It’s a pity. “Bright Star” is such an entrancing and exquisitely crafted movie, yet it drags so noticeably toward the end that you walk away from it only wishing that it had been shorter.
Like a bright star, the film shines like a supernova before it burns out too soon, collapses on itself and leaves us with a cinematic black hole.
OK, that’s overstating it. It’s still a good movie. But by the end, it is no longer a great movie.
What we get too much of is the death of poet John Keats. This story of his great love and muse, Fanny Brawne, must by necessity end with his early death. This isn’t a surprise: We know from English class that Keats died young. All the Romantic poets did, except Worsdworth, who should have.
Keats is played by Ben Whishaw and Fanny by Abbie Cornish, and it is to the film’s considerable benefit that it concentrates mainly on Abbie. As shown here, she is the one with the spark of life, she is the one who is flirtatious and funny and interesting, she is the one whose emotions spring from things that affect her. Keats, on the other hand, is just morose and moody and, you know, poety.
Cornish, an Australian actress little known on these shores (she was in the disappointing “Stop-Loss) is a revelation as Fanny. Intentionally made to look plain, she plays her as a frothy, good-time girl, in an early 19th century sort of way. She loves to dance and she loves parties, her seeming insubstantiality heightened by her interest in fashion.
But beneath this exterior gloss lies real depth of feeling, as Cornish makes clear in her carefully nurtured performance. She is smart and quick-witted in a time when intelligence and wit were not necessarily desired in women. And her fashions do look fairly stunning.
It is clear what Keats sees in her, but less obvious is what she sees in him. In this picture, he is a drip, given to prolonged periods of inactivity while waiting for inspiration to strike. When she first meets him, his poetry isn’t even all that good -- a situation that is resolved when she becomes his muse, and he matures.
We can assume that she also sees in him a certain attractiveness. Whishaw (he starred in “Perfume” and was Sebastian in the theatrical version of “Brideshead Revisited”) is darkly handsome as the doomed poet. But he’s kind of dull.
Writer-director Jane Campion specializes in movies about strong, multifaceted women -- her best films include “The Piano,” “An Angel at My Table” and “Sweetie.” Fannie Brawne fits in nicely with those characters, which is why we can’t help but wish Fanny would fall for Keats’ strong and personable best friend, Charles Armitage Brown, played by Paul Schneider (the brother in “Lars and the Real Girl”).
Understandably, however, Campion feels compelled to adhere to what actually happened.
To this end, she quotes with good effect from Keats’ letters to Fanny (her letters to him have been lost), and even from a few of his poems. The poems do show his brilliance, and they are less of a drag on the story than you might think.
But other parts of the film are. A great Romantic poet deserves a great romantic movie, and “Bright Star” fits the bill. One just wishes the last act -- the prolonged dying act -- were cut in half.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
'Silence' is golden
“Lorna’s Silence” is the story of a woman who falls for her husband.
He’s a junkie and a thief, and she is part of a plot to have him murdered. But he’s a generally good person, if needy, and when he tries to kick heroin, she experiences something she has apparently never felt before -- sympathy.
“Lorna’s Silence” is the story of a cold, calculating and ultimately selfish woman who falls for her husband and learns to think about someone other than herself.
It’s an inhuman story into which creeps a little humanity. And that’s what gives it its charm and its power.
Arta Dobroshi stars as Lorna, an Albanian working scams in Belgium. She is married to the junkie Claudy (Jeremie Renier), who has been paid to marry her so she can obtain Belgian citizenship. The marriage is a sham; they sleep in separate rooms and she can’t even work up the energy to tolerate him. Her sole interest is money -- the first few scenes are all monetary transactions -- which she hopes to use to open a modest snack bar with her Albanian lover. It’s a banal dream, considering the circumstances, and that is the point.
With her newly acquired citizenship, Lorna plans to marry a Russian so that he, too, can become Belgian. For this service, he will pay her enough money to open the snack bar. But first she has to get rid of the other husband. If he doesn’t die of an accidental overdose, her unsavory associates will help him along with one.
Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne direct from their own screenplay, and they take their directorial cues from their heroine’s moods. At the beginning, they direct with ice water in their veins -- they keep an emotional distance from the story as Lorna keeps a distance from the other characters. But as she warms, so do they; the film moves from inorganic to organic. Even the setting slides from generic urban sprawl to the outdoors.
