“The Clouds of Sils Maria” contains fine performances from its leads, Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz, some delicious irony, and some razor sharp commentary on the state of modern celebrity. What it’s missing is entertainment value.
French director Olivier Assayas has made an art house “Birdman,” with stunt casting but allows it to get weighed down by its ideas and melodrama.
Binoche is actress Maria Enders, an international star who got her start decades ago on stage playing the alluring Sigrid in “Maloja Snake,” a young woman who drove her boss Helena to suicide. When she is offered the role of the older woman in an all-star remounting of the play opposite Jo-Anne Ellis (Moretz), a scandal-prone Hollywood starlet, she retreats to the relative calm of Sils Maria, a rural town in the Alps, to rehearse with her assistant Val (Stewart) while contemplating aging, her past and her place in show business.
“The Clouds of Sils Maria” is as self absorbed as the people it portrays. The most interesting tangents, from a pop culture point of view, concern the character Val, who seems to be piercing the fourth wall by allowing Stewart to seemingly comment on her “Twilight” success and subsequent career. “I love her,” she says of Ellis, “she not completely antiseptic like the rest of Hollywood.” In fact, it’s more likely she’s referring to herself and her descent from Tween Queen to serious working actor.
“Clouds” is very much Binoche’s film—she’s in almost every scene and the action revolves around her—but thematically it’s not a stretch to see it as Stewart’s comment on her own career. “She’s brave enough to be herself,” Val says admiringly of Ellis, throwing down the gauntlet to critics who might questions her less than mainstream choices of late.
As interesting as that glimpse into Stewarts ID may be coupled with Maria’s fears of losing credibility, “The Clouds of Sils Maria’s” art vs. life premise takes pains to make the discovery of these points as obtuse as possible. Plot shards hang, interrupted by jarring scene transitions and needless narrative machinations. It’s the rare kind of movie that is undone by the very same cultural elitism it celebrates.
“Still Alice” has a Disease of the Week Movie plot but is elevated by a central performance from Julianne Moore. Her portrayal is deeply nuanced, self-aware but most of all, heartbreaking.
Moore plays the title character, a linguistics teacher at Columbia University in New York. She has a career, a loving husband (Alec Baldwin), three grown children Anna (Kate Bosworth), Lydia (Kristen Stewart) and Tom (Hunter Parrish) and early onset Alzheimer’s. She’s a woman who reveled in intellectual success, proud of her vocabulary and mental prowess but lately she can’t remember the small things. She blanks on people’s names and gets lost in familiar places.
Before she becomes incapable of looking after herself she records a message to her future self. In it she describes a contingency plan, a way to end the suffering that will be easy on her and the family.
Later in the film, when we finally see the video message, we are struck by the duality of Moore’s performance. The transformation from early onset to full blown Alzheimer’s has been subtle but constant. Placing her afflicted self side-by-side with her healthier being displays the depth, beauty and subtly of Moore’s work. It’s a showstopper of a sequence that cleverly displays Alice’s deterioration and Moore’s mastery of the character.
Also notable is Kristen Stewart who delivers a rough hewn but tender version of a daughter who is occasionally frustrated by her mother’s situation but slowly come s to form a deeper relationship with her than anyone else in the film. Her reading of a passage from “Angels in America” and the emotional heft that comes with it should mute the ”Twilight” jokes once and for all.
“Butterflies have short but beautiful lives,” Alice says, and while “Still Alice” doesn’t have the raw intensity of films like “Iris” and “Away From Her,” it is a showcase for a beautiful portrayal of a woman who has everything stripped away from her.
The release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies brings Peter Jackson’s trilogy to a close, and marks the end of a life immersed in Middle Earth for the actors. For several of the cast it was a years-long journey, and like any trip it’s nice to pick up a souvenir as a keepsake.
According to director Peter Jackson the actor who played the exiled dwarf king Thorin stole “the most boring thing in the world to steal,” from the set of the penultimate film, The Desolation of Smaug, socks.
