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Just Another Brick

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The Great Wall

by Hope Madden

You’ve seen the trailers for The Great Wall, right?

It looks terrible, doesn’t it?

It’s not.

It’s not good – let’s not get crazy. But I was expecting Warcraft bad – maybe worse – and The Great Wall is a borderline-passable piece of monster-laden eye candy.

Matt Damon plays William, a bow-for-hire who travels with a band of ne’er-do-wells into China seeking the legendary black powder.

Dreams of selling this weapon in the West keeps the Irish…Scottish…what kind of accent is Damon attempting?And why does it only show up in about 25% of the film?

Anyway, William and his mercenary friend Tovar (Pedro Pascal) must eventually surrender to the color-coordinated forces within The Great Wall – who actually have better things to do.

After that, director Yimou Zhang (House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern) does what he can to visually wow an audience and draw attention away from the leaden screenplay.

Zhang is a nearly unparalleled visual showman, and though Great Wall never approaches the style of his best efforts, the aesthetic will keep your attention and create wonder. Vivid color and rhythm drive a joyous spectacle of monster carnage once the CGI swarms come calling.

And then we’re back inside, with one-dimensional characters stumbling through obviousness about greed, trust and teamwork.

Zhang takes advantage of 3D as few filmmakers have. The approach rarely serves a larger purpose than to transport and amaze, but those who come to The Great Wall seeking a larger purpose should prepare for crushing disappointment.

The generally strong Damon struggles with more than the accent. Though glib humor enlivens several scenes with Pascal, the deadly serious tone the film takes and the broadly drawn characterizations of the Chinese warriors make chemistry or human drama impossible.

But damn, look at those hills and swirling bodies, the acrobatics of monster mayhem.

It may be that the only thing The Great Wall did right was to swap out director Edward Zwick (associated early in development with the film) for Zhang, because if you weren’t so distracted by how glorious this film looks, it might really be as bad as the trailers made it out to be.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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No Escape

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Toni Erdmann

by Christie Robb

It has already been a rough year. If you are looking for a movie to help you escape the bleakness of the year, Toni Erdmann isn’t exactly going to be it. No space battles, no superheroes, no fantastic beasts. It’s a spare and complicated film about a sad, silly man trying to reconnect with his distant, ambitious daughter.

The daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), works for an international consulting firm based in Bucharest. Her job is to compellingly propose outsourcing to oil company management. She shoulders the responsibility of job losses so that executives can sidestep the guilt. Ines doesn’t see much of her family and her father, Winfried (Peter Simonischek), jokes about hiring a substitute daughter to take Ines’s place (at Ines’s expense).

After the death of his beloved elderly dog, Winfried visits Ines, appearing unannounced in the lobby of her office building. Unfortunately, she’s in the midst of a project that may help her make partner. Her dad’s presence and corny jokes (delivered in front of clients) get under Ines’s skin and threaten her advancement.

Failing to reconnect, Winfred agrees to go home. Ines hits a bar to vent to some networking contacts about her horrible weekend. The man next to her at the bar introduces himself. It’s Winfried in a bad wig, with bizarre false teeth, claiming to be “Toni Erdmann”—consultant and life coach. Unwilling to out him (and by extension herself) to her contacts, Ines plays along while Toni inserts himself into her professional life, showing up at her office and at after-hours parties.

Hüller and Simonischek are outstanding, giving utterly believable, finely wrought performances—Hüller in particular. Ines’s carefully crafted professional polish requires that very little of her interior life is visible, and Hüller manages to get a lot across with the twitch of a lip or a downward tilt of the head.

But this is not the heartwarming, wacky father-daughter reconnection movie you might expect. There’s little of the tidy warmth that characterized Thicke’s Growing Pains. But there is a lot more realism. Writer/director Maren Ade’s film is almost three hours long, giving time to contextualize the characters in a way more typical of the new Golden Age of Television. We understand why Ines might be tempted to throw herself out of her apartment window, and we get why Winfried/Toni might not exactly have the answers for why she shouldn’t. But we see how hard he tries.

