Reviews

While I try to work up the moral fortitude to finish that blog entry that was scuttled by wayward internet connections, allow me to give you snapshot reviews of four movies I watched today (by sneaking into theaters, yes). It’s an interesting smattering, and I have thoughts on each:

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox—absolutely delightful. Completely charming and wonderful. Wes Anderson is a director I’m growing to deeply admire, as he has such a unique voice, and expresses it tangibly in the production of the film. Hack directors will try to compensate for blandness with crazy camera moves, but Anderson’s touch is in every costume, every piece of set dressing. This film, although stop-motion animated, is no different. The story revolves around a cunning fox who pines for his former life as a chicken thief. Forced by his saintly wife into an honest profession, Fox can’t help but slip back into old habits, with disastrous and hilarious results.

The golden question for parents (Brady and Holly, I’m sure you’re interested here) is: “Can I bring my kids?” The second golden question is, “Will I want to end my life once I do?” The answers are yes and no. “Fox” is suitable for all ages, and adults will have a lovely time. I do admit, though, that I’m very curious how an actual child would react to this thing. Unlike a Pixar film, whose sensibilities are always very straightforward and earnest, “Fox” is a profoundly ironic film. It doesn’t wink quietly at the parents, it just winks at everybody, and I wonder if the kid audience will be left feeling kind of ignored. Make no mistake, this movie isn’t really for your kids, it’s for you. It’s completely clean, has tons of adventure and talking animals, and supplies a deliciously upbeat ending (to the tune of Boby Fuller Four’s “Let Her Dance,” which I have promptly acquired on iTunes), but nonetheless there’s nothing covert about how sophisticated the humor is. I think it’s possible that kids will be slightly confused by this film, but they won’t be able to explain why.

On the other hand, and I can’t stress this enough, it’s just a wonderful film. The music, both original and soundtrack, is absolutely delightful, the acting (supporting cast includes Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman, etc) is terrific, and story has just the right twist of sardonic wit and sadness to make things interesting. There’s a painfully human story at this film’s core about dying legends, heroes with personalities too large for everyday life. It’s territory that “The Incredibles” explored as well, but “Fox” is more deft in its conclusion…which is to say it doesn’t have one. There’s an ending, all right, and a happy-go-lucky one at that, but the very last shot before the credits leaves a wry question mark on the proceedings. I’ll leave you to see it for yourselves and discuss.

2. Ninja Assassin—Crap. I’m really angry about how bad this movie was. Someone owes me some kind of apology.

3. The Road—as a person who read the book, I was reasonably pleased with this interpretation. John Hillcoat was a pretty solid decision for the director’s chair, although he retains a few bad habits from “The Proposition” which he should have done away with. The biggest one is music. Like his previous film, he brought Nick Cave in to do the score, and two problems result: first, the score isn’t good. Second, it’s in the film way too often. Anyone who’s read Cormac McCarthy’s original knows that there should be scarcely a drop of music in this movie, and yet they plastered cues all over it. Mistake. The other bad habit he couldn’t seem to shake was voice over narration. As I was listening to it, I became profoundly annoyed at how the simple, effective imagery lying underneath it was being smothered. Most of the time, Mortensen’s half-hearted dictations were explaining things I would have known anyway from what I was seeing. We see the father walking along with his son, and the narrator helpfully explains: “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect the boy” (or something like that). I just rolled my eyes and went, “No, really? I couldn’t freaking tell.” What’s the point of staging a scene, composing the blocking, adjusting the body language of the actors, and picking the angle of your camera, if you’re not going to let all of those elements do their jobs?

Still, they really did evoke the desolation of the novel quite well, and I especially commend their gentle tweaking of the book’s pacing to keep things sharp and satisfying. Both stories have a very uneven flow, every turn of the plot is surprising and yet logical, but in McCarthy’s take this sometimes resulted in a front-loaded, anticlimactic experience. The movie maintains all the major beats, almost in exact order, and yet deftly avoids this problem by systematically reducing the downtime between each one until there isn’t any. By the end, every scene is a gripping standoff, even if that standoff involves far fewer people than the ones in the beginning. This technique works wonders, and provides what I think is a slightly more efficient narrative flow. Acting also goes a long way, Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee work hard to increase the sense of desperation and fear as the story progresses. The latter is a decent child actor, but not the best I’ve seen recently (that goes to the kids in “2012″), and it did feel like his acting had an invisible ceiling of intensity it couldn’t get past. Mortensen was note-perfect, but of course he was. Robert Duvall also shows up and does stupendous work. Again, not exactly shocking.

All told, the book is still better, but I think the team behind this flick succeeded admirably anyway. Not only did they do a respectable job, they found a few areas where they could make improvements to their Pulitzer-Prize-winning material, and that ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.

4. New Moon—…yeah, we saw it. Does “morbid curiosity” mean anything to you? Let me be frank here: this is not a good movie, but “Ninja Assassin” was far worse. It’s corny and stupid, sure, but it also held my interest the entire time, and I found myself more involved than I’d care to admit. I think your reaction to “New Moon” will be dictated by your previous experience. If you’ve never seen “Twilight,” you’re going to laugh your head off and hate it. If you have seen the previous film, and I have, most likely you will walk out of the theater quite surprised at how far they’ve come. Yes, I said “how far they’ve come.” Go watch the first one and then we’ll talk. The original entry to this series was a ship with no one at the wheel, veering wildly in the winds of indecision. The special effects were insulting, the dialogue was ridiculous, and the tone was all over the place. It was just shoddy work in general.

“New Moon” is a much more careful piece of film making, everything has the feel of actual effort. I know some of you can’t believe what you’re hearing right now, but I need you to take a deep breath and try to make the distinction between a “bad” movie and a movie that’s simply not designed for you. “Twilight” was a bad movie, “New Moon” just isn’t for me. It’s a soap opera with werewolves and vampires, but it owns that identity and has no illusions about it. It’s corny, but on purpose, and that does make all the difference. The dialogue sucks a lot less, the special effects are actually good, and the tone maintains much more smoothly. Chris Weitz taking over behind the camera was a smart move, he seems in control here.

I feel fortunate to have seen “Twilight” and “Ninja Assassin” before this movie, because those disappointing experiences have allowed me to observe virtues in this movie I would not have noticed otherwise. By the end of “Assassin,” I had thrown my hands in the air. There were no characters anywhere in the movie, no story, nothing made any sense, the fight scenes were incomprehensible, I was so frustrated I didn’t know what to say. When “New Moon” landed on its closing credits, I was laughing my head off, but I was also having a perfectly good time. There were characters. There was a story. I could tell what was going on. Add to that a complete lack of pretension and a light, breezy pace, and you get a film I absolutely do not hate. We men are allowed to have our B-movies. If “New Moon” is the B-movie for girls, I am fine with that.

It reminds me of my brother’s review of “The Matrix Revolutions” all those years ago: “People told me it was terrible, but it’s not. It’s just kind of dumb.”