“I did steal every single pair of costume socks,” said Richard Armitage, “because we were given a brand new pair every day.”
As production on The Battle of the Five Armies wrapped Armitage was gifted with some more interesting props including the deadly goblin cleaver Orcrist, which he keeps in an umbrella stand, “cause I want to be able to pick it up.”
Martin Freeman, who plays head Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, says he doesn’t miss making the films—“I’m really proud to have done it,” he says, “and I’m really glad to have done it, but I rarely miss jobs.”—but kept his sword and prosthetic ears as mementos.
Unlike Freeman, Sir Ian McKellen does get sentimental when he reflects on making the movies because, “a lot of the audience seeing The Hobbit part three wouldn’t have been born when we started filming it.” After spending thirteen years playing wise wizard Gandalf the Grey he took two priceless props from the set, “Gandalf’s staff, which I keep with umbrellas and walking sticks, and Gandalf’s hat, which I keep in the basement.”
Many actors have pilfered props from their movies. Keira Knightley walked off with Elizabeth Bennet’s striped socks from Pride & Prejudice. Elijah Wood has the One Ring from Lord of the Rings and Daniel Radcliffe liberated two pairs of Harry Potter’s famous round glasses, even though there was a strict policy about taking props from the set.
‘The ones from the first film are absolutely tiny now,” he says, “but they are very sweet.”
Kristen Stewart kept the engagement ring Edward Cullen gave her at the end of Twilight: Eclipse and Zachary Quinto took the ears he wore as Spock in Star Trek: Into Darkness but the strangest cinematic souvenir may belong to Mark Wahlberg.
The Academy Award nominee kept the prosthetic penis he wore as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights. “I used to keep it in my desk drawer,” he said, “and I’d take it out and slap my friends in the face with it. I don’t keep many things from my movies, but that just seemed to have personal significance.”
Rock ’n’ roll and the movies have always had an uneasy relationship. For every film that hits all the right notes, like Quadrophenia or A Hard Day’s Night, there’s a host of tone-deaf films like Light of Day, featuring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett as musical siblings, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a glam-rock-and-disco re-imagining of the Beatles classic.
Rock ’n’ roll biographies are equally hit-and-miss. In The Buddy Holly Story, the toothy Gary Busey earned an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the rock legend, but Roger Ebert sneered that Dennis Quaid played Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire “as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak.”
This weekend, Jersey Boys — directed by Clint Eastwood, and based on the Tony Award-winning musical — tells the story of ’60s hitmakers The Four Seasons. Songs like Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like A Man and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You made them one of the biggest-selling rock acts of all time.
Lesser known than the Four Seasons but louder, faster and dirtier were The Runaways, the subject of a rambunctious 2010 movie. Set back when you could still drink a bottle of stolen booze in the shade of the Hollywood sign, The Runaways focuses on two glue-sniffing, tough girls named Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) who formed the underage all-girl band. The music of The Runaways was described as the “sound of hormones raging,” and this film captures that.
I’m Not There is a hard movie to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard-issue Hollywood biopics, there is nothing linear here, but then there is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie.
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is the title of eccentric English singer Ian Dury’s biggest hit and the 2010 biopic about his eventful life. Starring Andy Serkis, the film is as high voltage as one of Dury’s legendary live performances.
Finally, the film Control details the short life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis (Sam Riley). After seeing the film at Cannes, Curtis’s bass player Peter Hook said he knew the movie “would be very well received because, even though it’s two hours long, only two people went to the toilet the whole time. In fact, one of them was (Joy Division founding member) Bernard (Sumner). The other one was a 70-year-old woman.”
At one point in “On the Road,” the new film version of the famous Jack Kerouac novel, a character says, “Bless me father for I will sin.” Many of the fans of the book may take that line as a mea culpa from director Walter Salles, who has dared to bring a novel long thought to be unfilmable to the screen. Beatnik purists need not worry. There are sins on display, just none of the cinematic kind.
