“Hit it, DJ Chocolate Thundaa!”
Douchebag dance/beach parties have plagued the human race for many generations now. Long overdue is a collective middle finger to the herds of idiotic 20-somethings who invade warm climate retreats and gyrate to the sounds of obnoxious club music. Enter Piranha 3D, a brilliant stroke of cinematic genius with a profoundly simple premise: killer piranha eats ‘Jersey Shore’. There are no misconceptions here, as this is a horror movie only by default. Most of the time you’re laughing or downright cheering as prehistoric fishies end lives to the most gruesome degree. I won’t regale you with the gory details, suffice to say that both the male and female human form is mutilated and violated in creative fashion, minus any hint of subtlety – you see everything!
Jerry O'connell aims for Oscar gold as a ‘girls-gone-wild’ cosmic asshóle pornographer. It should come as no spoiler that he dies. Hilariously. Playing the town sheriff, the duties fall on Elisabeth Shue (at 46, she still rocks a sexy bod) to reconcile the lake-wide piranha attack and rescue her two kids, the oldest of whom, her son, played by Steven R. McQueen, is the film’s teen hero. Ving Rhames is the town deputy, Adam Scott a sidekick seismologist and Christopher Lloyd is the raving local pet story owner who also just happens to be an expert on all things thought-to-be-extinct-piranha. Eli Roth hosts a wet t-shirt contest and has the best aforementioned line in the movie. There’s also a special guest appearance by a Jaws alumni. He dies, too. Piranha 3D is a breezy 90 minute circus of t’n’a and wish-fulfilling massacre.
8. Tron: Legacy
“This isn’t happening.” – “Oh, man, this is happening!” What I initially deemed badly contrived I now see it as something more lovingly indebted. Though I care little for The Matrix myself, I can still appreciated that director Joseph Kosinski takes it as an inspiration and plays tribute with his own computer world techno club sequence. This film also harkens Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Burton’s Batman, Batman Begins and even a quick nod to original Tron contemporary War Games (and, of course, the original Tron itself). However, it’s Star Wars-and-subsequent-installments that leave the biggest mark, with multiple riffs, visual allusions and an action climax that borrows wholesale. Make no mistake, Tron: Legacy does have some high concepts, emergence being one as non-programmed/non-user entities called isomorphic algorithms (ISOs) manifest from nothingness with the potential to unify similar interpretations of sentient life.
Also, and more emotionally resonate, is the duality between Bridge’s Kevin Flynn and Bridge’s Clu, each with mirroring dreams of revolution. Flynn speaks of destiny in breaching The Grid world with intent to make information free whereas Clue seeks to free himself and his follower programs–information itself–from The Grid onto the real world, and, likewise, speaks of it as “destiny”. Poignancy occurs when Clu encounters his own warped reflection in a chrome apple and one of the films most artful moments is a scene of exposition through an abstraction of multiple analog TV sets. The latter mentioned coupled with a scene where Sam Flynn explores his father’s arcade like an ancient tomb renders a kind of mythology around 80s electronic gaming and media. Pacing is still the film’s biggest weakness, but its world is immersive, the action well designed and Daft Punk’s score pulses.
7. From Paris With Love
“Well, they ain’t no L.A. Maravilla gang …just some Asian dudes.” This movie presents to the average guy targeted audience an intro scenario with Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing young upstart CIA operative, James Reese, who labors the most banal missions of the clandestine circuit, swapping license plates and watching other guys–presumably real secret agents–drive away, onto lurid adventures he can only long for. At the end of the day he goes home to his beautiful girlfriend and she inadvertently proposes to him, and they agree to marry. So there it is. Reese is stuck fast in a world of mundane government chores and domesticated husbandry. That is, until he gets a phone call from the higher-ups, seconds after kissing his new fiancé, who task him with escorting a super-spy named Charlie Wax through the streets of Paris.
This is where the real movie begins and what ensues is a shattering of forms as Reese’s reality is taken through the loops, ultimately leading to a violent but no less heartfelt long goodbye of his old life in a way that accentuates the film’s lyrical title …With Love. This is not a serious, or taken seriously, exploration of character, but rather an R-rated ‘bros-before-hoes’ sonnet with guns blazing and high-five buddy humor. Said Wax is John Travolta, an outrageous merging of the actor’s most extreme personality with a character conceit that engages American male exploit fantasies of the post 9/11, 21st century: he kills terrorist, bangs hookers, eats cheese burgers, snorts coke, crashes dinner parties, mocks foreigners and answers to no one in the process. The man is walking offense, and loves every minute of his impossible existence. The plot is fittingly ridiculous and the action is awesomely over-the-top. From Paris With Love is frothy-light philosophy with bullets and explosions.
