A new young adult film based on a best selling series of books is set in a world where diversity is frowned upon; sort of like Arizona without the dry heat.
In “Divergent” a Big Brother style government has divided the post-apocalyptic Chicago into five factions: the altruistic Abnegation sect, the peace loving Amity, the “I cannot tell a lie” Candor group, the militaristic arm Dauntless and the smarty-pants Erudites.
At age sixteen all citizens must submit to a personality test that will help them decide which faction they will join. “The future belongs to those who know where they belong,” is the Orwellian motto.
Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) is from an Abnegation family, but chooses to join Dauntless, the warrior faction charged with protecting the city. During the grueling training “Tris” meets future love interest Four (Theo James) who helps her disguise the fact that she is “divergent,” a person who cannot be pigeonholed into just one designation. “If you don’t fit into a category they can’t control you,” she is told.
“Divergent” feels like a greatest hits version of recent young adult stories. Mixing and matching “Hunger Games” with a taste of “Harry Potter” and a splash of “Twilight,” results in a new story that feels familiar, like a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist.
The film does take pains in the first hour to establish a world, with a unique set of rules—like once you choose a faction you can’t go back—and then promptly proceeds to break their own guidelines. The disregard for the rubrics blunts the power of the story, changing it from a high concept sci fi idea to simply a shifting situation for the characters to exist in. It’s a state of affairs passing itself off as an idea.
That won’t matter to the film’s core audience, teens, who will be more interested in Tris’s grrrl power, the dynamic of the Dauntless recruits and Four, the movie’s heart throb. Director Neil Burger aptly juggles all these elements well, and despite the plot lapses and some bloodless action—a zip line aerial scene that should be visually spectacular doesn’t make the eyeballs dance like it could—but the film is a little darker and grittier than you’d expect from a blockbuster-to-be. It would have been interesting to see what a director with true futuristic vision, like Terry Gilliam, could have done with the material, but ultimately it’s not about dystopia.
The young adult story thrives off subtext and in this case it is more about family, being yourself and facing fears, all subjects that will resonate with the target audience louder than any sci fi premise.
“Divergent” is “Hunger Games” light, but Woodley and James bring some heat to the leads and it’s fun watching Kate Winslet sneering her way through a villainous role.
Based on Joyce Maynard’s novel of the same name, the action in “Labor Day” begins when a wounded, escaped criminal (Josh Brolin) hides out in the home of two strangers, Adele (Kate Winslet), a depressed divorcee and her thirteen year old son Henry (Gattlin Griffith). What begins as a hostage situation slowly changes as the stranger’s sensitive side is revealed and he becomes a surrogate father figure for Henry and companion for Adele.
It’s been said that ninety percent of the director’s job is casting, and on that score director Jason Reitman has knocked it out of the park. “Labor Day” is essentially a three hander with Winslet, Brolin and Griffith responsible for the emotional weight of the movie.
Griffith is convincing as a youngster abruptly placed in the position of son and surrogate spouse, but it is the leads who really carry the movie. Winslet is delicate and effective as the world-weary Adele while Brolin hands in another of his manly man performances, tempered by a hidden sensitive side that manifests itself in many ways.
He does chores around the house, cooks, becomes a stand-in dad to Henry and in one scene, which is sure to divide audiences, he teaches Adele to bake a peach pie.
I liked the pie sequence. I don’t want to give anything away for people who haven’t seen the movie, but imagine the scene from “Ghost” with pastry instead of pottery and you’ll get the idea. It’s just wonky enough to spice up the story, and I thought Brolin pulled it off. Of all the leading men out there right now he’s the only one I can think of to have the old school Lee Marvin grit to still look badass while folding pastry.
The movie takes place over one long weekend and takes its time developing the relationship between Adele and the mysterious stranger. Because Reitman is very deliberate in his storytelling it’s a bit more believable than the story might otherwise have been. You’re left with the question, “Is it Stockholm Syndrome or true love?”
Either way, it is a compelling, if slightly far-fetched tale, of the kinds of connections people make.
In my review for the recent remake of Oldboy I wrote, “There is no more manly-man actor in the mold of Lee Marvin or Lee Van Cleef working today.”
I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise given that he was named after the rough-and-tumble character Josh Randall played by Steve McQueen in TV’s Wanted: Dead or Alive.
In Oldboy he’s so tough he’s a practically indestructible force of nature; able to withstand physical punishment that would make Grigori Rasputin look like a wimp.
The tough guy angle is one Brolin plays in a number of films, including his latest Labor Day. He plays an escaped convict who hides out in the home of a depressed, widowed agoraphobic, played by Kate Winslet. Over the course of one long holiday weekend she learns of his dangerous past and before you can say the words Stockholm Syndrome has fallen for the ruggedly handsome stranger.
