Battle: LA Review

As I critic, I would much rather give a glowing review of a film than rip one apart. Sure, there’s fun involved and ranting and raving, in pounding out a scathing review, to pick apart another’s entertainment with the strokes of keys. But I much prefer recommending films. So much so in fact that I try so hard to find something good about every movie I see. Battle: Los Angeles made this very hard for me.

Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking, The Dark Knight) stars in the latest alien invasion flick as a marine with literally no life who retires at the beginning of the film. Kind of. Then he’s called back because aliens have landed in LA in incredible volume and threaten to take over the city. As it turns out, all around the globe, in major city after major city, a similar invasion (or colonization, as we are told by an expert scientist in the film) unfolds simultaneously.

After 20 minutes of very poor background exposition and attempts to make us care for the men we are about to see die, Harvey Dent leads a group a marines into the shit. Hoo-rah! Most of the film plays like an odd endorsement of the marines, with jokes coming at the expense of the air force and other armed forces. I found the main characters’ ability to make off-hand jokes at sarcastic comments in such stressful times to be remarkable. Are they really in this? Is anybody really in this?

Though some of the constant special effects are impressively detailed, I was unimpressed with the alien design. As a bit of an alien-invasion nerd, the aliens looked uninspired. The whole film played like a mish-mash of bad, unrelated ideas thrown together with little consistence. In the beginning of the attack, the viewer is lead to believe that the aliens are trying to abduct humans, perhaps eat them. We find out later, they only want to shoot us, though.

But all of this, plot, characters, intelligence, are pushed aside for scene after scene of mediocre action. Roger Ebert wrote that the experience was like watching a friend play a bad video game for two hours without ever getting to play yourself. That’s precisely it. Battle: LA is too disjointed, too episodic. Each scene plays like another level on a game where the creators are merely trying to challenge make viewer gratification and endurance.

By now, I think you have an idea of how much I loathe this film. But I think it would be fair to let it speak for itself. In one scene, a “civilian woman” offers to help Aaron Eckhart find out how to kill an alien by performing surgery on it. “I’m a veterinarian,” she explains. I guess she thinks that would help in dissecting E.T. After heart-pounding moments of Aaron Eckhart hacking at the beasts chest, he proclaims “shoot it where the heart would be!” So, why did you have to perform surgery to learn that. Another character, the platoon doctor, says “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” I wanted to explain to him that this might have something to do with the fact that it just dropped out of space, but…you know. I’m just sayin’…

Battle: LA is an exercise in excess. It’s an example of everything that’s wrong with Hollywood films right now. Grab the nearest formulaic script, add an action star and throw $100 million at it. Boom! You have a box office hit on your hands. This formula is tried and true. At the time this review was written, Battle: LA had garnered $115 million worldwide. The system works. Teenage boys wanna go see things blow up.

Do not go see Battle: LA. Not only do I hate it and think you will too, but it offers nothing new and does nothing very interestingly. Do not throw your dollars at this garbage. Send Hollywood a message: we want District 9. Or at least Armageddon or Independence Day. If you’re going to make a stupid film, at least make a fun film. If you’re going to be a joke, at least show you’re in on it.

One good thing: it does end.

One bad thing: it exists.

0.5/5

On Mildred Pierce: Part I

The American Dream is not available to everyone. This truth haunts some of the best drama of the American modernist fiction. It asks how far someone will go to have it all? What will they sacrifice? What can they stand to give up? How compatible are freedom and liberty?

Mildred Pierce introduces all of those questions and more. The novel, written by James M. Cain in 1941, was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1945 starring Joan Crawford and helmed by Michael Curitz (Casablanca). Mildred Pierce takes place in the suburban white California in the 1930s, and follows the title character’s struggle to redefine her role as a housewife in order to provide for her family during the Great Depression. This series of essays will consider on the 2011 mini-series director Todd Haynes crafted into 5-parts. The series is currently airing on HBO. Parts I and II premiered Sunday and have encore performances all week. Part III will air first on April 3^rd, and the series concludes of April 10^th, with Parts IV and V.

I cannot say too much about the plot at this point because I have neither read the novel nor seen the Joan Crawford film. I have only see Parts I and II of the Haynes film. Part I attacked the story right before Mildred Pierce (Kate Winslet of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Little Children) and her husband (Brian F. O’Byrne from Million Dollar Baby and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, but better known for his stage performances in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia and the Catholic drama Doubt) spar verbally about a possible affair. Mr. Pierce leaves to move in with his mistress, leaving Mildred alone in a large home with her two daughters and no source of income, save her selling of homemade pies. Part I shows Mildred attempt to find a job that she believes is dignified work. “I won’t wear a uniform,” she tells her neighbour (Melissa Leo from The Fighter and HBO’s Treme). After walking out on a woman offering her a job as a housekeeper (Hope Davis from Synecdoche, New York and American Splendor) because she was treated as a lesser, Mildred is forced to jump at the nearest job for an opportunity. She must choose between taking a “disgraceful” job, or “facing her starving kids.” Part I ends with Mildred’s anxiety about her older daughter, Veda, finding out that she is a waitress.

Part II chronicles Mildred’s success as a waitress and incorporating her pie-making into her work. She plans to open her restaurant and meets a playboy suitor (Guy Pearce from Memento and The Proposition) and spends a weekend with him before tragedy strikes.

That’s a brief plot summary, but I cannot say which threads the mini-series will pick up and leave dangling. The strengths of the first 40% of the series are mostly attributed to the extremely talented cast and to the guidance of Todd Haynes.

Haynes (director of Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, Poison and the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There) is one of the most interesting and maverick auteurs in American cinema. With that said, he’s much more a European filmmaker, but more on that later. Haynes makes decisions about his projects that remain incredibly faithful to his players, subjects and the nature of his story. Haynes was willing to abandon I’m Not There unless he could get permission to use Dylan’s music. With Mildred Pierce, Haynes said that the 1945 film left whole parts of the novel untouched that he thought were essential to the story. The result is a five-hour film that only found a home at cable’s continuously bravest and successful network, HBO. I don’t think Haynes would have continued with the project if he was forced to cut it for a 2-hour theatre run.

I said that Haynes is more a European filmmaker than an American filmmaker. That’s perhaps a deceptive comment. I meant more that he is influenced by European New Wave auteurs than commercial Hollywood studio filmmaking. He continually cites Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk as two of his more important influences. Far from Heaven is in a lot of ways an ode to the Sirkian melodramas of the 1950s. I’m Not There, composed of several parts, contained parts influenced by the aesthetics and themes of Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini (specifically 8 ½).

Haynes is often concerned with social outsiders who are alienated by their personal identity or unconventional sexuality. As a result, his protagonists are often homosexuals (Haynes is often identified as a pioneer of “New Queer Cinema”) or women struggling to define a fluid identity in a male-dominated world. Hayne’s sense of individual identity is at odds with socially-constructed concepts. Look no further than his African-American incarnation of Bob Dylan in the Confederate South, his casting Cate Blanchett to play Dylan, and the ode to the hippie westerns in the Richard Gere segment of I’m Not There. For Haynes, a self is a collective, like 6 people all playing Bob Dylan, or Mildred Pierce finding an identity in relation to her neighbour, co-workers or as a mother. His protagonists challenge power structures and disrupt social norms. Haynes works with postmodernist ideas of redefining the self more in terms of a feminine caretaker than a Kantian rational being. In that way, his protagonists are an assault on traditionally-defined male hierarchy.

Often, Haynes draws portraits of artists. In I’m Not There it was Bob Dylan; in Velvet Goldmine it was David Bowie. These artists found their creative output to be the greatest opportunity to exercise expressive freedom. Hayes is not concerned with individual freedom or market freedom. His concept of collective identity is less self-centered and more communitarian than that. In Mildred Pierce, Mildred expresses her freedom through her delicious and beautiful baked goods. Not only does she identify this as her greatest talent, but it offers her a means by which to make the money needed to care for her children.

