“In Time,” a new sci fi film starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is as timely a movie as will be released this year. It’s an allegory for the haves and the have nots. In this case 1% of the population controls 99% of the world’s most precious commodity–time. Instead of occupying parks, however, our hero JT sets out get time back on his side.
This movie has a lot of time of its hands, or should I say forearms. “In Time” takes place in a world where people are genetically engineered to stop aging at twenty-five. Sounds like Eden, but this is a dystopian world where once the calendar clicks on your twenty-fifth birthday the clock starts ticking. Literally. A digital readout appears on your forearm and you have one year until time runs out. But, because time is money–again, literally–your wages top up your clock, buying more time. When a time millionaire willingly gives Will Salas (Timberlake) a century of his time, Salas finds himself on the run from the Time Keeper police and one step closer to discovering the secret link between immortality and poverty.
Insert the word “money” for “time” at any point during “In Time” and the story reveals how run-of-the-mill it is. Stripped of its sci fi premise it should have been an interesting comment on the divide between rich and poor but, is instead, content to be a tepid action film. Not smart enough to be an interesting metaphor and not wild enough to be a thriller it falls between the cracks.
JT hands in a performance that makes you wish he would bring the sexy back. The more leads he does in movies, the more i can’t help but think his triumph in “The Social Network” was some kind of fluke.
But, as bad as the movie is Amanda Seyfried somehow remains compelling. She is so unusual looking, like an alien cupie doll, and that otherworldliness gives some flavor to her disconnected rich girl character.
Neither is helped by a script which provides as many unintentional laughs as genuine ones and whose idea of witty banter is: “You forget I almost killed you a few times.” “I’m willing to overlook that.”
“In Time” has an interesting-ish premise, but unfortunately there is not enough quality time in the movie to earn a recommend.
As you may have guessed from the title “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is an odd movie. Directed by Terry Gilliam, it is the strange tale of a mysterious immortal who complicates his life by making deals with the devil. Complicating Gilliam’s life during production was the unexpected death of his star Heath Ledger but, the show, as they say, must go on and here we are after the untimely January 2008 passing of the young actor, with a completed film. How did Gilliam finish the movie? A new credit, “A Film from Heath Ledger and Friends” tells the tale. Three of Ledger’s buddies, Johnny Depp (seen dancing on a leaf!), Colin Farrell and Jude Law, stepped in to play “through the looking glass” versions of the late actor.
Set in present day London the film begins with a look at Doctor Parnassus’s (Christopher Plummer) bizarre traveling show which offers people a chance to step through Dr.P’s magical mirror into an alternate reality. He’s selling imagination, but his gift of mind’s eye manipulation came with a heavy price. Eons before he made a trade with the devil (Tom Waits)—remarkable power in exchange for his first born daughter on her sixteenth birthday. That anniversary is now days away but with the help of a mysterious stranger named Tony (played by Ledger, Depp Law and Farrell) and the magic mirror Dr. P just may be able to save her.
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is more a piece of surrealist art than a traditional movie. Imagine watching a Salvador Dali painting come to life and you’ll get the idea. Gilliam, who co-wrote the script as well as directed, has allowed his imagination to run riot. While the story meanders to and fro he fills the screen with unforgettable images; Old Nick dangling Dr. P from the end of a branch or a multi-eyed hot air balloon shaped like a man’s head or the ensemble of skirt wearing, dancing Bobbies. Visually it’ll make your eyeballs do the Watusi.
The story, however, may leave some a bit baffled, but so what if it warps the brain a bit? The film oozes Gilliam’s trademarked anarchic spirit—he might be the only filmmaker who could replace his leading man with three other actors and actually pull it off—and is the most original movie of the year.
“Rise of the Guardians” takes familiar characters and transports them into a modern 3D fairy tale, complete with superhero nicknames. Santa becomes North, the Boogeymen is Pitch and the Sandman is Andy. OK the last one doesn’t sound all that superhero-ish, but the nap maker is the most mysterious and capable of the bunch of them. He’s definitely not sleeping on the job.
North (voice of Alec Baldwin) is the leader of the Guardians, a group of childhood fantasies come to life, whose job it is to protect the kids of the world—when they aren’t busy providing wonder and awe by exchanging quarters for teeth, ensuring good dreams and organizing Easter egg hunts, that is. When old enemy Pitch, (voice of Jude Law) reemerges, the Guardians put aside their daily duties and reunite.