It’s the kind of role that Brolin has mastered; the multi-layered tough guy but according to him, he doesn’t seek out those roles.
He says he wracks his “brain like crazy trying to figure out which films I wanted to be in.”
Some of those films include No Country for Old Men and Jonah Hex.
In the Oscar nominated No Country he plays down-on-his-luck Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles across the site of a drug deal gone wrong. Bullet-ridden dead men litter the landscape along with several kilos of heroin and a suitcase stuffed with two million dollars in cash. When he makes off with the money his life and the lives of those around him are changed forever.
Jonah Hex didn’t earn any Oscar nods, but did get some Razzie attention in the form of nominations for Worst Screen Couple for Brolin and co-star Megan Fox. The story of a supernatural bounty hunter set on revenge against the man who killed his family is as disfigured as its main character’s face but Brolin brings his real-life swagger to the role and has fun with some of the tongue-in-what’s-left-of-his-cheek lines.
One tough guy role got away from him however. On-line speculation had it that he would be cast as the Caped Crusader in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman. Although he would have been perfect for the part he lost out to Ben Affleck. Contrary to his bruiser persona he was gracious in defeat. “I’m happy for Ben,” he said.
For the first time ever Aardman Animations, who gave us Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, have put their clay figures into storage and taken a step into the 21st century, making a film that looks a great deal like one of their homemade stop-motion extravaganzas, but is actually computer animated. Flushed Away, the story of an upper class pet mouse flushed down the loo by a bullying rat, features great animation, an all star British voice cast and something that all kids love—toilet humor.
For the “No Clay! No Way!” purists out there it should be noted that the good folks at Aardman chose to go with computer animation for Flushed Away because of the number of scenes involving water, which is nearly impossible to portray convincingly in stop motion. To lend a handmade patina to the film they used software that reproduces the ‘imperfections’ found in claymation like thumb prints and dropped frames.
Flushed Away does not take place in the under water world of Finding Nemo or SpongeBob. No, most of this movie happens in the London sewer, a dark and dank Ratropolis occupied by rodent citizens who are threatened with extinction by a Toad King (Ian McKellen) who resembles a froggy Jabba the Hutt and his scheming rat henchmen. Dropped into this locality is Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman), a snobby pet mouse from the Royal neighborhood of Kensington, who is used to the finer things in life.
Despite the best efforts of the evil Toad and his French Amphibian Ninjas to do Roddy in, he manages, with the help of an enterprising scavenger named Rita (Kate Winslet) to uncover the Toad’s nefarious plot to destroy Ratropolis and discovers that home is where the heart is, not just where all your stuff is. It’s sort of a rodent Upstairs Downstairs with Hollywood action.
Flushed Away lacks some of the cheerful charm of good old Wallace and Gromit, but what it lacks in charm it makes up for in sheer inventiveness in its action-packed story. It swirls along at quite a clip, effortlessly mixing literate verbal and visual jokes—we glimpse a cockroach reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis—with potty humor that’ll appeal to the kids. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find themes of urban loneliness, the reciprocated condescension between Brits and the French and the class system that still exists in Britain.
Worth the price of admission alone is the hilarious Greek Chorus of slugs who provide musical accompaniment for many of the scenes.
Mr. Cheekbones, Johnny Depp, plays Peter Pan author JM Barrie in this film which was nominated for Best Actor for Depp and Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. It claims to be based on a true story, but in reality has little to do with the real life events that led to the writing of the famous children’s play. Having said that though, it isn’t a history lesson, it’s a movie, and as a movie it works largely because of the performances of Depp in the lead role and Kate Winslet, who plays the mother of the boys who inspire Barrie to write the play. I think it is really easy to be cynical about a movie that is about the enshrining of boyhood, but this movie is more magical than mawkish.
This is the film that finally gave Kate Winslet her best actress Oscar after five nominations but for my money the Academy got it wrong this year. They should have given her the award for Revolutionary Road, not The Reader. In Revolutionary Road she is a revelation, handing in a brave performance that crackles with suburban desperation. In The Reader she’s good, but not best actress good. In fact, the entire movie struck me as a deeply average piece of work from very talented people.
Based on an award-winning novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink The Reader is the story of two very different people. Teenager Michael Berg (German actor David Kross) is a good student who dreams of becoming a lawyer. Hanna (Kate Winslet) is twenty years older, working class and exotic in her earthiness. After a chance meeting they begin a sexual affair, meeting at her apartment after his school lets out. The set-up never varies. He reads to her and then they make love. In time, though, after his sexual awakening he tires of their trysts and leaves her.
Years later the law student Michael learns that after their fling Hannah became a Nazi prison guard and is now being tried for war crimes. During the trial he has an epiphany, realizing that he knows a secret about his former flame that could alter the outcome of the trail, but his shame regarding their affair forces him to remain silent.