6. Unstoppable: From an earlier review
5. Winter’s Bone
It’s already been fittingly described by numerous reviews as an American Southern Gothic, driven by a mystery narrative deeply rooted in rural Missouri Ozarks culture. Yet the environments are not overly romanticized via blatant picturesque scenery. This isn’t a “painting” film. The inhabitants largely maintain scene focus, the gothic atmosphere evoked as much through plot and character. We follow young Ree Dolly on the search for fugitive father, not for his sake, but for the sake of her vacant mother and two kid siblings, as their home has been rendered bail bonds collateral. Playing Ree, Jennifer Lawrence gives the kind of stark commitment often found in inexperienced but naturally gifted actors. The role of her Uncle Teardrop is played by John Hawkes – arguably the finest performance of his career as a character actor, and is the scene stealing role of the film. Teardrop is a dangerous man and the question as to whether he is Ree’s ally or enemy is not immediately answered.
What I find most interesting about Winter’s Bone is that even though we never see the father, he really is the main character. This is his story being told, after the fact, through the repercussions of his actions, the choices he made and how he affected those around him, particularly his family. It’s a kind of existential thread on how a man’s life and journey is weighed by his daughter as she follows in his wake. Ree is our conduit and it is up to her to face the music, in all its horrid melody. In doing so, by merely surviving the gauntlet, she is heroic. Code, courage and loyalty are the central themes; the stage set, though contemporary, almost feels medieval. These are clans people who live amidst harsh landscapes and skullduggery. From this turmoil the film’s ending finds both peace and doomed resolution.
4. Shutter Island
“It's Saturday, honey. School's not in on Saturday.” “My school is.”
This movie is all ‘oldies but goldies’. There’s really nothing here we haven’t see before, neither from Martin Scorsese or the hard boiled mystery thrillers of yore. But technique trumps novelty (at least it can) and Scorsese is nothing if not an adroit filmmaker. Shutter Island is a spook-fest about a man–a Federal Maashal–who follows a trail of breadcrumbs through a rogue’s gallery asylum then deep into a psychoanalytical wormhole. And eventually he blows up a car with a tropical tie. Make of that what you will. Is it rewatchable once you know the twist? Yes, because the truths revealed are not as important as how the lies reveal our main protagonist along the way. Imagery galore is the main course with ghosts, delusions, hypnotics and reversed memories.
The film is beautifully edited using confined framing and fragmented sound design to isolate our prospective in varying altered states of reality: as the two Marshals are first welcomed into the office of the head psychiatrist the introduction is routine and the conversation formal, until Teddy (DiCaprio) lingers over to a wall of framed, vaguely expressionistic illustrations depicting the 19th century “pre-civilized” treatment of mad souls; the camera closes in and the background dialogue fades out. Momentary silence. Then normality resumes, oblivious to the brief laps and the audiences is left wondering for a split second what the hell just happened. Again, if the whole thing is little more than a manufactured genre film then it’s at least manufactured with TLC, as Scorsese’s allusions to past pulpy cinema & novella are undoubtedly heartfelt.
3. Black Swan
“It’s my turn!”
Everything that happens in Black Swan is actually fairly ordered and systematic, even cliché in some cases, and we’re presented with only so many options as to what is really happening to the main character. There are no major epiphanies. Nina Sayers is either a lesbo mutant haunted by phantasms or is totally bat-shít crazy (or both). The real question is to what extreme does Darren Arnofsky take this conceit and, most important of all, will it entertain us in the process. In fact, the only reason to even watch a movie about a downward spiraling ballerina is to see just how far down the rabbit hole she goes. Nina goes all the way. And, yeah, you get your money’s worth. Despite the illusion of loosey-goosey handheld camera work, Arnofsky’s visuals and editing are very controlled. The film is virtuoso in movement but always specific to the subject matter and never disorientating. As mentioned, the story unfolds methodically at 108 minutes with no one sequence that drags or outstays its welcome, important for making such eccentric material accessible to the widest audience.
Believe the hype: Natalie Portman disappears entirely, really, for the first time in her career. It’s like watching a fictional character being played by a specter with a mere Portman likeness. The performance shows discipline and her ongoing expressions of pathetic vulnerability and manic paranoia somehow never tire or come off repetitive. Proof that it’s not just a role catered to Portman’s natural demureness comes in the final act when white swan becomes black – the actress uncorks a carefully pressured alter-ego that feels as true to character and form as if she were with us from the film’s beginning. Mila Kunis steps in as Portman’s easygoing opposite with a perfect balance of questionable motives and carefree sex appeal. This movie is absurd, in the best possible way.