Assigned a new recruit, Jack Frost (Chris Pine), by Manny (or the Man in the Moon as he is more formally known), some of the Guardians find it hard to accept a new member. “All he does is freeze pipes,” says the Easter Bunny, but despite the icy mayhem Jack seems to inspire everywhere he goes, he has a warm heart. He is search for meaning in his life, “I’ve tried everything but no one can see me,” he says. He’s on a quest for identity, to be recognized, and soon discovers the Guardians–and Pitch–hold may hold the key to his locked down memories.
“Rise of the Guardians” is beautifully animated. From the ethereal unicorns that lull Sandman’s kids to sleep to the darker vision of the Boogeyman’s horses–the personification of fear and bad dreams–it is guaranteed to spin your eyeballs around in their sockets. The details are lush, the character work beautiful even for the minor characters—if there is a sequel expect North’s army of Yetis and clumsy elves to become major characters—and there is a good message about believing in yourself as you believe in others.
But there is also some grim in this fairy tale. Despite the presence of the Easter Bunny and the lovable and delicate Tooth Fairy the movie contains some images that may upset younger viewers. Pitch’s dark legion of wild-eyed horses may have the intended trick—to inspire nightmares in kids–and a detail in Jack’s backstory is intense, so judge your child’s ability to process the scares before shelling out for tickets for the whole family.
“Rise of the Guardians” is about keeping the wonder of kid’s lives intact, but the animators have also done a good job of transferring some of that wonder onto the screen.
Like last year’s “Repo: The Genetic Opera,” this weekend’s “Repo Men” is set in a dystopian world where health care is a corporate game. Unlike the opera, which starred Paris Hilton and featured a noise-rock soundtrack, this one stars Jude Law and Forest Whittaker as two violent organ repossession agents who kill their clients to complete their jobs. That is, until one of them literally has a change of heart.
Set in the near future (in a city that looks very much like Toronto on steroids) “Repo Men” centers on two weapons grade repo men, Remy and Jake, played by Law and Whittaker. They work for The Union, a multinational health care provider who sell artificial organs—everything from hearts and lungs to esophagi—to terminally ill people who are usually unable to pay in full. That’s just fine by The Union, because, according to their unctuous head salesman Frank (Liev Schreiber), they don’t make any money when people pay in full. Their motto of “a job is a job” regardless of the consequences takes a hit when Remy gets a new pumper, a new attitude and falls behind in his payments.
Originally titled “The Repossession Mambo,” after a novel of the same name, I’m sure “Repo Men” was meant to be a timely comment on health care in a world where corporations place profit above human lives. It’s a timely message, and one that might have been explored a bit more in a better movie, or at least a movie that wasn’t content to replace content with blood and guts. The film is either a.) really gross or b.) marvelously bloody depending on your point of view.
There are several squirm inducing repossession scenes involving open wounds and a shootout in an all white room that leads up to a sequence that can only be called “squirty,” is startling. All that brings us to a spectacularly yucky repossession climax and a cool twist (ed) ending.
Law and Whittaker are odd choices to headline an action movie. Despite some good moves—Whittaker is a martial artist and Law has clearly been visiting the gym—neither feel like action stars on the screen. Liev Schreiber, seen here as a heartless pencil pusher, might have been a better choice in the action department, but shines anyway as the slimiest salesman ever.
“Repo Men” has a campy sense of humor to it, some wild action sequences, a cool looking vision of the future, and an unforgettable final repossession / sex scene, but ultimately fails because it can’t make up its mind whether it is satire, black comedy or serious look at the failings of health care.
Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar winning director of “Traffic” and nominee for “Erin Brockovich” is one of the most versatile filmmakers working today. From the art house pleasures of “Che: Parts 1 & 2” to the blockbuster business he did with “Ocean’s 11, 12 & 13” to the introspection of “The Girlfriend Experience,” he’s a master of all genres.
Add to that list “Side Effects,” a new pharmaceutical thriller starring Rooney Mara and Jude Law, which brings the immaculate filmmaking of the above mentioned titles to a potboiler plot that feels like its been sitting on Soderbergh’s to-do list since 1985.
When we first meet Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) it’s just days before her husband (Channing Tatum) is to be released from a four-year-prison stint for insider trading. Their life is about to go back to normal, but it soon becomes clear that Emily is troubled. A suicide attempt brings her to the attention of psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law). She tells him of her lifelong struggle with depression—“a poisonous fog bank that rolls over her mind”—and he prescribes a new drug to help her find equilibrium.
“It doesn’t make you anything you aren’t,” he tells her. “It just makes it easier to be yourself.”
The side effects of the drug, however, include nausea and vomiting, allergic reactions, drowsiness, sleepwalking and criminal behavior. Emily’s erratic conduct while on the drug not only turns her life upside down, but Dr. Banks’s as well.