Their work, both on paper and behind the camera, is notable for its subtlety and restraint. The script, which won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival, does us the favor of refraining from explanations; it trusts us to be able to figure out what is happening. In a bold move, one that pays off handsomely, the most striking action in the film takes place off-screen and is never directly referred to.
Their work is so fine, we can almost forgive them the de rigueur use of a hand-held camera. Almost.
But the real find here is Dobroshi. The Kosovo-born actress was previously unknown in this country, but she is marvelous in the role -- you couldn’t make the film without her. She plays Lorna with a deadened soul, but you can see the flicker of hope in her eyes, the seed of humanity that takes root within her. Although her performance is strong throughout the film, she is at her best when Lorna is changing. She is quietly stunning in a scene with a couple of cops, but maybe even better in the scene with her husband where she finally realizes what it means to be needed.
She makes this bitter tale sing.
He’s a junkie and a thief, and she is part of a plot to have him murdered. But he’s a generally good person, if needy, and when he tries to kick heroin, she experiences something she has apparently never felt before -- sympathy.
“Lorna’s Silence” is the story of a cold, calculating and ultimately selfish woman who falls for her husband and learns to think about someone other than herself.
It’s an inhuman story into which creeps a little humanity. And that’s what gives it its charm and its power.
Arta Dobroshi stars as Lorna, an Albanian working scams in Belgium. She is married to the junkie Claudy (Jeremie Renier), who has been paid to marry her so she can obtain Belgian citizenship. The marriage is a sham; they sleep in separate rooms and she can’t even work up the energy to tolerate him. Her sole interest is money -- the first few scenes are all monetary transactions -- which she hopes to use to open a modest snack bar with her Albanian lover. It’s a banal dream, considering the circumstances, and that is the point.
With her newly acquired citizenship, Lorna plans to marry a Russian so that he, too, can become Belgian. For this service, he will pay her enough money to open the snack bar. But first she has to get rid of the other husband. If he doesn’t die of an accidental overdose, her unsavory associates will help him along with one.
Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne direct from their own screenplay, and they take their directorial cues from their heroine’s moods. At the beginning, they direct with ice water in their veins -- they keep an emotional distance from the story as Lorna keeps a distance from the other characters. But as she warms, so do they; the film moves from inorganic to organic. Even the setting slides from generic urban sprawl to the outdoors.
Their work, both on paper and behind the camera, is notable for its subtlety and restraint. The script, which won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival, does us the favor of refraining from explanations; it trusts us to be able to figure out what is happening. In a bold move, one that pays off handsomely, the most striking action in the film takes place off-screen and is never directly referred to.
Their work is so fine, we can almost forgive them the de rigueur use of a hand-held camera. Almost.
But the real find here is Dobroshi. The Kosovo-born actress was previously unknown in this country, but she is marvelous in the role -- you couldn’t make the film without her. She plays Lorna with a deadened soul, but you can see the flicker of hope in her eyes, the seed of humanity that takes root within her. Although her performance is strong throughout the film, she is at her best when Lorna is changing. She is quietly stunning in a scene with a couple of cops, but maybe even better in the scene with her husband where she finally realizes what it means to be needed.
She makes this bitter tale sing.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The best movie ever about roller derby
Roller derby has rules? Who knew?
“Whip It” is a coming of age story set against the decidedly unusual backdrop of the great tacky sport of roller derby. What a pleasant surprise it is -- frankly, it comes as something of a shock -- to find that the movie is this entertaining.
Drew Barrymore makes a notably solid debut as a director -- it turns out she was paying attention all those years. And equally impressive is the strong performance by Ellen Page, who shows that “Juno” (and the little-seen “Hard Candy”) was no fluke.
Page stars as Bliss, a high school student dreaming of leaving her small town, the amusingly named Bodeen, Texas. Her mother (Marcia Gay Harden, excellent in the role) wants her to compete in the same beauty pageant the mother won as a teen, but Bliss has other interests.
She is attracted to the lights, the sounds and the pseudo-legitimacy of roller derby. On a lark, she decides to try out for a team in Austin. Even though the waiflike Page is smaller than petite, Bliss is picked for the team.
Quickly, the plot heads out into three all-too-routine directions -- the film’s major flaw is that it is formulaic. The most important thread involves Bliss’ breaking away from the influence of her parents, including Daniel Stern as her likable but passive father. The second thread is about Bliss falling in first love with a sweet musician, Landon Pigg. And the third part is the competition, the roller derbies themselves. Bliss’ team, the Hurl Scouts, are perennial losers until she joins them, and soon they are in contention for a title.
