Hannah's Pick: The Fighter

Well, I had a fairly good streak going on the blog, running the Monday to Friday life and getting reviews posted.  And then, all fell flat.  I wish there was a great reason for this.  I wish I could come up with a grand explanation as to why I was absent for the last few days.  Sadly, I have nothing other than a video game addiction that overtook me, which lead to a complete inability to track time.  I think I may have had a bug as well, but it was more so due to my desire to crush, kill and destroy pixelated villains in the name of good.

While many people look to this year as being the career renaissance of actor Matthew McConaughey, 2010 was the turning point in career of director/writer David O. Russell.  He had not directed a movie since 2004’s I Heart Huckabees and returned with The Fighter, which started off an incredible run of three movies in four years that would all earn Oscar nominations for best picture, best director, and a slew of acting nominations and wins.  I believe it is the first time in history that a director got such big recognition for three consecutive movies, and, as a pick from my wonderful sister-in-law Hannah, I thought it would be a great idea to travel back and take a look at the film.

One thing that Russell has managed to excel at in his films is the ability to draw captivating performances from his actors (Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle both got nominations in all four acting categories).  These performances, combined with great script and direction, quickly create people who we are invested in and we become quickly wrapped up in the story.

The Fighter, a movie about the life of boxer Micky Ward, follows brothers Micky (Mark Walberg) and Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) as Ward finds himself in a battle between his own best interests and those of his dysfunctional family.  Managed by his mother Alice (Melissa Leo), the attention is never on what is most appropriate for Micky, but on the former glory of Dicky, who is battling drug addiction.  Micky soon meets a local bartender named Charlene (Amy Adams) and finally has someone in his life who puts his needs ahead of his brother’s.

A typical boxing movie can be a great thing, as we get to cheer for the underdog as they claw their way up the ranks with grit and determination.  The story of Micky Ward is indeed one of the underdog, but it plays out so differently than most other films.  The real focus in this film is the relationships that surround Ward, the support (or lack of support) that he gets from different people, and the choices that he must make regarding career and family.  The pugilistic elements is just a backdrop for a deep story of human connection that hits a head and shatters, needing to be either swept away forever or put back together.

Because the boxing is secondary, the action scenes are not the strongest to exist in a boxing flick.  There is little sense of the crowd and environment (except for a wonderful scene as Micky is preparing to walk out to the ring), which may have been an intentional decision to make it more about Micky and those who were ringside.  The voice over commentary of the action also felt a little lifeless and forced at times, which detracts from the emotional experience of the boxing event.

That aside, there is very little that can be criticized about this film.  The acting was a collage of performances making a piece of art, instead of simply one or two stand out roles that compel the audience.  The characters are such a part of each other in this movie that the majesty of the ensemble’s efforts propels the story to another level.  It is especially the chemistry between Walhberg and Bale that plays well on the screen, giving so much history and context of their relationship simply through their body language and how they interact together.

Ward’s life was one of blue collar upbringing, and that essence comes across in perfect clarity thanks in equal parts to the hair, wardrobe, and locations.  It is easy to forget just how far those aspects can go in immersing the audience in the tale set before them, and the attention to detail that each received in The Fighter increased the tone of the film and took it to the next level.

I may be more than a bit of a David O. Russell fan, but his style of storytelling is right up my alley.   I get really geeked out about movies that focus on creating deep and interesting characters, put them in a situation, and have them have to play off of even more deep and interesting characters.  Some people may think that to be a bore, but I would take that any day over run-of-the-mill special effects and explosions.  Russell is one of the modern masters at this craft, and The Fighter is an excellent case study of how impactful a story can be when we actually care about the choices of the people on the screen.

Rating – 3.5 out of 4 stars

Enemy

I will apologize right up front, there was no proof reading of this review today.  I suppose that is how the cookie crumbles from time to time, but for it to get posted today it just needed to be done and out of the way.  It was a very complex movie and my brain just was not getting off the starting line today, which made reviewing it quite the difficult task.

While some people enjoy straight forward movies, there are also some people out there who enjoy the mystery and riddle to a film which does less storytelling, and focuses more on leaving some clues around for the audience decipher.  It can be a rewarding experience to view a film and let your brain pick up the task of plotting out possible scenarios and explanations for elements of the movie and coming up with a point of view that makes sense within the context of the story.  For the most part, Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy expertly disperses nuggets of possibility to the viewers without relying on offering its own reasoning, keeping the suspense and intrigue front and centre, demanding all of the viewer’s attention.