Proto beats Dean and Sal (Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley) spit in the eye of authority and embark on an existential search for self on the self-awareness, friendship and the “rainy night of America.” Along the way jazz happens, the discovery of the “joy of pure being” is revealed to be fleeting, and the central question, How are we to live? goes unanswered.
“On the Road,” the novel and movie, isn’t a piece of art to be explained, it needs to be experienced. The film, like the book is uneventful—nothing resembling an actual story actually happens—but both reverberate with the pulse of be bop jazz. Salles has created a movie populated by fascinating characters played by good actors who live in rhythm to the freeform structure of the story.
It’s a road trip that sees people come and go, relationships formed and broken and hearts broken. At the center of it all are two souls, Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s pseudonym ion the book), bound together by friendship and restless spirits.
Dean is described as someone who spent 1/3 of his time in jail, 1/3 in pool halls and a 1/3 in public libraries. He’s one of the towering characters of American literature and is brought to vivid life by Garrett Hedlund. A charming rascal, he’s deeply self-involved, a hip cat but in reality, the most desperate character in the bunch.
Refusing to take responsibility for himself or his actions he’s the bad boy your mom warned you about and Hedlund embodies it.
But as good as Hedlund is, the movie belongs to Sam Riley, the English actor most distinguished for playing Ian Curtis in the film “Control,” the biopic about the lead singer of Joy Division, is the beating heart of the movie.
Supporting characters come and go. Viggo Mortensen brings edge to his brief portrayal Old Bull Lee (a thinly disguised William S. Burroughs). Kirsten Dunst is shows the deep ache of jilted Camille and Kristen Stewart plays lovesick Marylou as a strong, but vulnerable victim of Dean’s charm.
Some will find ”On the Road” aimless, others will be swept along by its ride, the beautiful photography and the search for meaning.
Few tales of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll contain as much sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as the tawdry tale of The Runaways. An underage all girl rock band—they billed themselves as “Genuine Jailbait”—spawned from the Sunset Strip’s late 1970s seedy underbelly, they imploded in 1979 after four tumultuous years. “The Runaways,” a new film written and directed by former video helmer Floria Sigismondi, sees two “Twilight” co-stars leave behind repressed romance for life on the road.
Set back when you could still drink a bottle of stolen booze in the shade of the Hollywood sign without being arrested for trespassing, the movie focuses on two glue sniffing, glam rock obsessed tough girls named Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). Disaffected SoCal teens, they see an exit from their mundane suburban lives through rock ‘n’ roll. Unfortunately their ticket out comes in the form of impresario Kim Fowley, a record producer and self proclaimed “King Hysteria.” He cobbles together the band, trains them to be rock stars, convinced that these “bitches are going to be bigger than the Beatles.” Before they can play Shea Stadium, however, the band breaks up—knee deep in ego, drug abuse and bad management.
Sigismondi has made the movie equivalent of an ear blistering blast of feedback. Like the band’s two-minute-forty-five-second guitar punk tunes, “The Runaways” is loud, fast and dirty. If you want depth wait for the rock ‘n’ roll bio of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Here Sigismondi leaves behind the surreal feel of her videos and visual art, instead opting for a straightforward (although probably mostly fictional) retelling of the rapid rise and equally rapid free fall of the band. Its “Behind the Music” formulaic but Sigismondi layers on so many other rock ‘n’ roll elements that the lack of experimentation in the telling of the tale isn’t a minus.
Kristen Stewart is the name above the title star, and she does bring her brooding Brando best to the role of Joan Jett, but this movie belongs to Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon, who hands in a flamboyant performance.
As Kim Fowley he has a more than a passing resemblance to Beef from “Phantom of the Paradise,” and like that character he is campy, dangerous and slightly unhinged. An egomaniac, he introduces himself as, “Kim Fowley, record producer. You’ve heard of me.” It’s a bravura performance that could have gone very wrong in the hands of a less committed actor, but Shannon pulls it off with wild aplomb.