This is definitely not the movie that delivers on the uncomplicated warm fuzzies. It’s sad and weird, sometimes funny, and thoroughly awkward. But it might inspire you to embrace a loved one, and after this year, a good long bear hug is probably something we could all use.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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Oscar Nominated Shorts – Animation

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by Rachel Willis

This year’s batch of Oscar nominated animated shorts are varied in both style and subject matter. They run the gauntlet of emotion from tortured to heartwarming to comedic, and the heart of each story is reflected in the animation. Each film succeeds in marrying the story to the art so that none of the films would feel right without their particular style of animation.

Borrowed Time
Directors: Andrew Coates, Lou Hamou-Lhadj
Run Time: 7 minutes

Borrowed Time follows a sheriff as he reflects on a dark and brutal moment from his childhood. The minimal dialogue and bleak animation highlight the character’s inner turmoil. It’s a poignant piece that effectively utilizes the medium to explore the sadder side of human emotion.

https://youtu.be/2iDCfsQfst4

 

Pearl
Director: Patrick Osborne
Run Time: 6 minutes

A sweet tale, but overall bland in style and substance, Pearl tells the story of a single father and his daughter as they navigate the ups and downs of life. A song about home connects the story, as the audience is shown vignettes from the small family’s life. The animation is simplistic in style, but it works for the narrative. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to set Pearl apart from other films.

 

Blind Vaysha
Director: Theodore Ushev
Run Time: 8 minutes

Blind Vaysha blends a unique story with gorgeous visuals. A faceless narrator tells the story of Vaysha, a girl born with one eye that can see the past and one that can see the future. Blinded to the present, Vaysha can see the beginning of creation and the destruction of the earth, or the beginning and end of the same day. The animation highlights the terror the future holds for Vaysha, as well as the staid limitations of the past. Blind Vaysha is a marvelous, even flawless film.

 

Piper
Director: Alan Barillaro
Run Time: 6 minutes

Piper is also superb. The animation is stylized, but it offers hints of realism in the movements of the sand pipers as they dart back and forth across the sand dunes. The story of a young sand piper that overcomes fear with the help of a friend is reminiscent of the most touching Pixar films. At times both comedic and heartwarming, Piper is a worthy addition to the Pixar line up.

 

Pear Cider and Cigarettes
Director: Robert Valley
Run Time: 35 minutes

Techno Styles is the character at the center of Pear Cider and Cigarettes. With gritty graphics, Rob narrates the story of his friend Techno, a man seemingly larger-than-life. The imagery matches the story, from dull yellows to highlight Techno’s failing liver, to golden silhouettes to illustrate Techno as a mythic person. For a short film, Pear Cider and Cigarettes feels long, with moments of redundancy that slow the pace of an otherwise solid film.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Oscar Nominated Shorts – Live Action

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by Hope Madden

This year’s Oscar-nominated live-action shorts take on an international flavor. Entries from Hungary, Switzerland, Denmark, France and Spain talk culture, loneliness, oppression and racism in a spate of lovely dramas, comedies and romantic bits.

Enemies Within (Ennemis Interieurs)
Director: Selim Aazzazi
Running Time: 28 minutes

Enemies Within (Ennemis interieurs) from France’s Selim Aazzazi intimately examines a power struggle between two men – a French inspector interrogates an Algerian-born Frenchman looking to formalize his citizenship.

McCarthyism knows no geographic border, nor does terrorism, paranoia, or the fallout from all three. Two nuanced performances keep the work – also written by Aazzazi – riveting.

 

La Femme et la TGV
Director: Timo von Gunten
Running Time: 30 minutes

Switzerland’s La femme et le TGV, a slight but insightful pseudo-romance, follows an aging woman who clings to things as they are. “I’ve never sent an Internet and I never will,” she declares. A charming and sometimes poignant look at embracing change, the film also looks great.

 

Silent Nights
Director: Aske Bang
Running Time: 30 minutes

A holiday piece on loneliness, longing and belonging, Denmark’s Silent Nights is the most sentimental of the shorts. Written and directed by Aske Bang, the film follows an immigrant from Ghana (Prince Yaw Appiah) and the homeless shelter volunteer (Malene Beltoff Olsen) who loves him.

Strong performances, especially from Olsen, buoy a solid if too tidy film.