Enemy is a story of a history teacher named Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) who learns that there is someone out there named Anthony (also Jake Gyllenhaal) who looks and sounds exactly like him.  Adam becomes obsessed with this and works to locate and meet his double.  As he is seeking for answers, so are we, as we gain some insight into the story that acts as both context and symbolism to view in light of Adam’s story.

Much like Prisoners, Villeneuve shows an expertise in the visual aspect of directing and has a great sense of what to include in shots and what to leave out.  He has an ability to insert props and set pieces into scenes to inform the audience as to what is going on, as well as a using them to inform us on the characters themselves.  Very little explanation comes in the form of dialogue in this film, and the reason for that is the proficiency Villeneuve has in visual storytelling.  In fact, there are long sections of this film where there is little to no dialogue, and all we have to guide us is what we see.

Another talent of Villeneuve is in how he uses filters and light to tell the story and set the mood.  In the life of Adam, everything has a yellowish tinge to it, and is propelled by the type of lighting that Adam uses in his house.  We get a very drab and colourless feel about Adam as an individual, and even the colour of yellow could be in reference to his timid demeanour.

Jake Gyllenhaal, as he is apt to do, delivers a very strong performance and is a natural at communicating his emotions and thoughts with his face and posture.  We really get to see this skill shine in the scenes where both of his characters are face to face, and it is the subtleties in Gyllenhaal’s acting that distinguishes the personalities and works to set the tone of the scene.

The wonderful inclusion of the subtle is what really makes this film, and it is when it deviates from it that it loses its magic.  There are moments in the film where perhaps the use of music feels a bit abrasive, that we are slugged over the head with it at moments so that we know exactly what we are supposed to be feeling.  It felt to be a bit of a shame that with such a wonderful flow visually there would be a bit of a strain coming from the audio side of things, but this never reached the level of being an enormous distraction, and it did not hinder my enjoyment of the film very much.  It more just seemed to counter the softer tone of insinuation that had been established.

The big issue that the film had was with the consistency of the characters.  In the end, there is so much mystery to the story and we are left trying to come up with interpretations for what happened in the movie.  That is the sort of thing that would drive some people mad, but I am fine with it as long as there are theories that we can work with that makes sense with what we have seen.  Every theory that my friend and I were able to come up with were not consistent with how the characters acted in the film, and even taking the movie at face value alone sees the characters acting in ways that fight the story.  To go into it in any detail would be throwing spoilers on the table, so I will keep from doing such things.

The end of the film, while it caught me off guard, left me with a lot to think about and discuss on the ride home from the theatre.  For better or worse, is there really any more that you could ask for from a movie than to give you lots to talk about?  Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation continually reverted back to the fact that the characters did not feel as though they acted in line with who they were throughout the movie, a factor which made truly enjoying this movie a very difficult task.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars

Box Office Predictions

This week Kermit and the gang are back in Muppets Most Wanted and attempt to follow up on the huge success of the 2011 movie, The Muppets.  Will it be able to make an attempt at first place in the box office against the likes of the young adult geared film Divergent?  I break down various factors about both films and make my predictions as to how well they will do this weekend over The International House of Spicer.

A Good Day to Die Hard

I was away from the blog yesterday due to some March Madness, and today I am back with a little more madness in the form of A Good Day to Die Hard.  I am kicking myself a little, because in the last week or so I have seen a few movies that have not been the most enjoyable, and this movie keeps with that trend as it drags along the Die Hard franchise that is on some very tired legs at this point.  When Die Hard first came out, Bruce Willis gave us a stubborn and normal guy who was battling against some well-dressed criminals.  Willis’s portrayal of the protagonist, John McClane, was one that could win over the crowd as he was a little pit bull that took a beating and just kept plugging forward.  He was the action fan’s version of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Yes, the first movie was improbable and McClane was able to perhaps take a bit too much punishment, but there was a playfulness with the film that was able to distract many viewers from questioning such things.  In the latest installment of the series the improbable becomes more and more frequent and the character of John McClane loses the charm from earlier movies.  During the first half of the film I had no care for his outcome or success.  I am not saying that I cared when the second half of the movie came around, because I didn’t.  I think I was just a bit numb by that point.