Saying any more than that would take some of the pleasure away from letting the plot unfold. Besides, detailing the ins-and-outs of the twisty-turny script by Scott Z. Burns would take up the rest of the space I have allotted for this review. You can’t accuse Soderbergh of scrimping on dramatic plot developments, but is it too much?
It all feels very much like the thrillers that used to pack ‘em in at the local bijou in the mid-eighties. Movies like “Jagged Edge” that featured unpredictable plots and elaborate confession montages.
So while it is true that Soderbergh can’t be faulted for not including enough texture in the story, it must also be noted that layers for the sake of layers isn’t always a good thing. The story, which could have been an interesting comment on a broken medical system, or professional misconduct, instead becomes unnecessarily cluttered.
The performances, howevre, are uniformly great. Quick! Somebody buy Mara some Gatorade because she sheds a river of tears—no, make that an ocean—in a performance that is understated but chillingly effective.
Law is terrific as a man whose life is almost torn apart. Luckily he’s left the horrible fake teeth of “Contagion,” his last outing with Soderbergh, at home, replacing them with serious chops playing a man racked with paranoia and anger.
“Side Effects” is a confounding movie because it is beautifully made. Soderbergh strings us along so well in the first hour only to allow the melodrama to win out in the last reel.
Robert Downey Jr.’s entrance in the opening minute of “Sherlock Holmes”—he leaps off a buttress, effortlessly rolls down a set of stairs stopping just in time for the camera to catch his close-up—suggests that this isn’t your father’s—or your grandfather’s or mom’s or anybody else’s—Sherlock Holmes. The ensuing kung fu battle and satanic ritual confirms it.
Set in 1891 the story centers on Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law), doctor, war veteran and best friend, getting to the bottom of a case involving the supernatural, an ex-flame (Rachel McAdams) of the great detective, The House of Lords and deadly cult leader named Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). It plays like Holmes meets “The DaVinci Code.”
With “Sherlock Holmes” director Guy Ritchie has created the darkest movie of the Christmas season. Mimicking the depressing fog and industrial smoke that colored Victorian London, he’s made a drab and dreary looking movie that never met a shade of gray it didn’t like. That would be fine if the story or the performances added some color to the film, but unfortunately for Holmes (and for the audience) not only is “Sherlock Holmes’s” color palate a bit monochromatic but the whole film is a little on the dull side.
The story is suitably convoluted for a Holmes story, there is plenty of intrigue, much deducing and loads of clues, trouble is, nothing much happens. The game may be a-foot but it feels more like a loose collection of action sequences bound together by some witty “Odd Couple” style banter between the leads and Downey’s quirky performance.
Downey plays Holmes like a cross between Robert Langdon and a Victorian street urchin. Apparently being brilliant means you don’t have to wash. Or tuck your shirt in. Or shave or clean your fingernails. Downey throws out the image of the debonair Basil Rathbone Holmes in a deerstalker hat for something much more bohemian. In fact, it’s closer to the description of the detective offered up in Conan Doyle’s books and short stories. Downey plays the role with suitable gusto (and acceptable English accent), but is let down by a script that is a non-starter.
Downey has good chemistry with Jude Law but the same can’t be said for Rachel McAdams as his love interest. Guy Ritchie isn’t known for his way with female characters and “Sherlock Holmes” and she suffers for it. The movie wastes McAdams in a damsel in distress role that requires her to do little other than leer in Holmes’s general direction. She’s more a plot point than a character and it’s a shame to see McAdams wasted like that. She gets lost in the über-maleness of it all.
“Sherlock Holmes” gets the spirit of Holmes but doesn’t deliver the goods. Big budget action scenes are sprinkled throughout, but even the huge set pieces like the fight in the shipyard—which must have cost a fortune—contains no drama and the only real mystery here is how Guy Ritchie managed to take good elements—like Robert Downey Jr and Sherlock Holmes, one of the most popular characters of the last one hundred years—and make such a lackluster movie.
Don’t call it a remake of the classic 1972 film based on Anthony Shaffer’s stage play which starred Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier as two men locked in a tricky and sometimes vicious game of verbal one-upmanship. No, the new Sleuth, penned by the Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter, has, for better and for worse, only a passing relationship with the original.
In the new film, directed by Kenneth Branagh, Caine graduates to the role of Andrew Wyke, the oddball crime novelist originally essayed by Olivier. Jude Law is Milo Tindle, an out of work actor and the paramour of Wyke’s estranged wife. When Milo visits Andrew at his eccentric country mansion to convince him to grant his wife a divorce the pair engage in a power struggle. Each man is pushed to his emotional limit, but who will come out on top?