I want to briefly mention the general aesthetic of Todd Hayne’s project. Filled with a mix of vibrant colours and burnt browns, Haynes contrasts the constrictions of social norms on Mildred’s life with makes her free. Take a look at the vast open spaces of the set design. Haynes likes to juxtapose long shots with more intimate close ups to create a sense of isolation or separation in his mise-en-cine that comments on the atmosphere that Mildred lives in. How at home is she in that vast, empty house? What about the transformation of the building she plans to make a restaurant? Glass appears frequently throughout Mildred Pierce creating both a clean, gleaning, reflective surface that’s quite fragile, but also putting Mildred constantly behind a barrier looking in. In some shots, all we can see of the action is what is reflected through these surfaces. As Haynes’s script unpeels layers and surfaces, appearances and masks from an overly-stylized made-up world of the bourgeious, what we could see might scandalize. What lies behind the picket fences and well-manicured lawn her husband spends so much time on in the first scene? Mildred Pierce is more aesthetically restrained than I’m Not There, but that’s likely because it’s narrative is more linear, straightforward and organized. Both approaches are appropriate for their respective projects. If I’m Not There was about the flamboyancy of performance and the deconstruction of persona, Mildred Pierce is concerned with restraint and masks, with creating the illusion that everything is sunshine and pies, until you step inside the house.

So, I encourage you to take a look at Mildred Pierce. The first two parts are probably airing right now on HBO. Part III will play this Sunday night. If you do, look for these occupations of Haynes’s themes. I think Mildred Pierce is a fitting next step for Haynes’s career that continues to look again at mere appearances. Next week, in Part II of my essay, I will look more closely at the setting of suburban, white California for Mildred Pierce. I will consider the genre fiction that James Cain brings to the project and explore more closely how the social and economic characteristics of 1930s Glendale effect the family in Mildred Pierce and offer a glass through with to examine America in the 2010s.

I hope to see you next week!

Radiohead’s Latest The King of Limbs Needs a While to Bloom

I made a mistake asking to review Radiohead’s newest album The King of Limbs. I have nothing new or insightful or say about it, really. You can stop reading now.

Over at Wash U, the music editor Steve Hardy, one of my former fellow reviewers, is taking heat from pretentious indie disciples and burnouts galore. “You don’t know or feel music,” they retort. They cry afoul: “nonsense.” This is likely because Mr. Hardy is committing sacrilege. He’s calling a bluff on Radiohead’s part; the obtuse British band is playing tricks on their fans and critics. Maybe, after the universal success and acclaim that surrounded In Rainbows, The King of Limbs is just a big joke, like the Coen Brothers following up No Country for Old Men with Burn After Reading. I am not ready to claim that The Kings of Limbs was designed to defy interpretation. I just don’t get it.

If you are a Radiohead fan, then you already know there is a lot to like about The King of Limbs, from the Philip Glass-ian piano opening in “Bloom” to the complementary guitar tracks in “Morning Mr. Magpie” to the mystifying, possibly code-ridden lyrics of “Separator.” And “Little by Little,” my favourite track. But, if you are a Radiohead fan, you don’t need me to tell you to listen to this album.

The King of Limbs won’t convert any new listeners to the cult of Thom Yorke. Like the rest of their albums (save Pablo Honey which I refuse to listen to lest my worship of the band be tarnished), The King of Limbs offers a tough first listen. I have experienced the album thrice now, each listen revealing new layers like a lotus flower (sorry, I had to). But I still don’t know what it all means. Is it a masterpiece? How about a likely successor and continuation of In Rainbows? For this amateur reviewer, it is too early to tell.

There is much ado about a possible part 2 to The King of Limbs. When will this be released if it even exists? No one knows. I’m not sure Thom Yorke does. Radiohead has a reputation of maverick strategies. In Rainbows was released for free on their website, and no one knew The King of Limbs even existed until a week before its scheduled release date. Rabid fans have taken a crack at decoding the lyrics of “Separator,” which promises “if you think this is over then you’re wrong.” That must mean there’s a part 2! Right? I mean, after all the song is called “Separator.” Furthermore, the download file was called “tkol01,” and the vinyl release contains two albums when all eight tracks would easily fit on one with their brief, 38 minute running time.

What interests me about all this commotion is how Radiohead is playing with the way we experience music as a community. Radiohead acknowledges that this isn’t 1967. In his sixties class, Dr. Hal Bush attests to the collective pop culture phenomenon that was the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. In class recently, Dr. Bush predicted that if all his students wrote down their three favourite albums of the last year there would be little overlap. Our iPods have little in common these days. Even if the music industry is fractured, small communities emerge, like the Radiohead faithful. Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 12.01am was going to be an event. My roommate and I had planned on a celebration the minute the album dropped. Could this be the closest modern music can get to a collective experience like the one in the summer of 1967 when Sgt. Pepper dropped? And then Radiohead released The King of Limbs at 5am on Friday morning to a surprised fanbase. On overload, their website took 45 minutes to download the album. I got mine in 7 minutes at 11am.

I think Radiohead is prophetic. Fans will attest to the band’s lasting influence on rock music, especially with Kid A. Personally, I can’t get enough of the anti-technocracy of OK Computer. In Rainbows is a near-religious experience, even on the 15^th listen. What does The King of Limbs say about the world we live in? I can’t answer that, but maybe the sparse 38 minute running time criticizes expectations and attention spans in an increasingly technology-savvy, fitter, happier world. That Thom Yorke is a pesky one. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He’s like a detuned radio.

Climb Aboard "The Sunset Limited"

One of the taglines for The Sunset Limited reads: “Two men. One room.” That’s a pretty accurate and comprehensive plot summary. Only HBO would take such a risk, virtually filming a 90-minute, one-act play with only two characters, and the reward is compelling drama.

One could explicate on that plot summary and say: “The Sunset Limited is a philosophical argument between an atheist college professor and a maintenance man who saved foiled his attempted suicide.” However, this summary invokes feelings of “been there, seen that.” Atheist vs. theist. Isn’t there enough of this on Fox News? (No, actually).

But if you haven’t seen The Sunset Limited, then you surely haven’t been there. Tommy Lee Jones directs the script by Cormac McCarthy (author of The Road and Blood Meridian) based on his own play. The players: Samuel L. Jackson as Black and Tommy Lee Jones as White. And that they are.

Another tagline insists that “nothing is ever black or white.” The film, set entirely in Black’s inner city apartment, wrestles with God, death, destiny, morality, character and nihilism. It’s basically McCarthy 101. But what sets this drama apart from a Tuesday night dorm room debate is McCarthy’s dialogue. With his characteristically dark tone, McCarthy once again challenges his audience to pan for a fleeting glimmer of hope at the play’s end.

Some critics claim that The Sunset Limited is just canned theatre; that TLJ didn’t open the play up enough for the big screen. While that’s partly true – no scenes are added, and like the play, the film’s attack point is after the attempted suicide – it would be a mistake to overlook TLJ’s work as a director. The screen veteran knows his way around a camera and while he doesn’t invent any new camera tricks, he manages to make two men arguing compelling enough for 90 minutes.

Of course, acting opposite Mace Windu doesn’t hurt. Jackson infuses Black with enough energy, wit and intelligence that he isn’t merely a good Samaritan. Similarly, Jones wears so much of White’s festering depression heavily under his eyes and over his mouth. His slouching stature shows that he is never quite comfortable among the living.

The Sunset Limited never goes much further than life and death. McCarthy himself once remarked that literature can only be valuable if it considers life and death. And consider he does. One could say he obsesses. But The Sunset Limited is compelling and the work of obsessive professionals at the height of their powers. And that leaves one happy to be aboard The Sunset Limited.

"The Illusionist" isn't magical

 “Magic can sometimes be just an illusion.”

Based on an unproduced original script from legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati, The Illusionist in many ways rehashes the magic of the silent film era.

Directed by Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville), The Illusionist is a picaresque following a French magician who travels to Scotland in search of work. There he meets and befriends a young woman, and their relationship changes both of their lives, for the better and for the worse.

The Illusionist wears its heritage on its sleeve. The films of Jacques Tati (born Tatischeff, the name of the protagonist in The Illusionist) often bordered on silent comedy. Characters rarely speak in The Illusionist, and when they do the dialogue is negligible. The result is a richly detailed blend of physical comedy and elaborate use of mise-en-scene.

The Illusionist harkens back to Tati’s onscreen persona Monsieur Hulot. He is a tall, thin Frenchman who smokes, carries an umbrella constantly and wears pants like he’s expecting a flood. Tatischeff’s posture, leaning forward with his arms extended back, meets its maker in a scene where he enters a cinema that is showing Mon Oncle.

Like Chaplin’s The Tramp, Tatischeff is a sad man, an outsider who wears his heart on his sleeve. His only flaws are his pathos and his tendency to fall madly in love. In both cases, the audience is invited to laugh with, and not at the social outcast.

However, The Illusionist feels unfinished, despite the script sitting on the shelf for 35 years. The ending is abrupt, and the humour, few and far between, feels unpolished. I was underprepared for the film’s sometimes dark tone and melancholy ending. While I embraced its silent-film format and resistance of animated film tropes (annoying characters, celebrity voices and an unending slew of pop culture references), I left the film disappointed. It’s quick and swift and does not overstay its welcome, but The Illusionist is perhaps too short. By the end of the 80 minute running time, I did not feel The Illusionist had fully explored Tatischeff’s quest to find an audience. His final crisis, finding a place in a world that does not believe in magic while he is the only one who does, reached its statis much too quickly for me.

In the final analysis, I would recommend The Illusionist because it is something different: a modern-day silent film, and an animated film that refuses to march in line with the others. But be prepared for the melancholy tone and feeling that The Illusionist, like its protagonist, never really connects with its audience.

2.5/4 or 3/5

2010: An Afterlife Odyssey

3.5/4 or 4/5

Enter the Void, the third film from French visionary director Gaspar Noe, is the film everyone wanted Inception to be: mind-bending, transcendent, mesmerizing.

While tough on the rear-end and not for the squeamish, Enter the Void tries to be a cinematic drug trip. Told entirely via POV of the main character, Oskar (Nathaniel Brown), the film follows Oskar’s soul as it floats through Tokyo watching over his sister (Paz de la Huerta) whom he promised never to leave. Beginning on the night of his death (no spoiler here, it happens at minute 35 of 163), we see the world from Oskar’s eyes on this side and the next. The middle of the film provides the end-of-life flashback through Oskar’s life, and the final chapter is the search for rebirth.

The film references the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Early on in the film, two characters talk at length about the book and the promises it makes about death and the hereafter. While this exposition feels a bit clunky, it is necessary for understanding what we are about to see.

As children, Oskar and Linda witnessed the death of their parents from a graphic car accident. The experience draws the two together (perhaps too closely), and they promise to never leave each other “never ever.” Oskar promises Linda that even if he dies, “he’ll come back.” The two are then placed in separate foster homes and reunited years later in Tokyo.

Tokyo, photographed with lush and vibrant colours and set design with a floating camera, represents both a moral wasteland (Oskar is a drug dealer and Linda a stripper) and a sort of purgatory, where one makes sense of their life after they have died.

I feel obligated to say that Enter to Void is not for everyone. While it is clearly the work of an auteur who is trying to create something we have never seen before, the film is quite graphic violently and sexually. Furthermore, the visuals, while breathtaking are arresting, like a psychedelic odyssey. Noe is known for taking no hostages. His 2002 film Irreversible is told, well…in reverse, and features a graphic 9-minute rape scene. Enter the Void is never quite that graphic, but viewers beware.