McClane is supposed to be a bit abrasive, but ultimately he is a person who gets the support of viewers for his charisma, persistence, and underdog status.  He has now travelled from saying some fun lines, as in earlier films, to merely spewing out the flat script that was provided by Skip Woods.  His keen mind is replaced by an aloof presence at times, as he stands amidst a violent attack and seems baffled that his son is trying to flee from it instead of standing around to talk.  In a way he feels like just a reminder of what the character used to be, and being this far removed from the original has diluted the product and left us with just a walking, talking reason for a sequel.

While the script is not good at all, bordering on awful at times with an insistence to dive into the convoluted, it is far from the only issue with the film.  The directing from John Moore never established anything that I could really find harmony with, with the pacing of the cuts and the style of the camera work acting as a barrier to connecting with the movie.  It was primarily in the action sequences where there was relentless assault of fast zoom ins, some shaky camera work, and continual cuts to characters calmly giving ‘witty’ one liners.  Whenever the film started to get any kind of flow to it, it was quickly able to lose the magic time and time again.

The movie was not all agonizing, as I was treated to a few moments of fun action.  There was one vehicle pursuit in particular that had beautiful and gratuitous amounts of cars getting crunched, crumpled, spun around, and flipped with screeching tires and broken glass strewn about.  The scene as a whole was not spectacular (because of the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph), but it had some great execution in its stunts and was a real treat for the eyes.  I am not sure if all of the money from the budget went into this sequence, because by the end of the film the special effects where replaced by not-so-special effects.

I really wanted to like this movie, I really did.  I have such fond love for some of the films of this franchise that I really had such desire that I would be treated to a closing bow of fist pumping excellence and mayhem.  I named my cat John McClane for crying out loud, that’s how much fun I had with Die Hard.  Perhaps that is the problem I have here; my love for the franchise came from the movies having a certain playfulness and personality to them, a factor that is replaced by sterile dialogue and disjointed action sequences.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars

Zookeeper

When settling into the very first scene of Zookeeper, I was actually quite shocked at the number of times that I felt giggles escaping my lips.  Normally with a Happy Madison production (the Adam Sandler founded production company), I spend 75% of the time groaning, and the remaining 25% of my time looking back and trying to establish exactly what butterfly flapped its wings that lead to the chain of events which incited my willingness to view the movie.  I was delightfully surprised that the feel of the intro felt very different in tone to what I had expected, and instantly had hope that this movie could be one that would win me over, against any skepticism that I had when I entered it.

Just like the forces of gravity dictate, I was soon pulled back down to the terrestrial realm of earth and reality when the movie then established a very familiar style and humour found in other like films.  Silliness is the name of the game with this type of film, but it is most often a silliness that is void of much thought and wit.  As I reached the ten minute point of the movie, I was sure of exactly where it would go and was rolling my eyes at a lot of failed attempts at humour.

The film is about Griffin (Kevin James), a man who works as a zookeeper, a profession which this film portrays as one that grown men would not have.  I am not sure this would be the reality, because I could not see such an important job being entrusted to the less than capable hands of teenagers and young adults who are still adjusting to the crazy new hormones that their bodies are introducing them to.  It made me think a bit about The Weather Man, which showed the disdain people had towards television meteorologists (there are some great scenes of Nicolas Cage being shellacked with food products), but that theme seemed to fit a bit better in that film.

As Griffin deals with the relationship issues of what a ‘grown man’ goes through, he contemplates leaving the zoo, something the animals seem none too keen about.  They hold court and decide to help him out.  He soon has to deal with a number of different animals talking in English to him, and giving him advice on how to properly secure a mate.  While a number of the animal characters held no humour at all, there were some moments where I, once again, found the sounds of laughter escaping me.  Thrown in amongst the sea of whimsical refuse were a scant few moments of fun.  I would never go as far to say that it ventured into the land of hilarity, but it is what it is.

James was good enough in this role, although it is not the type that is able to showcase his comedic abilities.  A number of the comedic attempts just felt easily anticipated as well as being dumbed down a considerable amount.  Assisting with a solid performance, and not in the film enough, was Nat Faxon who never seems to get the shine he deserves.  Joe Rogan also appeared and was able to make me laugh a number of times as he played the ex-boyfriend of Griffin’s ex-girlfriend, an egotistical centre of attention if ever there was one.