Fanning shines, but in a much more low key way. Low key, but not low wattage. Fowley describes her outer layer as part Bardot, part Bowie but she plays Currie as damaged goods; a young girl with a crappy home life and faraway look in her eye. Fanning quietly gives Currie an unspoken inner life as she slowly falls apart, and whether she’s smashing pills with her platform heels and snorting the powder off the floor or rocking it out on stage there is a core of sadness to her that is so real you can almost reach out and touch it. It’s the most demanding role in the film and Fanning aces it.
Kim Fowley described the music of The Runaways as the “sound of hormones raging” and in her film Sigismondi transcends the formulaic aspects of the story by capturing the gritty spirit of in-your-face teenage rebellion.
“Snow White and the Huntsman” plays like the love child of the Brothers Grimm and The Hobbit. It is dark in tone and in look with just a few hi ho ho’s provided by the Seven Dwarfs. That’ll be my last bad Snow White joke, I promise. The first hour is a gothic fairy tale, the second hour more an action movie, but through it all Charlize’s Theron’s bug eyed Grand Guiginol performance remains constant.
It’s a tale as old as time… wait a minute! That’s Beauty and the Beast. But Snow White’s story dates back almost as far. In this twist on the familiar fairy tale Charlize Theron is Ravenna, an evil queen so obsessed with being the fairest in the land she condemns the dead king’s lovely daughter, Snow White (Kristen Stewart), to a lifetime of solitude and captivity. When the queen’s gossipy mirror-on-the-wall tells her that Ms. White will one day reclaim the throne, Ravenna does what any evil monarch would do. She decides to eat Snow’s still beating heart, thereby ensuring immortality and the throne. Luckily Snow escapes, and with the help of a handsome huntsman, (Thor’s Chris Hemsworth), a childhood friend (Sam Claflin) and eight diminutive allies (Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, Johnny Harris and Brian Gleeson), fulfills her destiny.
“Snow White and the Huntsman” may be the fairest movie of the summer, and I’m not referring to the fetching Charlize or KStew, or the chiseled Hemsworth or Claflin, but to the look of the film. It is majestically bleak, blending stark realism with fantasy elements to create a look rich in detail. With much of the color drained from the palette the movie has a dark foreboding feel which helps shape the narrative.
First time director Rupert Sanders knows how to establish atmosphere, it’s too bad he isn’t as skilled in storytelling.
The look, from the sets to the creatures—very cool tree troll and some airy fairies—to Ravenna’s evil wardrobe are all spot on, but some of the good will they create is blown by a script that often relies on banalities.
The talky bits aren’t nearly as interesting as the yelling bits (thanks to Charlize’s unhinged performance) and the action sequences. When the movie is on horseback, or Charlize is chewing the scenery (or her favorite snack, beating bird hearts) the movie is great fun. When it slows down to up the word count, it’s less so.
Stewart brings her usual brooding intensity, this time matched with an English accent and Hemsworth is having fun in a physical role that does not involve throwing a giant hammer. But as appealing as they both are, “Snow White and the Huntsman” becomes something other than a beautifully shot teen retelling of the story (with a strong sword wielding female lead and a feminist twist) only when Theron is lets loose or the band of small-sized warriors are on screen.
This is it… or is it just the beginning of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan’s immortal romance? I don’t know. All I know is the release of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 means the film franchise is over and it goes out with probably the most enjoyable movie of the bunch. It’s out with the angst, and in with a newfound sense of fun. The previous movies struck me as overly ponderous; this one is actually quite funny, occasionally even bordering on camp. And that’s OK given that the story of vampire babies and ab-tastic werewolves is rather silly.