OK, you probably won’t care about who wins the roller derby contests, but they’re enjoyable enough to watch if we care about the characters. And we do, courtesy of the winning performance by Page and, to a lesser extent, work from Barrymore, Kristen Wiig and Juliette Lewis as a rival player.
As a director, Barrymore keeps things peppy and full of life. She avoids the common first-time-director trap of calling attention to her work behind the camera, but she does suffer from a couple of minor missteps. A food fight feels a little staged, and a scene in which Bliss looks blissfully (so to speak) at her lover is so false it almost overshadows the inventive underwater love scene that precedes it.
Writer Shauna Cross based the screenplay on her own book, which she based on her own experiences as a roller girl. Her familiarity with the sport and its practitioners comes through, or at least her familiarity with the rules, and she has crafted believable characters who say witty things.
“Whip It” may make the case for grrrl power a bit too emphatically at times for some tastes, but it’s mostly a lot of fun. If I could think of an appropriate phrase taken from the world of roller derby, I’d use it here, but I can’t.
“Whip It” is a coming of age story set against the decidedly unusual backdrop of the great tacky sport of roller derby. What a pleasant surprise it is -- frankly, it comes as something of a shock -- to find that the movie is this entertaining.
Drew Barrymore makes a notably solid debut as a director -- it turns out she was paying attention all those years. And equally impressive is the strong performance by Ellen Page, who shows that “Juno” (and the little-seen “Hard Candy”) was no fluke.
Page stars as Bliss, a high school student dreaming of leaving her small town, the amusingly named Bodeen, Texas. Her mother (Marcia Gay Harden, excellent in the role) wants her to compete in the same beauty pageant the mother won as a teen, but Bliss has other interests.
She is attracted to the lights, the sounds and the pseudo-legitimacy of roller derby. On a lark, she decides to try out for a team in Austin. Even though the waiflike Page is smaller than petite, Bliss is picked for the team.
Quickly, the plot heads out into three all-too-routine directions -- the film’s major flaw is that it is formulaic. The most important thread involves Bliss’ breaking away from the influence of her parents, including Daniel Stern as her likable but passive father. The second thread is about Bliss falling in first love with a sweet musician, Landon Pigg. And the third part is the competition, the roller derbies themselves. Bliss’ team, the Hurl Scouts, are perennial losers until she joins them, and soon they are in contention for a title.
OK, you probably won’t care about who wins the roller derby contests, but they’re enjoyable enough to watch if we care about the characters. And we do, courtesy of the winning performance by Page and, to a lesser extent, work from Barrymore, Kristen Wiig and Juliette Lewis as a rival player.
As a director, Barrymore keeps things peppy and full of life. She avoids the common first-time-director trap of calling attention to her work behind the camera, but she does suffer from a couple of minor missteps. A food fight feels a little staged, and a scene in which Bliss looks blissfully (so to speak) at her lover is so false it almost overshadows the inventive underwater love scene that precedes it.
Writer Shauna Cross based the screenplay on her own book, which she based on her own experiences as a roller girl. Her familiarity with the sport and its practitioners comes through, or at least her familiarity with the rules, and she has crafted believable characters who say witty things.
“Whip It” may make the case for grrrl power a bit too emphatically at times for some tastes, but it’s mostly a lot of fun. If I could think of an appropriate phrase taken from the world of roller derby, I’d use it here, but I can’t.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Hurrah for zombies!
So now we have a shiny new sub-genre, the zombie horror-based comedy.
First there was “Shaun of the Dead.” Now it is joined by “Zombieland.” In the world of shiny new sub-genres, two is a trend.
As funny as “Shaun of the Dead” is, “Zombieland is at least as good. The two films perfectly demonstrate the difference between English and American senses of humor. “Shaun of the Dead” is quiet and dry, drawing its laughs from its restraint. “Zombieland” is in your face and physical, reveling in irony and crudity. But it’s funny crude, not crude crude.
Zombies have taken over the world, killing nearly everyone and turning the planet into a zombie wasteland (although Garland, Texas, we are told, always looked like that).
Our hero from Garland, Jesse Eisenberg, suspects he may be the last human alive. He is a wimp, with numerous phobias and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Perversely, his failings have helped keep him alive -- he has no close family and friends to feed on him, and his default mode of fear makes him extra cautious at all times.
Naturally, there are a few other survivors -- otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a movie. Our unnamed hero (none of the characters have names) meets his opposite in Woody Harrelson. Harrelson plays a tough, hard-living, macho redneck, the sort who would find Eisenberg’s sniveling character an annoyance and an irritant. Nevertheless, with their survival on the line, the two join forces, at least for a while.