A long list of celebrities showed up to voice the animals at the zoo, which were, for the most part, animated fairly well to give the appearance of them talking.  I would imagine that for a budget of $80 million (a large budget for a comedy, but not for a Happy Madison comedy) you would expect such things.  On the topic of Happy Madison, the movie did have, of course, a very blatant element of corporate advertising as the grumpy gorilla (voiced by Nick Nolte) seemed really intrigued about the great experience that was TGI Fridays.  Luckily for him, and the audience, we got to see an actual location shoot at a TGI Fridays as Griffin takes the gorilla there to celebrate his birthday.  You gotta love product placement  Still, it was not as jarring as the mid-movie commercial for Royal Caribbean in the middle of Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill (which also, of course, had other products it was pumping, such as Dunkin’ Donuts).

My obvious distaste for the advertisement-filled tactics of Happy Madison movies aside, Zookeeper entertained me more than I had anticipated.  You will not find anything new here, as the film treads over a sadly tried and true formula that Sandler- produced films always adopt.  It is not an earthshattering movie, but it also is not as bad as Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star or any of the other movies that have been pumped out by Happy Madison.  After saying all of that, it still is not a great movie, and the amount of good in it comes nowhere close to countering the amount of bad that you will have to endure.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars

Veronica Mars

Heading into Veronica Mars, I had absolutely no idea as to what the plot was and knew less than nothing about the television show that it was based on.  This is the issue for most movies that have a strongly followed source material because, not only do you want to satisfy the fans, you need to be able to usher new and fresh eyes into the experience as well.  Simply making a project for the hardcores can limit profitability and the ultimate success of such a venture, so it becomes that you almost have to make a film that speaks two languages to hopefully appease the audience and create new fans without losing existing ones.

For the first act of the movie, I did feel like there was a lot of history that I was missing out on.  The opening narrated sequence did a decent job of bringing me up to speed on the concept of the television show, a feature that I was very happy about.  However, as we began to meet more and more characters, it became quite obvious that the people in the theatre around me knew all about their pasts and personalities, and I was simply left with having to deduce for myself what I was missing out on.  I am not sure how much you can fault the filmmakers for this, because it would have been next to impossible to properly do it without creating useless scenes of forced expository dialogue.  I do think back to Joss Whedon’s Serentity as a great example of quickly and organically introducing the various personalities, but such execution is one in a million.

As the story rolled along, a tale of a former teenage super sleuth named Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) returning to her home town and getting sucked back into the life of an investigator, it eventually began to feel as though it was coming into its own.  During the first act it seemed as though it was having a hard time shaking the television show vibe, but before I knew it I was sucked right into the life and times of the residents of Neptune, California as there was a murder to be solved.  There was nothing abrupt about this transition; it was more or less a gentle easing into the ethos that the TV series had created.  These issues that I am mentioning about from the beginning of the film were nothing of distraction, but just more of a real tonal difficulty that I (as an outsider to this world) had to be walked through.

What was really fun about this movie was the script and how the cast was able to deliver it.  There were some great pop culture references, some funny little one liners, and an ability to begin making the characters more well-rounded throughout the course of the film.  As well, we are treated to a top notch cameo from James Franco, who portrays himself.  Despite being in the movie for only a brief portion, his appearance goes a long way in disarming folks like myself who are feeling like an outsider, and it allows us to let our guards down, have a good laugh, and begin feeling like a fellow fan of the show.

The main story was engaging, yet there was a major secondary plot development that took place which felt a little out of nowhere at times.  While it had its own resolution, it did not serve the main plot line and I was left wondering if it was more to create some closure for existing plots from the television show.  Even though it felt a little too separated from the rest of the on-screen happenings, it was still not jarring enough to really be lessen the enjoyment of the movie.

As a whole, the film succeeded in presenting something that a person who is completely unaware of the original source material could become engaged in and enjoy.  The ending proved to do a good job of satisfying the audience of fans, as well as leaving myself with a feeling of proper resolution and journey.  I was an outsider at the opening credits, but by the time the movie came to a conclusion I would now consider myself a fan.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars