pictures should read as follows: "If Sam Rockwell is in this film, I shall watch it." Not everyone abides by this rule, but the world would be a better place if they did. Rockwell's ability to elevate any material, no matter how good it is on the page, makes him the most dynamic actor working. He makes not so great films watchable (A Single Shot) and good films better (The Way, Way Back), and while a part of me wishes he was a household name, I'm somewhat enamored by the fact that he is a bit of a hidden commodity. It makes those of us who genuinely enjoy his work feel like we're in an exclusive club that knows more than everyone else. Thankfully the release of his latest film, Better Living Through Chemistry, is being simultaneously done in theaters and on demand, making it easier than ever to get your Sam Rockwell fix...

Doug Varney (Rockwell) is a mild mannered pharmacist living in a bland suburban town where nothing ever changes. His wife Kara (Michelle Monaghan) is a perfectionist who is obsessed with keeping Doug on a tight leash and never allowing him to deviate from his expected duties as a husband and bread winner for the family. Their son Ethan (Harrison Holzer) is having trouble at school and neither of his parents connect with him, and Doug's father-in-law (Ken Howard) has just sold Doug the pharmacy he's run for a number of years, yet refuses to let Doug rename it. In other words, Doug is a fairly stereotypical put upon twenty-first century man.

All of that changes when Doug is forced to do the pharmaceutical deliveries one night, and he crosses paths with Elizabeth (Olivia Wilde), the trophy wife of a wealthy industrialist (Ray Liotta). Doug & Elizabeth begin a torrid affair, and Elizabeth convinces Doug to begin sampling his own supply of drugs, opening up a whole new world for Doug. The affair gets really heavy when they concoct a plan to switch her husband's prescriptions in hopes of killing him, so they can start a new life together, but things get really complicated for Doug when a DEA Agent (Norbert Leo Butz) begins a routine investigation into Doug's pharmacy.

Better Living Through Chemistry can only benefit from extremely low expectations. While it's not a bad movie, it's such lightweight fluff that it's hard to consider it a good one either. It hits all of the expected beats for a mid-life suburban dad crisis film, and features very little in the way of surprises. By the time the complications begin piling up, it's entirely too predictable to call groundbreaking or innovative, and it more or less plays out exactly how you expect. While there were a few deviations from this predictability, particularly in the last ten minutes or so, it refuses to do anything too bold or shocking and thereby failing to make itself distinguishable from the dozens of other films whose ranks it seeks to join.

The filmmakers clearly didn't trust themselves enough to craft situational humor, so they decided to tack on a narration by Jane Fonda that mainly relies on the formula of a distinguished actress saying dirty words and phrases equaling comedy gold. I admit that hearing Fonda say things like "balls deep" made me giggle, but it's the sort of cheap and unsatisfying laughter that such a formula induces, and that is ultimately the largest problem with the entire film. It seeks to be shocking and edgy when at its core, it's just as bland and safe as the suburban landscape it seeks to skewer. Even a subplot involving Doug bonding with his son over vandalism feels more obligatory than natural, and most definitely felt like an opportunity for the filmmakers to use a cover of "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" by a choir of children, rather than a free flowing extension of their characters' arcs.

As if it hadn't gone without saying, Sam Rockwell is a godsend for material this shallow. His ability to turn even the most ham-fisted dialogue into comedy gold makes him a national treasure. He transcends the material in such a way as to make it seem infinitely better than it is, lulling you into a false sense of security that the film is actually good. He's in nearly every scene of the film, meaning that the filmmakers knew how much he added to their script. Had it been Jeremy Renner, who was originally cast in the role, the film would have been a complete wash. That's not a slight against Renner, but he can't make a mountain out of a molehill the way Rockwell can.

The rest of the cast is very good, showing that the writer/directors at least knew enough to cast good actors that would make the most out of their subpar script. Wilde, Monaghan, Howard, Liotta, Butz, and especially young Harrison Holzer all do a very good job despite their woefully one-dimensional characters. Ben Schwartz is also good, if underutilized, as the pharmacy delivery boy. It's a real shame that the script is so flat and unimaginative, because one can imagine what this cast could have done with great material.

While it's not terrible, Better Living Through Chemistry reeks of mediocrity. First time writer/directors Geoff Moore and David Posamentier clearly have a lot of ideas, it's just that their execution leaves much to be desired. It's a decent enough time waster, and Rockwell completists will get their rocks off on his hyperkinetic performance, but it's hard to recommend it without the major caveats already mentioned. I suppose if you got together a group of friends and each chipped in a buck to stream it, you'd most assuredly get your money's worth. The film is playing in select cities, and is available to stream via Amazon, M-GO, Vudu, and other on demand services. Just adjust your expectations accordingly as the film is not going to blow your mind.

GO Rating: 2.5/5

[Images via 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Day 284: The Grand Budapest Hotel

"Did he just throw my cat out the window?"

It's no secret that I'm a huge Wes Anderson fan. From Bottle Rocket to Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson got off to a tremendous start with one of the best trios of films to start a career ever. His fourth film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, is an acquired taste to say the least, as was its follow-up The Darjeeling Limited. The animated Fantastic Mr. Fox was just that, fantastic, but all of his worst attributes came to the surface with his last film, Moonrise Kingdom. It played more like a film made by any one of the countless Anderson copycats like Jared Hess, and made me apprehensive about his next film. 