The first thing you’ll notice about Sleuth is that it looks great. Branagh has set the entire movie in Wyke’s house, a strange and wonderful place that looks like a cross between The Jetson’s living room and a museum tableau of 21st century furniture design. Filled with stylish but uncomfortable looking chairs and filled with sharp edges, it perfectly captures the prickly, uneasy feel of the script.
Pinter has crafted a script that seems deceptively simple on its face, but reveals much for those willing to dig a little deeper. As the two actors parry back and forth even a line as innocuous as “Would you like a drink? I’m having vodka,” becomes laden with meaning. It would be a throw-away line in any other script, but here, as Wyke offers Milo a cocktail it reveals much about his character. He’s the perfect host, but also a controlling one. When he says “I’m having vodka,” it’s a passive aggressive way of suggesting that Milo also have a vodka. It also sets him up as a egomaniac. Who cares what he’s having? Certainly not Milo, but Wyke feels the need to announce everything in his life, even the most banal tidbits as if they were fascinating nuggets of wisdom.
Caine perfectly captures the rhythms of Pinter’s dialogue. He is to Pinter what Madonna is to the pointy bra. That is he was born to say those words. Law less so. The first hour of Sleuth crackles with snappy wordplay, humor and the two actors seem to relish every second of screen time, particularly Caine who fully embodies the Wyke’s English eccentric character.
Regrettably as the running time creeps up to the hour-and-a-half mark the story takes an unfortunate turn into psycho drama, and while Caine shines, Law’s work becomes over-the-top and even a bit screechy. His transformation in the movie’s final third didn’t work for me, and threatens to sink the entire film. Luckily Caine’s strong performance anchors the final moments of the movie.
Sleuth is a flawed, but interesting movie and worth the price of admission to see Michael Caine, one of film’s great actors, really strut his stuff.
Jude Law (reunited with director Anthony Minghella for a third time) plays a world-weary architect who reevaluates his life following a series of break-ins at his office. Determined to recover his stolen laptop, which contains his “whole life,” he embarks on an unorthodox investigation that leads to an affair with the mother of a suspect. Breaking and Entering is a multi-layered story about immigration in the new England, the fragility of relationships and how a mother’s love trumps all. It’s a bit too ambitious, casting its net too wide to fully explore all of these topics, but steady direction from Minghella and top-flight performances from co-stars Ray Winstone and Juliette Binoche save the day.
The release of All the King’s Men is the kick-off to awards season. When the weather cools and the leaves start to turn the blockbusters and popcorn movies that clogged up the multiplexes in the summer make way for more serious-minded movies, the kind of movies that win awards.
All the King’s Men is perfect Oscar-bait. It’s based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, which was turned into Oscar’s Best Picture of 1949. The new version features a cast with no less than a dozen Oscar nominations and a few wins between them. That’s quite a pedigree. Too bad the movie doesn’t live up to its legacy.
Sean Penn plays Willie Stark, loosely based on Louisiana governor Huey P. Long. When we meet Willie he is a hick-town county treasurer who risks his job to fight corruption at Town Hall. When he reveals that a construction firm used bribery to land a contract to build a school, a school with a faulty fire escape that collapsed, killing three children, he becomes something of a folk hero. When he is approached to run for governor, he accepts, running on a “man of the people” platform that wins him favor with a large constituency that had never been considered before—rural farmers and landowners. His fiery speeches and populist politics win him the election, but his flamboyant style earns him many enemies in high places. It soon becomes clear that Willie is as corrupt and power hungry as the men he replaced.
The first hint that All the King’s Men is being positioned as an important movie with a capital “I” is the overwrought score by James Horner. This is big, orchestral film music in which violins swell as if heralding the second coming. It seems out of place, considering much of the film takes place in rural Louisiana. Perhaps a score that utilized Cajun and blues music might have been more appropriate. A few accordions, an old washboard and a swampy guitar would have created a sense of place and atmosphere that booming violins cannot.
But the music isn’t the only thing that seems overwrought. Sean Penn is a fine actor, but here he is so over-the-top it is as if he is acting in a different movie than the rest of the cast. He gives us Willie Stark in a vein-popping, arm-waving performance that suggests that maybe he should lay-off the Red Bull.
Next to his eye-popping performance the rest of the cast kind of disappears. Jude Law is serviceable as Stark’s right-hand man; Anthony Hopkins turns in one of his patented old codger performances, but Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo are both wasted in small roles that require little from either of them.
It pains me to thrash All the King’s Men because I think it is a movie that aspired to greatness, that tried to have something important to say, and Hollywood could really use more movies that aim high. But in the end All the King’s Men’s lofty aspirations simply make its failure so much more acute.