2. Tangled
Everything that happens in Black Swan is actually fairly ordered and systematic, even cliché in some cases, and we’re presented with only so many options as to what is really happening to the main character. There are no major epiphanies. Nina Sayers is either a lesbo mutant haunted by phantasms or is totally bat-shít crazy (or both). The real question is to what extreme does Darren Arnofsky take this conceit and, most important of all, will it entertain us in the process. In fact, the only reason to even watch a movie about a downward spiraling ballerina is to see just how far down the rabbit hole she goes. Nina goes all the way. And, yeah, you get your money’s worth. Despite the illusion of loosey-goosey handheld camera work, Arnofsky’s visuals and editing are very controlled. The film is virtuoso in movement but always specific to the subject matter and never disorientating. As mentioned, the story unfolds methodically at 108 minutes with no one sequence that drags or outstays its welcome, important for making such eccentric material accessible to the widest audience.
Believe the hype: Natalie Portman disappears entirely, really, for the first time in her career. It’s like watching a fictional character being played by a specter with a mere Portman likeness. The performance shows discipline and her ongoing expressions of pathetic vulnerability and manic paranoia somehow never tire or come off repetitive. Proof that it’s not just a role catered to Portman’s natural demureness comes in the final act when white swan becomes black – the actress uncorks a carefully pressured alter-ego that feels as true to character and form as if she were with us from the film’s beginning. Mila Kunis steps in as Portman’s easygoing opposite with a perfect balance of questionable motives and carefree sex appeal. This movie is absurd, in the best possible way.
2. Tangled
“I could get used to a view like this. Yep, I'm used to it. Guys, I want a castle.” Working within the envelope–adhering to the conventions of traditional Disney princess fairytales–sounds like recipe for mediocrity. But when the finer details in form are treated anew and the story told with utmost sincerity, the results can be coolly refreshing. Tangled is a rarity, an old fashioned charmer void of pretentiousness, unnecessary angst melodrama or pithy-hipness that plagues just about every other computer animated film these days. It follows a near pitch-perfect narrative that effortlessly balances humor, romance, song and adventure. I’m all but aghast that the film has not received more technical praise; the animation here is the most expressive and accurately nuanced I’ve ever seen! And the lush atmospheres evoke classical Rococo oil paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard. The world rendered is so delicately beautiful and yet equally busting with verve.
The slapstick mayhem is fluid and the sit-comedic timing is nimble and rhythmically edited. Though criticized as a shallow marketing ploy, the title of the film (changed from Rapunzel) better appropriates the interweaving of the three main characters, each with their own separate motives. Yes, the movie is funny, but there is also a genuine hinge on the personal choices our two heroes make as they venture together; compelling, despite its absolute predictability, because both Rapunzel and her scoundrel opposite, Flynn Rider, are so imbued with good writing and strong voice cast performances from Mandy Moor and Zachary Levi. Donna Murphy rounds out the trio as Mother Gothel with show tuney sass. She’s wicked, calculative and fun. The whole movie is fun. It deserves and Oscar nod at the very least. Personally, I think it’s better than the somewhat overrated Toy Story 3
1. Somewhere
.............
.............
Sofia Coppola makes films for sensitive people. When using the word “sensitive” I’m not speaking generally about cry babies or anyone whose feelings, good or bad, are easily triggered by trivial things. That, in fact, has more to do with (over)sentimentalism, which is a spectrum that Coppola dabbles in the least, if barely at all. No, I’m going back to the root definition of the word regarding those endowed with acute perception through the senses – seizing and interpreting on a tonal level made whole, in this case, through naked image, sound and music. Somewhere is a visual/aural piece stripped of conventional plot and narrative. This isn’t a movie where you have to decode via academics or intellect a particular scene or shot in order to determine its relevance. If you take it that far, you’re already thinking too hard. Don’t analyze; relax. Somewhere is an experience, not a thesis. Nor is it in any way pretentious. When critics make such accusations I can only wonder if they even understand the meaning of the word.
Coppola’s films, chief among them the film at hand, are far too casual and unassuming to be pretentious. Somewhere makes no haughty claims about how important it is. It doesn’t force upon you seemingly incomprehensible characters, imagery or situations in the name of “art”. The setting and circumstances are almost entirely circumstantial. This movie could take place anywhere, which is the very point of the title: the Chateau Marmont is as genuine a place as any and the meditative introspection of its long term guest, action star Johnny Marco, is no more or less human than spending an hour and 40 minutes with Farmer Ted, which is not to say that such lives are uninteresting, but that all lives are uniquely profound. Coppola is merely being honest by depicting a lifestyle and father/daughter dynamic that she’s more familiar with. Somewhere is quiet, beautiful, subliminal and chilled.