 

Sing
Director: Kristof Deak
Running Time: 25 minutes

Kristof Deak’s entry from Hungary is equal parts sinister and triumphant as the new kid in school gets to join the country’s most successful children’s choir. Sing (Mindenki) follows Zsofi (Dorka Gasparfalvi). Befriended by popular Liza (Dorka Hais) and invited – as are all students – to join the world famous choir, Zsofi couldn’t be happier. Until she – and, by extension, Liza – learn something not quite right.

Deak articulates the logic of a child in a drama that offers as much tension and as welcome a resolution as most full-length films.

 

Timecode
Director: Juanjo Gimenez Pena
Running Time: 15 minutes

Spain’s Timecode is the most charming of the lot. Two parking garage security guards see each other in person only at the beginning and end of each shift. Regardless, they develop a very particular friendship – one that is fun, funny, endearing and full of welcome surprises.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Wickity Wack

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John Wick: Chapter 2

by Hope Madden

Keanu Reeves is a cyborg. He’s seen human behavior – he just can’t replicate it very believably. It’s a reasonable theory, isn’t it?

But every once in a while he lands on a role where acting like an actual human just doesn’t matter – like the surprise 2014 hit John Wick. If you enjoyed that splashy bit of violence and canine love, you’re likely to appreciate its strangely anticipated sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2.

The Keyser Soze of international hitmen, Wick was brought out of retirement, you’ll remember, when a half-assed Russian mobster stole his dog and his car. And if you could make it through the maudlin, sentimental crap and focus just on that kickass hotel shit, it was a mildly entertaining film despite Reeves’s absence of talent.

Once out of retirement, though, Wick has a tough time getting back out of the biz.

Chapter 2 picks up right where the previous installment ended. Wick, his beloved if unnamed pit by his side, re-buries the gold coins and weapons of his trade. But Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) requires Wick’s services – and he’s not above doing ill-advised things to acquire his compliance.

Director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad return, both improving on their previous effort by streamlining the story, limiting sentimentality and spending more time exploring what was cool the first time – The Continental.

Turns out there’s a mirror hotel in Rome, site of Wick’s new gig. There’s also a high-powered organization of the world’s most influential criminals as well as an armed, underground network masquerading as New York’s homeless.

Basically, 4 out of every 5 people walking the street are trained killers. Who’s paying for all this?

Stahelski ups his game with the action sequences. Wick’s movements are without ego – they are clean and efficient, which is appropriate. And he likes to shoot the knees out, so points for that. Stahelski films with flair – fascinating framing, often beautifully backlit. It’s fun.

Still, there’s the problem of Reeves’s acting. (I’m sure he’s a very nice man.) Stahelski does what he can by pairing his lead with slightly more agile actors to buoy the few scenes with dialog. The always-welcome Ian McShane returns. Peter Serafinowicz and Franco Nero make tangy appearances, along with one co-star who would have been a fun surprise had his face not been splashed all over the trailer.

Sure, there are problems – besides the dialog. Why are the bad guys all such bad shots? Where are all the witnesses? Eye-rolling contrivance follows ludicrous convenience, but these guys brought their shootin’ boots.

It’s not like you don’t know what you’re in for here.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Abs-olutely Fabulous

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The LEGO Batman Movie

by Christie Robb

This year’s spin-off of 2014’s The LEGO Movie centers on Batman—the brooding solitary vigilante with the wonderful toys and the nine-pack abs. We catch up with him doing the usual thing—saving Gotham City from a supervillain. But when he gets home after a long day, who does he have to share his life with? Just a judgey Alfred, Siri, and a microwaved plate full of lobster. Apparently Batman’s greatest fear is intimacy.

The Bat can’t even identify his “bad guy”—breaking Joker’s heart when he decides to “fight around.”

So when Barbara Gordon takes over as police commissioner amid plans to work more collaboratively with Batman, he gets the heebie jeebies. Discovering that he’s accidentally adopted an orphan doesn’t help. Nor does the Joker’s rounding up of all of Gotham’s villains and submitting a group resignation letter.

Faced with demands on his emotional intelligence and without purpose, Batman begins to crack. Sure that Joker is up to something, Batman refuses to work with Gordon and inadvertently places Joker in a position where he can destroy all of Gotham for good.

