Movie Reviews

Ok, this post should catch me up with reviews of the big films I saw since mid December. I'll try to keep up writing more individual reviews.

Pina - This was nominated as Best Documentary and I hadn't heard of it. All I knew was that it was about dance and it was directed by Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire). I know nothing about (particularly modern) dance and had no reference for the title. The film is structured around several big modern dance performances and a few small ones by one or two people. These are intercut with the dancers being interviewed about their mentor Pina and by interviewed I mean the camera shows their faces while a voice over (I assume was their own voice) says a few sentences (which I had to read as subtitles). Maybe I've been too influenced by Werner Herzog but I was wondering if Pina was real or fictional. Apparently it was acclaimed and recently German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch and her management style was similar to Steve Jobs; just a few words of direction and a demand for excellence. The film is less a documentary about than a tribute to, it's really a performance film. Some of the dances are intense and mesmerizing, others I felt like I just didn't have the background to understand. What was evident was the skill of the dancers, many of who were with Pina for 20+ years. Some of the leaps and falls they did were frighteningly fearless. I saw it in 3D and it did a good job of using it to define the spaces for the performances.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - I have read the book nor have I seen the Alec Guiness BBC version. I knew to expect a more cerebral spy story rather than anything Bond-like and I was looking forward to that. I think the ads are pushing it as a spy thriller and it's really more of a mystery. It's set in the 70s and Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, a recently retired top spy in the British Secret Service. He's brought back in to hunt for a mole in the upper levels of the service. There are a lot of characters (suspects) and rather than action it's mostly people talking in rooms. I was engaged through all of it though I found it simple. Smiley goes from one person to the next getting the info he needs to get to the next person. And then there's a giant leap that seems completely unexplained. Someone I saw it with thought she fell asleep and missed something, though she hadn't. Apparently the book is the same way, given the things that Smiley observes, you're supposed to piece it together as he does. I think that's much easier to do in a book than in a film, particularly in a theater. I liked it, but it's very low key and I don't really understand all the extreme praise I've seen.

Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows - Very much like the first one; I liked this one a little better. It's a bit more action and less banter between Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) which is the opposite of what I'd want, but I thought the ending made up for it. This one introduces Moriarity as the villain and the inevitable confrontation was more thoughtful than I expected.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - I really appreciate how Tom Cruise has run this series, finding a director he likes and giving them free reign. This time it's Pixar's Brad Bird's turn, in his first non-animated film. He definitely brings the excitement from The Incredibles to the IMF. My one complaint with the film series is it seems like every time they get disavowed, something else would be nice. This film like the others is a series of big set pieces. There's a lot of crazy equipment but it's all used in a way to make the scenes more exciting. The middle of the film is the Dubai sequence which is shown in the all the commercials. It's the most giddy fun I've had in the movies since Inception. The last sequence went a little to far on the suspension of disbelief scale for me but overall it's a lot of fun. It's a fine summer action and I have no idea why it came in December.

The Muppets - Jason Segel is a big muppet fan and wrote a screenplay and convinced Disney to revive this brand they bought and let lie fallow. Segel stars as Gary who's brother is a (new) muppet named Walter who is an enormous fan of the muppets. They take a trip to LA with Gary's girlfriend (Amy Adams) and one thing leads to another and their helping the muppets get back together and put on a big show in too little time to save their theatre. What else would the plot be? It works well as a muppet film, with lots of guest stars, and I laughed every time Beaker was on camera and a few times more. It's one of only two films up for Best Song.

The Adventures of Tintin - Spielberg's first animated film and first 3D film is based on classic Belgian comics by Hergé. I've only read one of the comics and it was a while ago so I wasn't a huge fan going into the film. I had a hard time engaging with this and I'm not sure why. I didn't relate to the characters very much. Tintin struck me as very naive, and the villain was rather generic. I know Captain Haddock is supposed to be a drunkard but I found so much of this revolved around getting him sober or drunk to remember things that happened in his past. He seemed far more annoying rather than charming. The Thompson twins were really stupid and Snowy the dog was by far the smartest character around. It's an adventure story involving some treasure and there are some big chase sequences where Spielberg really makes use of animation. The camera flies around doing things that would be impossible in real life and the 3D generally works well for this. I don't know why but rather than being enthralled I found myself waiting for the set pieces to end so that we could get back to the plot. Maybe it was because it was obvious no one would be hurt and how they would end, with whatever artifact being the possession of whichever character was needed to further the story.

Hugo - Scorcese's first family film and first 3D film is based on an illustrated story, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Hugo is an orphan living in a train station in 1920s Paris. He lives with his drunk uncle who cares for the clocks and he longs to repair a mysterious mechanical man his father left him. The first half is the setup with a limping station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) chasing Hugo (Asa Butterfield) through the station and with Hugo making a friend of young Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) who's the daughter of a shop keeper (Sir Ben Kingsley) in the station. The second half weaves in the story of Georges Méliès the real life pioneer of early cinema who created many special effects and is best known for his film A Trip to the Moon. I've seen a few reviews where people like either the first or second half better but there's no consensus. For me the second half is where the film came to life, being something more than just an obvious adventure story. The characters are a bit weak and people either love or hate Cohen's inspector. It's up for 11 Oscars which is a large number considering none of them are for acting awards (basically for everything other than song or makeup). It also seems fair.

A Dangerous Method - David Cronenberg's film about Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) is based on a play based on a book. It centers around a real life patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly) who was treated by Jung using Freud's methods and eventually became an early psychoanalyst. She became close with Jung and it's not clear if this is historically accurate, but the film argues she had a sexual relationship with him and that contributed to Jung's falling out with Freud. Knightly's performance is filled with over-the-top physicality which contrasts with the constraint of both Fassbender and Mortensen. The film is talky but doesn't reveal too much of either man's theories. Without the credits I would not have known that Cronenberg directed this so perhaps this shallowness was purposeful and I just missed the point. But to me it emphasized the lurid details of Spielrein's story and Jung and Freud's split and assumes knowledge of the parts of consequence.

Young Adult - Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman, the write director pair from Juno, re-team for this feel-bad film. Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is a young adult novelist living in Minneapolis who's recently divorced and completely maladjusted. She drinks to excess and has one night stands and is completely lost. She goes back to her nearby home town to reconnect with her high school sweetheart Buddy (Patrick Wilson) who's a bit simple but happily married and has just had his first child. Mavis views this as a situation she can rescue him from. Yeah, she's sociopathic. This is a dark comedy so the main character is unlikable and it's serious so she doesn't change much. She's still the "psychotic prom queen bitch" she was almost 20 years ago. See that's why she writes young adult novels and the film is called Young Adult, she hasn't outgrown high school. Patton Oswalt plays Matt, the character we can (kind of) relate to. He was a nerd in high school and is still living in the past but that's because he got the name "hate crimes guy" for a reason, so we can feel more (sorry) for him. The performances in this film, particularly Theron and Oswalt, are very good and quite brave in roles that are difficult to pull off, I just didn't care for the experiment. See how bad high school was and how we really shouldn't make that the center of our lives? Yup got it. And if you didn't notice, every TV in this movie is tuned to an E! ! reality show starring a Kardashian or a Girl Next Door. See, those shows are stuck in high school too and we shouldn't be watching them either! Yup, got it.