This slow moving Mississippi river-set movie features infidelity, murder and theft, but at its heart it isn’t really about any of those things.
Not Really. Instead it’s a story about the things we do for love.
When two fourteen-year-old boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland, who plays the excellently named Neckbone) discover a charismatic stranger named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) living on a remote island they get drawn into a dubious scheme to reunite the loner with his true love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon).
Methodical and moody director Jeff “Take Shelter” Nichols takes his time telling “Mud’s” coming-of-age story. The film’s pacing echoes the sleepy lifestyle of its rural setting, which some viewers might find too slow—especially amid the crash-boom-bang of summer blockbuster season—but the moody approach allows the story to explore the gritty moodiness of the titular character and the confusion of a young boy who believes that love trumps all.
The performances of the leads—McConaughey and child actor Tye Sheridan—are stellar and quietly effective.
McConaughey does take his shirt off, but this time around it’s part of his unique backstory and not an excuse for Kate Hudson (who is nowhere to be seen here) to widen her eyes and giggle at his abs. It’s another compelling performance—following “Bernie,” “The paperboy” and “Killer Joe”—that continues his acting rehabilitation after years of romantic comedy purgatory.
Also effective in supporting roles are Sam Shepard as a sharp shooting river rat and Michael Shannon who plays it remarkably straight here after a series of edgy performances in films like “The Runaways” and “Premium Rush.”
“Mud” is a small film about epic subjects—true love, loyalty and the nature of friendship—that has a much clearer world view than its title might suggest.
If you own any DVDs with titles like The Crawling Eye, Mothra or The Leech Woman then a new animated 3-D movie called Monsters Vs. Aliens may be right up your alley. Inspired by the giant bug and alien movies of the 1950s, the new DreamWorks film, starring the voices of Reese Witherspoon and Seth Rogen, is a loving homage to the crazy sci fi films of a simpler age.
When Modesto, California resident Susan Murphy (voice of Witherspoon) is struck by a meteor on her wedding day she suddenly transforms into a 49 ft 11 in creature named Ginormica. Labeled a monster by the American government she is captured by the military and shipped off to a secret government compound that houses other scientific oddities; “It’s an X-file wrapped in a cover-up and deep fried in a conspiracy,” says General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland).
Imagine an Area 51 for creatures like the insect-headed Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), the Missing Link, a 20,000-year-old gill-man (Will Arnett), B.O.B., a gelatinous organism who began life as a genetically altered tomato (Rogen) and Insectosaurus, a 350 foot grub turned monster by nuclear radiation.
The motley crew of monsters is called into service after a UFO lands and an alien overlord named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) demands that Earth be turned over to him. “Humans of Earth,” he says, “my quest has lead me to your planet. Give it to me now! You should, in no way, take any of this personally. It’s just business. Gallaxhar out.”
The country’s highest ranking government officials—including General Monger and the President (Stephen Colbert)—feel that the monsters are the best bet to save the world from looming destruction!
One of the qualifiers I use when reviewing the new crop of 3-D films is to imagine the same movie without the flashy stereoscopy. If I think the movie would hold up on it’s own without the optical effects then it gets a passing grade. If not, then I knock a star or two off the rating. 3-D should enhance storytelling, not replace it.
Recently Coraline earned my highest rating. It’s a beautifully animated film that uses 3-D to augment an already compelling movie. My Bloody Valentine on the other hand, took a bit of a smack down because it mistook special effects for a plot. Monsters Vs. Aliens falls somewhere between the two.
The animation and 3-D in the film is top notch. Unfortunately the outstanding tech side isn’t supported by a strong enough story or interesting enough voice work to place this in the same category as other DreamWorks movies like Kung Fu Panda or Shrek.
With humor aimed at kids, the kitsch factor at movie geeks (like me) and action for teens and young adults Monsters Vs. Aliens is a warm tribute to the mad science b-movies of the 50s that gets much of the tone right, but like the pictures that inspired it, is more fun to imagine than actually sit through.
Rendition is a political thriller about the use of torture to obtain information that may, in the long run, save innocent lives. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard and Alan Arkin it is an even handed look at a sticky ideological question from Tsotsi director Gavin Hood.
American sweetheart Witherspoon plays Isabella El-Ibrahimi, the pregnant wife of an Egyptian-born chemical engineer who disappears while on a flight from South Africa, where he has been at a conference, to Washington, where he lives. Unbeknownst to Isabella her husband is suspected of involvement with an extremist group responsible for a Middle-Eastern suicide bombing and has been the subject of ‘extraordinary rendition,’ whereby suspected terrorists in the US can be sent, without the legal consent of their parent nations, to third country prisons to be clandestinely questioned and detained.