Only one thing can stop this nefarious plan…teamwork.

LEGO Batman is a PG-rated movie that is probably even more fun for adults than for kiddos. Those responsible for paying the tab will get to enjoy spotting the references to other Batman movies, identifying terrible Batman TV show villains (like the Condiment King), and wondering how the administrative folks at the studio acquired permission for all the outside intellectual property required for the climax.

The movie also has a remarkable depth of voice talent. Will Arnett handles the gravel-voiced protagonist, but Michael Cera steals scenes as the endearingly twee Robin. Not only do we get Rosario Dawson as Gordon, we get Ralph Fiennes as Alfred and Zach Galifianakis as the Joker. But even characters that have minute amounts of screen time get good coverage. Billy Dee Williams, for example, briefly reprises his 1989 role as Harvey Dent.

And, in the end, we learn everything is cool when you’re part of a team.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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The Angsty Frontier

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The Space Between Us

by Hope Madden

Space – the weepy YA film’s final frontier. Hopefully.

Asa Butterfield (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) is Gardner, the first child born on Mars – even if it was an accident. But he’s lonely and isolated and apparently we can build a community on Mars but we can’t get them contemporary movies.

Gardner’s lonely! He’s angsty! He’s smitten with Tulsa, the bored, hardened foster kid he met online (Britt Robertson – Tomorrowland).

Wouldn’t it be dreamy if they met? Maybe fell in love? I’m sure each one of them could appreciate how deeply special the other one is, even if no one else notices it.

The Space Between Us is harmless enough. Butterfield and his big blue eyes make Gardner’s exploration of Earth sweet, and solid performances from a veteran supporting cast including Gary Oldman and Carla Gugina give what life they can to the plodding, predictable plot.

The film, which screams of adolescent literature, is actually an original piece of writing by Allen Loeb. Loeb most recently brought us the excruciating Collateral Beauty. If you haven’t seen it, don’t.

Schmaltz and emotional manipulation – these are some of the tricks employed to draw your attention away from the utterly ludicrous storyline. Unfortunately, they don’t mask the lack of chemistry between the leads.

This is a love story without sparks, a potential tragedy without an emotional pull. The payoff feels not only predetermined but unearned.

Is it as bad as If I Stay or The Fault in Our Stars? Why, no. The Space Between Us mercifully avoids the truly maudlin. But there is enough overlap in theme that it feels more like a sanitized version of those tear jerkers than it does an original idea.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

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Viral Video

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Rings

by Hope Madden

Releasing a film without a pre-screening for critics is usually a bad sign. A mid-February studio release is never good.

You know what else isn’t good? Rings.

If you’re wondering whether Samara’s story disappeared with the last VCR, puzzle no longer. Sadly, it did not. Indie hipsters at a garage sale take home some vintage equipment, find an old VHS tape inside and watch it.

If you’ll recall, watching said video of freaky images condemns the viewer to death within a week. The images relate to the accursed life of, in the English language films, a little girl named Samara.

Gore Verbinski’s 2002 The Ring managed to do two remarkable things. One: it surpassed its Japanese-language original (Hideo Nakata’s Ringu) in quality. Two: it was a deeply frightening PG-13 movie.

But Verbinski has talent, as does his cast, most notably 2-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts.
Rings director F. Javier Gutiérrez is playing without those kind of all-stars.

At this film’s heart is still that Scooby-doo mystery to solve that is the foundation of nearly every ghost story – and Samara’s tale is essentially that. In this episode – which forgets 2005’s The Ring 2 ever existed – two college freshmen do the sleuthing.

The leads are, as far as I can tell, made entirely of wood or wheat toast. Matilda Lutz is Julia the Bland, devoted girlfriend and courageous ghost hunter. Her boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe – yawn) participated in a wild psychological experiment led by his professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) – garage sale junkie. That experiment leaves Holt with 7 days to live…and his time is almost up.

The film’s running time isn’t, though. Oh, no. Holt’s fate is revealed and we still have at least 3/4 of the movie to suffer through.