Eventually, they meet two sisters, played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. The younger girl (Breslin) has been bitten by a zombie and needs to be put down. But this is a comedy, and Breslin currently has the best career in the cast, so it is easy to guess that she will be around for most of the film.
The potential concern in a movie such as “Zombieland” is that it is just one joke, or at least just one note, and that will tire of it long before it ends. But writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and director Ruben Fleischer keep the laughs coming throughout the picture. Part of their secret is that much of the humor is based on the characters’ reactions to one another (the rest tends to be about the funny way zombies go splat -- it’s not quite gross-out humor, but it’s not for the faint of heart). And part of it is that although the story is simple, it is always interesting. We like the characters an we hope they succeed in their efforts to survive.
And although zombie movies have been done to death, so to speak, “Zombieland” manages still to be inventive. It makes good use of its locations -- the amusement-park climax is particularly satisfying -- and it never forgets that it is a comedy, not a horror film.
When you think about it, the concept of zombies has always been kind of funny. It just took “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland” to figure that out.
First there was “Shaun of the Dead.” Now it is joined by “Zombieland.” In the world of shiny new sub-genres, two is a trend.
As funny as “Shaun of the Dead” is, “Zombieland is at least as good. The two films perfectly demonstrate the difference between English and American senses of humor. “Shaun of the Dead” is quiet and dry, drawing its laughs from its restraint. “Zombieland” is in your face and physical, reveling in irony and crudity. But it’s funny crude, not crude crude.
Zombies have taken over the world, killing nearly everyone and turning the planet into a zombie wasteland (although Garland, Texas, we are told, always looked like that).
Our hero from Garland, Jesse Eisenberg, suspects he may be the last human alive. He is a wimp, with numerous phobias and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Perversely, his failings have helped keep him alive -- he has no close family and friends to feed on him, and his default mode of fear makes him extra cautious at all times.
Naturally, there are a few other survivors -- otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a movie. Our unnamed hero (none of the characters have names) meets his opposite in Woody Harrelson. Harrelson plays a tough, hard-living, macho redneck, the sort who would find Eisenberg’s sniveling character an annoyance and an irritant. Nevertheless, with their survival on the line, the two join forces, at least for a while.
Eventually, they meet two sisters, played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. The younger girl (Breslin) has been bitten by a zombie and needs to be put down. But this is a comedy, and Breslin currently has the best career in the cast, so it is easy to guess that she will be around for most of the film.
The potential concern in a movie such as “Zombieland” is that it is just one joke, or at least just one note, and that will tire of it long before it ends. But writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and director Ruben Fleischer keep the laughs coming throughout the picture. Part of their secret is that much of the humor is based on the characters’ reactions to one another (the rest tends to be about the funny way zombies go splat -- it’s not quite gross-out humor, but it’s not for the faint of heart). And part of it is that although the story is simple, it is always interesting. We like the characters an we hope they succeed in their efforts to survive.
And although zombie movies have been done to death, so to speak, “Zombieland” manages still to be inventive. It makes good use of its locations -- the amusement-park climax is particularly satisfying -- and it never forgets that it is a comedy, not a horror film.
When you think about it, the concept of zombies has always been kind of funny. It just took “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland” to figure that out.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Zellwegeria
“My One and Only” tells the story of a life so interesting that they ought to make a movie about it.
Just not this one.
“My One and Only” is not quite a comedy, not quite a drama and not quite a movie. It is mostly just an idea, and it meanders and ambles around until it occasionally hits on it. But mostly it just meanders. And ambles.
This is the intermittently true story of Anne Devereaux, who comes home one day in the 1950s to find her no-good bandleader husband in bed with his lead singer. She piles her two teenage sons -- one by that husband, one by another -- into a new Cadillac Eldorado and sets off on a journey to find a husband who can support her and them. This trip takes them through a number of towns (mostly played by Baltimore) and introduces them to a number of men of varying degrees of inappropriateness.
All the while, the no-good bandleader husband lurks. That’s what he does, he lurks. He’s a little sleazy, this guy.
Renee Zellweger stars as Anne, and it has to be said that she is looking a little weird. Weirder than usual. Her performance is mannered and is marred by an inconsistent Southern accent, but either she improves or we become more used to her as the film rolls along. Although we never accept her belabored characterization, we do (perhaps begrudgingly) warm to the theatricality of the performance.