The adult Michael (now played by the stone-faced Ralph Fiennes) is tormented by the decision he made back in law school and punishes himself for his silence all those years ago. It’s a moral quandary. He doesn’t condone her actions, but he feels as though he could have helped her and didn’t.
The Reader feels very Masterpiece Theatre, if Masterpiece Theatre featured more nudity. It’s a well constructed, well acted film with authentic looking period details and a thought provoking premise on the legacy of guilt in postwar Germany, but it feels so mannered, so restrained it left me cold. Even Winslet’s naked performance—both physically and emotionally—is too sombre. The whole movie feels removed from its subject matter as though the filmmakers were watching the story unfold instead of really trying to get under its skin and bring it to vivid life.
The last time we saw Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on screen together they were lovers in the midst of a huge disaster, Leo gasping for air as the cold waters of the Atlantic beckoned him to his death. In Revolutionary Road, their first pairing in eleven years, they once again play lovers, but this time they are drowning in a sea of shattered dreams, infidelity and boredom.
Based on a novel by Richard Yates—it was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer—it sees Frank (DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Winslet) leaving the exciting world of New York City to raise their children in a quiet Connecticut suburb. Dreams and aspirations on hold—she wanted to act, he just wanted something exciting. “I want to feel things,” he says. “Really feel things. How’s that for an ambition?”—they get on with their work-a-day lives, until April has an idea to shake up their lives and save their decaying marriage. When the rescue plan falls apart, both April and Frank crumble under the weight of their stultifying suburban life.
As you may have guessed Revolutionary Road isn’t a laugh-a-minute. DiCaprio and Winslet have side stepped the burden of trying to live up to the success of their last pairing by making a very serious movie with little commercial appeal. It’s a movie that celebrates life’s failures, a partner’s inadequacies and the heaviness of a life unfulfilled. There’s no king of the world here and the only thing that goes down in flames is their marriage.
Set in 1955 it’s a peak behind the curtain of the lives of a seemingly perfect couple. They are popular, beautiful; their neighbors love them. “You’re the Wheelers!” one says, as if that’s all there is to say about their supposedly idyllic life. Behind the curtain it’s a different story.
Repression oozes from April as she tries to come to grips with the fact that she isn’t one of the “special people” she always dreamed she would be. Feeling like she has sold out her life and dreams of being a famous actress to settle down and have children has given her a severe case of the suburban blues. We soon learn she’s not alone, that the neighbors, with their carefully manicured lawns and freshly waxed cars, also have secrets. This is Blue Velvet without the severed ear or Mad Men without the glamour. It’s a penetrating, raw look at what happens when disappointment and regret become life’s motivating factors.
Winslet does good work here. April’s refusal to be a 1950s suburban Stepford wife fuels her every move and it’s a harrowing performance. Occasionally it feels a bit stagy, perhaps a bit too big for the screen, but when she says, “I thought we’d be wonderful,” you can taste the regret that drips from her lips.
DiCaprio looks born to play a 1950s era man. He suits the fashions, the hairstyles, the feel of the character. Like the movie, his take on Frank is on a low boil for most of the running time, slowly working towards the explosive final act of the film.
Revolutionary Road is bleak. It has the dry, stark feel of a British “kitchen sink” drama and while it is a brave film for all concerned—Winslet, DiCaprio and director Sam Mendes—it is so unremittingly unwelcoming, so brutal in its take on the human condition that I can’t recommend it to a wide audience.
Fans of Jack and Rose (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) needn’t worry that James Cameron has tinkered with their story of love, loss and icebergs. His massive 3D redo of “Titanic” hasn’t altered the movie as much as enhanced what was already there. There are no extra scenes, Kate Winslet’s American accent is still dodgy, and yes, Celine still croons the that ear-wormy song, but the movie works better now than it did when it rode the top of the box office charts for fifteen weeks in 1997.
The first hour remains as clunky as ever with its wooden dialogue and manipulative story, but once the ship starts to sink the power of the movie becomes clear. Cameron’s crew of 3D artists has breathed new life into the film by meticulously remastering every frame of the picture. Unlike the shoddy 3D retrofits of films like “Clash of the Titans”—which Cameron has very publicly railed against—which tend to be dark and feel soft focused, the “Titanic” upgrade is a triumph. It’s bright, in sharp focus and beautiful.
The 3D ups the drama and terror inherent to the story. As the ship hits the iceberg water gushes everywhere in a way that 2D simply can’t convey and the scenes of the dead and dying floating in the cold waters of the Atlantic really, well, come to life.
Standout moments include Rose’s suicide threat—the sense of depth as she looks over the railing is startling—the swirling camera work on the grand staircase and, of course, Winslet’s nude scene is more eye-popping than ever.
You may have already seen “Titanic.” It grossed $1.8 billion so chances are good many of you saw it more than once, but you’ve never seen it like this.
