If the latest film from “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson is to be believed the afterlife looks a lot like a Pink Floyd album cover from the late 1970s. In “The Lovely Bones,” a loose adaptation of the bestselling book by Alice Sebold, he goes heavy on the computer generated imagery to create a slick looking world, which despite the best efforts of the cast, is almost bereft of emotion.
In case you’re not a member of Oprah’s book club, who chose “The Lovely Bones” and propelled it up the best seller charts like a rocket, it is the story of Susie Salmon (“like the fish”) a 14 year old girl murdered in suburban Pennsylvania in 1973. Susie, however, didn’t go quietly into the long goodnight. From a place somewhere between Heaven and Earth she watches over her distraught family and tries to guide them through their time of despair.
Some of the now controversial CGI—early trade reviews called the film indulgent and “evocative of “The Sound of Music” or “The Wizard of Oz” one moment, “The Little Prince” or “Teletubbies” the next”—is quite beautiful and some of it is overkill. When Susie is making her arrival in “her heaven” it is a beautiful representation of a spirit floating away. Hugh shots of her never-to-be boyfriend Ray, reflected in a body of water that separates them and Ray again on a gazebo, surrounded by an undulating landscape, are a bit heavy handed. Jackson is the real deal, a skilled filmmaker and visualist, but he has to learn to trust the story and not let the technology do the talking.
Performance wise Jackson has cast well and gets good, solid work from his actors, particularly Rachel Weisz as the grieving mother, Susan Sarandon as the boozy grandmother and Rose McIver as the spunky sister Lindsey but it is the two central roles that the whole movie hinges on.
As the murderous Mr. Harvey Stanley Tucci is creepy; all twitchy movements and squeaky voiced. He’s Norman Bates without the overbearing Mom and wonderfully cast. Tucci, it appears can do anything. Earlier this year he played Julia Child’s loving diplomat husband in “Julie & Julia” and held his own opposite Meryl Streep. Now he’s the creepiest bad guy this year since Hans Landa drank a glass of milk with a French farmer in “Inglourious Basterds.”
At the heart of the film, however, is an arresting central performance by Saoirse Ronan as Susie, the little girl who never got to kiss a boy or see her fifteenth birthday. Her luminous presence gives the film whatever soul it has and her generous screen presence is a good tonic for the effects heavy scenes she plays in the “in between,” the blue horizon between heaven and earth.
“The Lovely Bones” should have been a better movie. It’s not terrible, mind you; it just doesn’t push the emotional buttons that a story about the murder of a young person should. Jackson is still in epic “LOTR” mode, taking a small, intimate movie and needlessly cluttering it up with bigger than life images that get in the way of the feeling of the piece.
Shortly into my conversation with Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan I begin to understand what his daughter Kristen meant when she said her father “exists up in the clouds. In order to communicate with him, you have to go up into the clouds yourself.”
When I mention the quote to the Dream House director he laughs and tries to explain.
“I think that’s probably true in relation to the way I approach actors and story. I know directors like Tim Burton or David Fincher, they’re very structured visually. Then there’s the approach that says, ‘It’s emotional over here.’
But emotions are invisible and it’s hard to catch the invisible. Trying to catch the invisible is very interesting because it’s just something that happens in front of you rather than something that has happened, as Hitchcock said, and then I’m only shooting it.”
A scheduled 10 minute interview stretches into 35 minutes as the three-time Oscar nominee chats amiably about the movies he thinks will eventually become classics — “the poetic ones that don’t make as much sense” — on artistic vision — “it’s a product of interior emotion” — the meaning of the Kubrick film 2001 — “it’s a baptism!” — and, of course, his new movie.
In Dream House real life newlyweds Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz are Will and Libby, a happily married couple who leave New York City for a simpler life in New England. Of course, this is a thriller, so their hopes for a happy life are dashed when they discover their new home was the site of a grisly murder.
“It’s a genre piece,” he says.
“It’s a psychological thriller with horror overtones and detective story overtones, but essentially, deep down it’s a love story. It’s in the vein of A Beautiful Mind and Shutter Island. We’ve made the kind of movie with thriller and horror elements, but women will like it.”
Sheridan may exist in the clouds, but he is realistic about the state of the movie business. The kind of character dramas that made him famous are harder to get made these days.
