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January 23, 2009
A QUICK ONE
A FEW QUICK MOVIE REVIEWS
It's been a while, kids. Here are the movies I saw since December:
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: Depending on how you look at it, it's either a charming fairy tale or the latest manipulative attempt to use an impoverished country for dramatic and visual effect. I was not a huge fan of the spate of films a few years back that adopted the "callow Westerner has a life-changing experience with Africa as a backdrop." But it seems stupid to apply that criticism to SLUMDOG, with its intense focus on the experience of living in these slums. Is it commercialized and dramatized? Somewhat. But there's something refreshing about Danny Boyle making a movie and not a travelogue or an intense experience in suffering with no narrative to ground it. Some found its structure manipulative; I thought it was inspired. Some found its optimism contrived; I thought it was stirring.
Some movies are "critic-proof," but SLUMDOG is a pretty easy film to tear apart. When compared to something like CITY OF GOD, it lacks the realistic brutality and documentary feel that made Mereilles' film remarkable. Its storybook plot can come across as imposed on a setting that deserves revelation, not contrivance. Yet I'd argue that these contrivances don't diminish the problems of India - at times Boyle subtly shows how globalization changes everything, and rarely for the better. The naturalism is overwhelmed by the optimism, but it's still there in grim shots that remind us that Salim's story is the exception, not the rule.
But to be perfectly trite, SLUMDOG is as much a love letter to the human spirit as it is a reminder of what movies can be.
FROST / NIXON: I was pretty high on Ron Howard after CINDERELLA MAN - the kind of old Hollywood entertainment that's fewer and further between these days. So I was hoping he'd ride that success in the immensely intriguing F/N, my most anticipated movie of the Xmas season. While I enjoyed the performances, many of Howard's choices left me flat. Why, for instance, have talking heads explain what is happening on screen? Especially when what is happening can be revealed through the narrative?
Michael Mann would have nailed this movie - given it the sense of professionalism that he gave THE INSIDER. As it is, the movie suffers from a lack of context, which keeps the drama pretty slow. Thus it has to be carried by the titular characters, who pull it off as well as can be expected. Frank Langella is a marvelous Nixon - his sweaty not-charm is balanced by the realization that (he thinks) he has nothing to lose. But Michael Sheen is equally good as Frost.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON: I love David Fincher; I'm glad he exists. He is a visual stylist of the highest order, and his visuals always coalesce with whatever story he decides to tell. But why BUTTON? Why tell a story about a guy who ages backwards and have little of import happen to him? BUTTON is FORREST GUMP without the funny, and the main thing I liked about that movie was the funny. Fincher has never really proven that he can do "whimsy," and his latest film needed a bit of that. Instead, it feels like a lead weight. Benjamin searches for a father figure and ends up with a mother; yeah, I get it - but the movie plays like a poor man's BIG FISH.
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD - A disaster. Don't fall into the easy trap of trying to pin the blame on Kate and Leo. They're just doing what they're told: to be histrionic. Richard Yates' novel, one of my favorites, is remarkable because it resists the judgment that the reader wants to give it. But in Sam Mendes' surprisingly terrible adaptation, we're left hating Winslet and feeling sorry for Leo. (Really?! How did he get away with this? Kate W. seems like a pretty smart lady; why didn't she challenge them?) Not as good as the worst episode of MAD MEN, it hearkens shamelessly back to better films in hopes that we'll transpose those find memories for the dull melodrama we're watching. Yates the author had a way of seeing the way melodrama came from naturalistic means, and found an immense amount of compassion for two people who wanted more than they had. Perhaps because Leo and Kate are always reminding us of the kids they were, we keep responding to them like children rather than the adults they become.
Please read the book . . . it's much better than this movie.
| By Andytown | 11:39 PM
Comments
Of the four films you mention here, the only one I've seen thus far is BUTTON, and I couldn't agree more with your analysis of it; as one of my friends put it, the film played like one long CGI demo. The parallel you draw to GUMP is an apt one; that film made you care about its protagonist and want to follow his journey through the peaks and valleys of life, whereas BUTTON was a joyless, maudlin affair that often made you question the character's decisions (and by extension those of the filmmakers). To say nothing happens in it is to give idleness a bad name.
I like your takes on the other films, each of which I'm keen to see...really, the only quibble I have about your reviews is your endorsement of CINDERELLA MAN: where you saw it as a piece of old school Hollywood film-making, I thought it was hokey and more than a little bit contrived. But like Dennis Miller used to say (before he stopped being funny), that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
It usually takes quite a bit of motivation for me to plunk down the cash to see a flick in the theater (as opposed to waiting for it on Nexflix or whatever), but this current crop seems like a good one and should make things pretty interesting come Academy time. I notice you didn't mention THE WRESTLER, which is one I'm particularly interested in watching...from what the critics have been saying, Rourke's performance is a tour de force, and I really dig Aronofsky's work. If you haven't seen it yet, maybe we can catch a showing of it sometime soon, before the pressures of this grad school semester engulf us all...
Posted by: Anthony at January 27, 2009 11:21 AM
interesting that you mention liking Cinderella Man. Didnt I see that with you and you talked about you thought it was too storybook, and I argued that it indeed it was everything it intended to be, completely storybook?
remind me...
Posted by: Drew Holcomb at January 28, 2009 7:52 PM