Thankfully the trailers for his eighth film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, looked like a return to form, and with a comedic performance from Ralph Fiennes, it looked like a can't-miss proposition. So is it just that, or has he officially gone off the deep end, never to return? Read on to find out...

The Grand Budapest Hotel opens on a girl walking through a cemetery and stopping at the shrine to a famous author (Tom Wilkinson) and cracking open his final book. The story then flashes back to 1985 where he begins telling the story of a trip he took to the fictional country of Zubrowka in 1968. The younger author (Jude Law) stayed at the now dilapidated eponymous lodge, wherein he meets the owner, renowned philanthropist Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham). Moustafa tells the author the story of how he came into possession of the hotel, and the story flashes back once more to 1932. 

Here we meet Moustafa as a young man played by Tony Revolori, working as a lobby boy in the hotel at the height of its opulence. His boss, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) trains him in the ways running a successful hotel, which Moustafa discovers, for Gustave at least, involves romancing the older ladies that stay at the hotel. One of these clients,  Madame D (Tilda Swinton) suddenly drops dead one day, bequeathing to Gustave a rare painting, much to the chagrin of her son Dmitri (Adrien Brody). Gustave absconds with the painting, and upon returning to the hotel, discovers that he is now being charged with Madame D's murder.

That's only the tip of the iceberg for this film, as it weaves several more story lines and characters into its tale, including but not limited to: a fascist regime waging a war, an imprisonment, a prison break, a downhill slalom chase, murder, pastries, and a love story between Moustafa and a young pastry chef named Agatha (Saoirse Ronan). To say that the film is overstuffed for one which runs a shade over ninety minutes is an overstatement, and that's the main problem with the film. It's such a hodgepodge of half baked ideas, executed with incredible precision, but none of which amount to anything more than a pastiche of diversions and subplots that ultimately distract and derail any forward momentum being made by the narrative. 

While the film isn't a total wash, and the first half hour is very funny, it becomes so bogged down in minutiae, one-note characters, and subplots that go nowhere, that by around the halfway point, it becomes hard to care about anything anymore. Much like Anderson's lesser works, there is no growth or change to be found in any of these characters. They all just sort of stagnate and serve a function that does not allow them to be characters so much as they are living set dressing. Paper dolls in an elaborately constructed fantasy world that is fun to look at, but has absolutely zero depth. It's the very worst of what Anderson could have become following The Royal Tenenbaums, and it only seems to be exacerbated at this point in his career. 

While Anderson's earliest films, in particular those first three, pay homage to Luis Buñuel, this film feels more of a piece with the work of Ernst Lubitsch. Flowery language, slapstick, and tons of frivolity. But whereas Lubitsch knew enough to give his characters some depth, these characters have literally nothing going on beneath the surface. Here's this one note, now hammer it on this piano until I tell you to stop. This seems to be the way that Anderson wants to make films nowadays. That's all well and good, but he's really lost sight of the forest for the trees, and it's impossible to engage with these films on anything beyond the most superficial level imaginable. 

As for the performances, a few standout and the rest are an interchangeable collage of utter forgettability. Ralph Fiennes does a bang-up job of handling the absolutely preposterous dialogue, and gives it a life that it most certainly would not have had on the page. One can't help but think of Harrison Ford's famous quip to George Lucas "you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it." That Fiennes manages to give as good a performance as he does in spite of the absurd dialogue he was given is a testament to the fact that he is one of our best living actors. Anderson regulars Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe manage to do the most they can with their horrendously shallow caricatures, and Abraham, Law, and Wilkinson in particular are the best of the newcomers.

Adrien Brody may have proven himself here to be the worst actor alive. He is utterly unable to create a believable character, and flounders with the shell of one he was given here. Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman, and even longtime Anderson collaborator Owen Wilson are reduced to blink and you'll miss them cameos, making their participation seem more mandatory than willing. It's not unlike the phase that Christopher Guest got to by For Your Consideration, where he had such a vast stable of actors, he couldn't even give half of them anything worthwhile to do. 

While the set design, cinematography, editing, and costumes are all gorgeously conceived, they do all the heavy lifting because the script and a large percentage of the actors are just sort of flopping around like fish out of water. Even the gimmick of changing aspect ratios to fit the different time periods in which the film is set falls flat since the vast majority of the film is shot in what's known as "Academy ratio," or 1.37:1. It's not conducive to the kind of films Anderson makes, and for someone that uses anamorphic as well as he does, it's disheartening to see him confine himself this way. 

It's more sad than it is anger inducing, but Anderson's best days are clearly behind him. Unless he can find another collaborator like Wilson or Noah Baumbach to help him write these scripts and add some dimension to these characters, there's no rebound in sight. This is his first solo script, and it shows. He has no interest in character, and just views them as another piece of the puzzle he's building, no more or less important than the color scheme. The Grand Budapest Hotel truly felt like it could have been a return to form in a big way, but it's merely a bold statement that he's continuing down a road on which some may not want to join him. I'm sorry to say that I must now count myself among those no longer willing to go on the journey. 

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]