“One day, I don’t know what day it was, maybe a Thursday, about a year ago, everybody decided you couldn’t make a drama anymore,” he says. “I think there was a surfeit of independent movies when there was a surfeit of money,” he says. “In Ireland we built too many houses, in America we made too many movies.”
Instead of running the title card “based on a true story” up front, “The Whistleblower,” a new drama starring Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci and Vanessa Redgrave, begins with the disclaimer “inspired by true events. Some of the characters may be composites or fictitious.” No “just the facts ma’am” for this movie. The filmmakers decided to take a perfectly serviceable and important story and tart it up with Hollywood story elements. Because facts are often stranger than fiction, it’s a shame they didn’t stick more with the truth and less with the movie contrivances.
Weisz plays Kathryn Bolkovac a Nebraska policewoman based on a real life person of the same name. Divorced, she’s desperate to move across country to be closer to her kids but can’t lay her hands on either the job transfer or the money to make the trip. To raise the cash she takes a six month job as a peace keeper in Sarajevo, Bosnia. War has ended and a company called Democra Security has been contracted by the U.N. to help smooth the transition from strife to peace. Soon, however, she uncovers a human trafficking ring specializing in young women sold into prostitution. Uncovering a far reaching conspiracy she finds herself making some powerful enemies.
“The Whistleblower” is a well intentioned film that more often than not plays like an episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” albeit with more exotic locations. It’s a police procedural with many of the tried and true plot devices of the genre. Evidence seems to show up when needed, progress is inevitably slowed by bureaucratic process and the main character is true blue. “I’m an American police officer,” she says to a young woman afraid that the U.N. isn’t going to be able to help, “it doesn’t matter who I work for.” No that’s plucky.
Where it differs from other procedurals is in its uncompromising imagery. A dank dungeon brothel is identified by close-ups of chains, dirty mattresses and used condoms and a scene involving the bad guys disciplining one of their captives is too grim to be described here. Those scenes have impact and underline the importance of telling this story from a humanist standpoint, but from a cinematic perspective it all feels kind of standard and often borders on the sanctimonious.
Weisz, in the role that Mariska Hargitay would have played if this was a TV movie, brings some depth to the gritty cop stereotype we’ve seen a hundred times before, conveying urgency and determination.
“The Whistleblower” is topped by an effective and exciting final reel but for my money it takes just a bit too long to get there.
Director Rian Johnson’s two feature films, the underrated Brick and The Brothers Bloom, (in theatres this weekend) exist in the intersection of quirky and film noir. Brick saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt play a high school loner with a knack for hard boiled dialogue. “I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night; that puts me six up against the lot of you,” he says to a school yard bully, seemingly channeling Raymond Chandler. The Brothers Bloom is just as idiosyncratic but more accessibly so. Starring Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody as the titular Blooms it’s a story of deceit, love and finding the perfect con game.
The film begins with a bravura prologue detailing the rough and tumble upbringing of the orphan Bloom Brothers. Bounced from one foster home to the next—one ex-guardian puts down “larceny” as the reason for sending the kids away—they discover a talent for grifting. Cut to twenty years later. They are now seasoned con men. Steve (Ruffalo) loves the work and creates elaborate Dostefsky-esque plots for their swindles. Bloom (Brody) is less involved. He looks up to his older brother but is having a crisis. He feels he has only ever lived life as a character in his brother’s scams. He wants more—he wants an unwritten life. The classic “let’s get together for one last job” brings them in contact with Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz), an eccentric shut-in with lots of liquid assets, who will change their lives.
The Brothers Bloom is willfully anachronistic. That’s a fancy way of saying quirky. The con artists seem to have stepped out of a 1930s crime movie, both in dress and behavior. The movie is set in modern day, but like Brick, pays homage to the caper films of yesteryear.
The other characters are just as strange. Penelope is a chainsaw juggling femme fatale who lives alone in a giant New Jersey estate. Rinko Kikuchi is Bang Bang, a mostly mute demolitions expert. Robbie Coltrane plays The Curator, a man so mysterious the lights dim whenever he enters a room and Diamond Dog (Maximilian Schell) has a crystal dangling where his right eye should be. Oh, and did I mention that there’s a camel who drinks whiskey?
The set-up and execution feel very artificial, but luckily, the characters transcend the script’s quirks to bring the material alive. The first hour of its 109 minute running time is a wild ride, alive with humor, beautiful photography, interesting characters and many twists and turns. The last fifty minutes less so.