At first, her sons seem like appendages to the story, even though it is being narrated by the more bookish of the two, George, played by Logan Lerman of “3:10 to Yuma.” The other son (Mark Rendall) is gay, and his effeminism is thankfully treated with affectionate humor. The two boys eventually come into their own in the picture, and the film’s big surprise concerns one of them.
This surprise, incidentally, has been revealed by practically every other critic in the country. Sigh.
Veteran British director Richard Loncraine has made such notable films as “The Missionary” and the Ian McKellen version of “Richard III” -- and he directed an episode of “Band of Brothers” -- but “My One and Only” simply gets away from him. He seems at a loss about what tone to take, and all to often winds up with no tone at all. It is as if a somnambulist made the film; the actors are particularly lethargic, waiting half a beat too long to speak, and then in a near monotone.
And what they have to say is rarely interesting. Writer Charlie Peters has made a career of scripting terrible, terrible films, from “Paternity“ and “Hot to Trot” to “Her Alibi” and “My Father, the Hero.” Actually, “My One and Only” is one of his better efforts, if only because it boasts two genuinely amusing scenes. In one, a hitchhiking adventure takes an unexpected turn in the desert; in the other, David Koechner explains the secret to keeping women happy (they get cold a lot, so bring a sweater).
There are certainly worse movies than “My One and Only” playing at the multiplex. But if you see them, you’ll remember how terrible they are. If you see “My One and Only,” you’ll have forgotten it by the time you walk out the door.
Just not this one.
“My One and Only” is not quite a comedy, not quite a drama and not quite a movie. It is mostly just an idea, and it meanders and ambles around until it occasionally hits on it. But mostly it just meanders. And ambles.
This is the intermittently true story of Anne Devereaux, who comes home one day in the 1950s to find her no-good bandleader husband in bed with his lead singer. She piles her two teenage sons -- one by that husband, one by another -- into a new Cadillac Eldorado and sets off on a journey to find a husband who can support her and them. This trip takes them through a number of towns (mostly played by Baltimore) and introduces them to a number of men of varying degrees of inappropriateness.
All the while, the no-good bandleader husband lurks. That’s what he does, he lurks. He’s a little sleazy, this guy.
Renee Zellweger stars as Anne, and it has to be said that she is looking a little weird. Weirder than usual. Her performance is mannered and is marred by an inconsistent Southern accent, but either she improves or we become more used to her as the film rolls along. Although we never accept her belabored characterization, we do (perhaps begrudgingly) warm to the theatricality of the performance.
At first, her sons seem like appendages to the story, even though it is being narrated by the more bookish of the two, George, played by Logan Lerman of “3:10 to Yuma.” The other son (Mark Rendall) is gay, and his effeminism is thankfully treated with affectionate humor. The two boys eventually come into their own in the picture, and the film’s big surprise concerns one of them.
This surprise, incidentally, has been revealed by practically every other critic in the country. Sigh.
Veteran British director Richard Loncraine has made such notable films as “The Missionary” and the Ian McKellen version of “Richard III” -- and he directed an episode of “Band of Brothers” -- but “My One and Only” simply gets away from him. He seems at a loss about what tone to take, and all to often winds up with no tone at all. It is as if a somnambulist made the film; the actors are particularly lethargic, waiting half a beat too long to speak, and then in a near monotone.
And what they have to say is rarely interesting. Writer Charlie Peters has made a career of scripting terrible, terrible films, from “Paternity“ and “Hot to Trot” to “Her Alibi” and “My Father, the Hero.” Actually, “My One and Only” is one of his better efforts, if only because it boasts two genuinely amusing scenes. In one, a hitchhiking adventure takes an unexpected turn in the desert; in the other, David Koechner explains the secret to keeping women happy (they get cold a lot, so bring a sweater).
There are certainly worse movies than “My One and Only” playing at the multiplex. But if you see them, you’ll remember how terrible they are. If you see “My One and Only,” you’ll have forgotten it by the time you walk out the door.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Informative
Steven Soderbergh is back with Matt Damon (and George Clooney producing) in the whimsical, surprising and sort-of true "The Informant!" Read my review at: http://boomerlifemagazine.com/ver2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=305:the-informant&catid=74:movie reviews.
Friday, September 4, 2009
With the laughs "Extract"ed.
"Extract," the latest film by Mike Judge, is everything that "Office Space" is, but less. My review is at: http://boomerlifemagazine.com/ver2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=302:extract&catid=74:movie-reviews.
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