As she desperately tries to track her husband down with the help of her old friend Alan (Peter Sarsgaard), an aid of Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), on the other side of the world a sad-eyed CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal) is developing moral questions as he becomes personally involved in El-Ibrahimi’s torture. In the middle of this mess is Corinne Whitman (Meryl Streep), the powerful intelligence agent who ordered the rendition.
There are a few moments in Rendition when a lesser director may have allowed the material to go off the deep end, but Hood keeps everything on track. It is a well balanced film that does something that most Hollywood films don’t do—it allows the audience to make up its own mind. When Streep’s character argues that information obtained by torture has saved thousands of lives it acts as a counterbalance to Witherspoon’s anguish. Imagine Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart arguing the point and you get the idea of the divide between these two characters.
Unlike the recent terrorism movie The Kingdom, Rendition isn’t as interested in pointing fingers, but seems to be determined to present a story that will entertain, but also stimulate conversation.
“Water for Elephants” is told from the point of view of an older man. Looking back at the most important years of his life old Jacob Jankowski (Hal Holbrook) tells the story of how a 9000 pound pachyderm introduced him to his wife. At first I wondered why they bothered with this device. Other than giving us a chance to see Hal Holbrook, which is always welcome, it didn’t seem to add much to the story. Then I realized that the tale has a warm fuzzy kind of glow that is the result of being told from the point of view of memory and not reality.
Set during the Great Depression, the flashback part of the movie begins with veterinary student Jacob Jankowski (Twilight’s Robert Pattinson) finding a job as a roustabout on the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth circus. On the job he meets Marlena, (Reese Witherspoon) a beautiful equestrian star married to August (Inglourious Basterds’ Christoph Waltz), an abusive animal trainer. He falls in love with her while tending to Rosie, the faltering circus’ 9,000 pound star attraction.
“Water for Elephants” has a decidedly old fashioned feel. The old time carnies speak like characters out of a John Steinbeck novel and the treatment of the animals clearly predates PETA. There’s a nostalgic glow to every frame of the film which helps cover up occasionally overwrought dialogue like Jacob’s summation of his first day as a circus hand: “The Benzini Brothers outdid God himself. They build heaven in one day.” It’s a bit melodramatic, but makes narrative sense when seen as the foggy recollections of an old man looking back at the single most important time of his life. Who hasn’t embellished a detail or two when retelling a story?
The movie’s occasional excesses are overshadowed by the winning cast. Reese Witherspoon looks like she was born to sit atop an elephant, R. Patz gets more action here than in all the Twilight movies combined and Christoph Waltz once again shows he was a way with cruel and unusual characters.
The only thing missing from Waltz’s bad guy performance here is his SS uniform from Inglourious Basterds. He really is becoming Hollywood’s guy we love to hate, and he’s good at being bad, but I’d like to see if he can do other things as well. Pattinson on the other hand proved to me that he can play something other than a lovesick vampire, which, the success of Twilight aside, is kind of limiting career wise.
“Water for Elephants” is an old school epic, or at least as close as we get to an old school epic these days. It’s a movie for adults, although they’ll probably have to fight their way through the crowds of teens who’ll line up to catch Robert Pattinson without his fake fangs in place.
This has been a banner year for celebrity bios on film. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a lock for an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the title character in Capote and David Strathairn’s turn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck has won raves. Add to the list of possible nominees the two leads in Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter are both Oscar worthy in a film that, unfortunately, isn’t a match to their talents.
Walk the Line follows the tried and true film biography template that Ray mined so successfully last year, providing the greatest hits of Cash’s life—a traumatic childhood event, a cruel father, years of pill popping, an on-again-off-again relationship with June Carter Cash and his rise to fame—in a competent but disposable film.
Phoenix—who imitates Cash’s vocals in a convincing deep rumble—brings the larger-than-life Cash crashing down to earth, playing him as a weak-willed man who fought a lifelong battle with the demons of his past. In Walk the Line’s version of events popping pills was the only remedy for Cash’s daddy issues. Reese Witherspoon’s June Carter is the best performance since Election. Her façade of cheeriness carefully masks Carter’s own inner heartbreak and inner strength. The scenes they share are the film’s strongest and it’s a pity that their relationship isn’t the main focus of the story.
Walk the Line is slick Hollywood product—everything that Johnny Cash wasn’t—and could have benefited from a more audacious and gritty approach.