In its second half the story gets bogged down with too many cons and an unsatisfying pay-off. The Brothers Bloom is worth a look—the acting is great and it looks beautiful—but it feels more like an under developed Wes Anderson film than a fully realized Rian Johnson movie.
The real legacy of Bourne, apparently, lies in frenetic action and wild hand held camera moves. That’s the only thing passed down from the first three movies. The new film, “The Bourne Legacy,” features a new star in Jeremy Renner, a new director in Tony Gilroy and a new, simpler structure.
Dovetailing the story from “The Bourne Ultimatum,” the film begins with Jason Bourne’s arrival in Manhattan, although Matt Damon who made the character famous is nowhere to be seen. Bourne’s appearance has outed the CIA’s Treadstone/Operation Outcome unit so head honcho Eric Byer (Edward Norton) orders all agents neutralized, i.e., assassinated before a Senate committee can unearth info on the genetic experiments they conducted on their agents. Among the targets is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), a highly skilled operative who requires chemical enhancement to stay in peak killing form. On the run, he picks up genetic scientist Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) who he hopes can lessen his reliance on his daily dose of “chems.”
Why they didn’t call this movie Bourne Again, I’ll never know. Jason Bourne may not make an appearance, but it feels like a movie we’ve seen before–the same shaky camera and over-the-top action. The only thing that’s changed is that while there’s a fair amount of CIA superspy gobbledygook, its surprisingly light on plot. For a movie about the deepest, darkest workings of secret government agencies the story is really rather simple.
Gilroy, who has written all four Bourne movies, is much more deliberate in his storytelling now that he is behind the camera as well. He’s brought the franchise’s trademarks along for the ride, but story wise it almost feels like one of the Pierce Brosnan “James Bond” movies. The ones they were making just before Daniel Craig stepped into the picture to revitalize the tired 007 series. There are gadgets, a Bond girl (ironically played by Craig’s wife Rachel Weisz) and even an unstoppable Energizer Bunny of a super villain.
It’s not bad, just familiar and not as blood-pumping as the Paul Greengrass directed “Bournes” of yore.
The action is wild and frequent, although there is nothing as memorable as the old rolled up magazine in the toaster trick from “The Bourne Supremacy.”
Renner, however, mostly holds his own. He can run, jump and shoot with the best of them, but I was hoping for more charisma. When he’s not in motion chasing after a bad guy or wrestling a wolf, I found him kind of flat. I was more on side with him in the beginning when he played Cross like a junkie who needed to score. After that he becomes a bland Bond wannabe.
“The Bourne Legacy” isn’t an improvement on the movies that came before, but it doesn’t embarrass it self either. Sure, Weisz could have been given more to do than tag along with Renner in his quest and the (MILD SPOILER ALERT) Bourne Free ending could use some finessing to make it seem less like a door slamming shut on the story, but there are enough tense moments and thrills to make it worth your dollar. It just doesn’t add much to the legacy of the Bourne franchise.
Like the name suggest “360,” the new film from “City of God” and “The Constant Gardener” director Fernando Meirelles, is a well rounded look at its subject. The film tells a complicated story that mixes-and-matches the lives of globe-trotting characters from all over the world into one intertwined narrative.
Familiar faces like Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Ben Foster and Anthony Hopkins headline the cast, which also includes international stars Jamel Debbouze and Moritz Bleibtreu working from a script by “The Queen” scribe Peter Morgan. Based on themes of love, life, loss of life and infidelity, the story casts a wide net to include the story of a young Slovakian woman who looks to prostitution as a way of escaping poverty, an older man searching for his missing daughter and a Muslin man struggling with feelings of love for a married co-worker.
As well acted and compelling much of “360” is I couldn’t help but feel a better movie could have been made if fewer stories were essayed. Like so many of these attempts at multi-pronged storytelling what could have been a rich experience becomes muddled by the sheer volume of stories and characters. Instead, how about choosing any one of the story threads and fully exploring the characters and situations, sewing up loose ends and not worrying too much about weaving together all the disparate story elements?
“360” isn’t a bad movie, far from it, Meirelles is too skilled a director for that, but he’s also ambitious. This time it feels as though his storytelling ambitions got the best of him as he tries to bring too many stories to the table.