Sadly, the genuinely talented Vincent D’Onofrio gets dragged into this at a certain point, his only real contribution is to remind the audience what acting actually looks like.

Why do I get my hopes up?

Verdict-2-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouwST4IEvJo

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The Saddest Lines

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Neruda

by Hope Madden

Pablo Larraín is having quite a year. In theaters already with his insightful vision of grief, celebrity and politics, Jackie, the Chilean filmmaker returns with a page from his own nation’s history books – Neruda.

Again eschewing the traditional biopic structure, Neruda drops us into the life of Chile’s most beloved poet and most famous Communist as political tides are changing. Post WWII, Pablo Neruda’s outspoken support of his party puts him on the wrong side of his government.

Though Neruda (Luis Gnecco) became the voice of resistance in Chile and around the world, his own life hardly mirrored the communist principles he championed. A poet, a lover and a man of grand excess, he spoke eloquently of a struggle he refused to live himself.

A fascinating set of conundrums, Neruda is a hard man to pin down cinematically – so Larraín doesn’t exactly try.

When Chile calls for Neruda’s arrest, we follow him underground, as does Inspector Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal – scene stealer).

Here is where Larrain, working from Guillermo Calderon’s inventive screenplay, gets a bit experimental to better serve his subject.

From Peluchonneau’s point of view, the film becomes hard-boiled detective pulp, a narrative device that allows Larraín to better explore the line between fact and fiction – and poetry.

The investigator becomes the antagonist in Neruda’s imagined persecution, allowing him the mythical martyrdom and drama he feels a man of his greatness deserves.

Gnecco’s performance hits all the right marks, creating a presence that’s simultaneously admirable, aggravating and disappointingly vain. Fine support from Mercedes Morán as Neruda’s longsuffering wife buoys the performance by articulating the effect he had on those around him.

But the fictional Peluchonneau runs away with the film. García Bernal’s oddball incompetent with his own delusions of grandeur brings color to the film as it transports the audience to a more literary landscape.

The conceit doesn’t always work. It often feels too cute. But there are several scenes where reality and fiction collide without a clear winner – one with Morán and a snowy finale, in particular – that elevate the entire project.

It’s an arresting and lovely near-miss.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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Strangers on a Trainwreck

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Julieta

by Hope Madden

Pedro Almodovar brings his two most marked filmmaking styles – the one submerged in the world of women (Volver, for instance), the later of a more Hitchockian note (The Skin I Live In) – and pulls them together in his latest effort, Julieta.

The titular heroine, played at different ages by Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte, has a shameful secret – or two. As the film opens, Julieta (Suárez) is packing to leave Madrid for Portugal with her boyfriend, Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti). But a chance encounter with a childhood friend of her daughter’s convinces Julieta to drop Lorenzo and stay in Madrid, moving instead to the old building where she’d lived for years with her daughter.

We then switch to the story of the younger Julieta (Ugarte), and Almodovar gets all Strangers on a Train with us – even to the point of eventually mentioning the novels of Patricia Highsmith, writer at the core of that Hitchcock classic.

Suárez capably maneuvers Julieta’s emotional landscape. She’s a woman pretending to be fine, keeping her true nature from those around her and attempting to hide it from herself. The performance is haunted, edged with remorse.

Ugarte stumbles, though. It doesn’t help that she and Suárez look so little alike, or that the flashback storyline is designed to be a thriller – an ill-fitting choice for the material.

Almodovar built the screenplay on three inter-connected shorts by Canadian writer Alice Munro, layering her words with an urgent score, suggesting dangerous thrills, and dialog-heavy close ups that feel more like daytime drama.

For all the clashing colors, discordant images and creepy housekeepers, Hitchcock and Munro just don’t fit together well.

Munro’s writing tends to lull you with quite unveilings. Julieta may be Almodovar’s attempt to spice that up by way of homage, score and framing, but it feels like a trick. His direction leads us to believe we’re watching some thriller wrought with dangerous secrets. We are not. This chicanery undercuts the power of Munro’s meditation on guilt while it all but guarantees the dissatisfaction of a misled audience.

The final result, though often gorgeous and compelling, is a bit of thematic chaos that doesn’t work.

Verdict-2-5-Stars