Picking up where the last movie left off—both films are based on a single book, Stephenie Meyer’s “Breaking Dawn”—the new one begins with Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) rebirth as a vampire following the arrival of her half-human, half-bloodsucker baby Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy). Bella loves her newfound life—or whatever it is the undead call their existence. She doesn’t get tired, doesn’t have to eat and vampire sexy time is supernaturally satisfying. Edward can’t stop smiling, the baby is growing by leaps and bounds—literally—but there is darkness afoot. An allegation regarding the child finds its way to the Volturi, an ancient, vengeful coven of vampires who enforce the laws of the vampire world. The film leads to a showdown between Edward and Bella’s extended family and the old ones which could lead to a culling of the Cullen clan.
It took five movies to finally get the tone of story right. The first movies were teen angst personified through brooding Bella and Edward’s ennui. It’s as if these popular movies contained the cinematic equivalent of a dog whistle, subtext that only teenage girls could hear and see, which left anyone over the age of thirty out in the cold. However, four movies of sad faces and staring off into space may have captured the pain of teen love, but, if you’ll excuse the pun, they also sucked some of the lifeblood from the story.
Director Bill Condon, who also helmed the part one of the story, embraces the ridiculousness of the premise without losing the horror Harlequin feel that made the star crossed lovers storyline so appealing to Twihards. Bella and Edward are still share and eternal love, and the addition of Renesmee has only strengthened that feeling, but now they’re having some fun. Edward, if you watch closely, even smiles occasionally.
It’s a big step from the first installments and, unsurprisingly, it makes for a fun movie. Intentional laugh lines—when Bella’s dad learns of Jacob’s (Taylor Lautner) lycnthropian ability he says to his daughter, “You don’t turn into an animal too, do you?”—are mixed with some unintentional gags—Russian vampires anyone?—and topped off with some playful action—like Bella wrestling with a cougar.
The cumulative effect is the rare undead story that is life affirming with less of the stuff that made the previous movies tough going for non-romantically inclined fang bangers and more pure entertainment.
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” packs a lot into its first half hour. There’s Taylor Lautner’s abs (twenty seconds in), teen brooding, a vampiric confession, an overprotective werewolf and the most anticipated teen wedding of the decade. Well, she’s eighteen, he’s over one hundred years old but looks like a youngin’. It’s the next-to-last in the popular series and takes Twihards to the bedroom and beyond.
In case you don’t know this is the episode in which the passionate, but chaste relationship between vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) become official and sexual. Everyone is pleased with the pairing except werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the lobo who is loco for Bella. He doesn’t approve, but when Bella gets pregnant with her dead lover’s baby and a tribe of werewolves vows to kill her, he chooses to follow his heart, not his heritage.
Like the most successful of recent teen movie franchises “Twilight” treats its characters with respect. Their trip from page to stage has been an easy journey, with most of traits that endeared author Stephanie Meyers’s creations to readers intact. The movies value the integrity of the characters and I think that is what has kept audiences coming back for more.
It’s not because they’re great movies. They’ve gotten better, and this Bill Condon directed episode is one of the best of the bunch–although he pads out the almost two-hour running time with so many music montages I lost count after the deflowering montage–but misses greatness because of its slavish loyalty to the book.
The story readers expect is there–family values intact, even if they are more Addams Family than Family Ties–with traditional morays celebrated, but the presentation of Bella’s pregnancy misses an opportunity to explore the darker side of this vampire story. What could have been a cool Cronenberg-style play on body horror instead becomes melodrama with a pro-life twist.
But “Twilight” has as much to do with horror as Pauley Shore does to comedy so I shouldn’t expect real scares, but stranger than any supernatural element in the story is its attitude toward the physical relationship between Bella and Edward. Despite containing a tasteful sex scene the movie seems afraid of sex.
What message does it send to the young audience that Bella can declare how happy she is, while covered in bruises after a night of wild vampire get-it-on? And don’t even contemplate the horrors of pregnancy, it seems to say.
If it was a horror film the odd messages could be taken for what they are–plot devices–but in this context they read more like unnecessary cautionary tales about the dangers of sex between consenting adults.
“Breaking Dawn” isn’t likely to recruit many new Twilight fans, but despite some odd sexual politics should please fans of the series.