If I haven’t made it clear enough yet, the film looks amazing, unlike anything I have ever seen before. In addition, Noe’s narrative experiment is nothing short of intriguing, if it isn’t entirely successful. The direction is maverick, leading me to believe this is Noe’s film through and through; no other working director could have made the film quite this effectively. However, the writing seemed to take backseat to the visuals. Because of the constant POV, the viewer rarely gets to see Oskar’s face. Without seeing his crucial facial expressions and reaction to the world as he sees it, I had a hard time empathizing with Oskar, or knowing what he was really about.

It’s not often American audiences watch films from overseas. If you feel adventurous, give Enter the Void a try. You won’t be bored, or feel like you’ve seen this before. (Also, the dialogue is all in English). Enter the Void is at its soul an experiment; the result of an inspired artist stretching the limits of his medium. Even when Enter the Void comes up a bit short, its shameless ambition deserves high praise.

[Note: if you’re not interested in this film, at least go on YouTube and watch the opening credits sequence. It’ll blow your mind, and maybe give you a headache.]

Firth's Crowning Achievement

The King's Speech

5 stars out of 5

In 1925, the Duke of York was happily resigned to his position as the brother of the future King of England. His debilitating stammer, while an embarrassment to his family and a detriment to his confidence, would never directly embarrass the people of the British Empire - which encompassed 25 percent of Earth's entire population. Nonetheless, "Bertie", as he was affectionately called by family members, set out to correct his defect in order to better handle public events and the radio. Unfortunately for Bertie, his brother's decision to choose love over duty made the need to overcome the speech impediment essential in order to lead the millions of British subjects through World War II.

Tom Hooper's film follows the Duke (Colin Firth) over a twelve year period; from his cringe-worthy failure to speak before a stadium of people in 1925 to the defining moment of his reign in 1937, addressing his subjects following the declaration of war with Germany. David Seidler's screenplay is laden with witty dialogue, the legendary dry British humor that makes BBC America such a valuable cable channel and three of the best performances of the year.

Firth, as King George VI (Queen Elizabeth's father), owns the picture. His turn as the stammering royal is the best leading performance in 2010. In scenes in which the conflicted and stressed prince snaps at speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) and his elder brother, David, one truly believes they are watching George VI on screen. While it is cliched to say so, in this film it is perfectly accurate to suggest that Firth not only acts, but becomes the character.

Working closely with Firth throughout the film is Rush, who's performance is poignantly humorous. As the relationship between Bertie and Lionel is the heart of the story, the guarded respect and burgeoning friendship Firth and Rush bring to the screen gives audiences the year's best exchanges between characters. Understated moments of deep understanding as when Lionel calls Bertie "Your Majesty" for the first time or when Bertie defends Lionel before the Archbishop of Canterbury (Derek Jacobi - who brilliantly exudes the Archbishop's sense of self-importance) make this film that much more beautiful and spellbinding.

Helena Bonham Carter co-stars as Bertie's wife. Carter successfully captures the notorious quick wit and tenacity of the eventual Queen Mother, leaving audiences falling in love with the beloved British Royal matriarch eight years after her death at age 101. A scene in which Elizabeth consoles her husband following his ascension to the throne speaks volumes about Elizabeth's constant loyalty to Bertie despite apprehensions about life in Buckingham Palace.

Unlike other films about the royalty, this story is not predominantly set in awe-inducing palaces or grand ballrooms. Rather, Hooper spends significant amounts of time showing the Duke of York undergoing treatments with Lionel in Logue's drafty, dusty and bare office. When not in the office, the story plays out in the Duke's brick townhouse located on a residential London street (complete with neighbors) or Lionel's very humble abode in one of London's poorer areas. This sense of Bertie and Elizabeth as common Brits, thrust into the spotlight by the advent of radio and unpredicted circumstances surrounding the Prince of Whale's love-life, allows audiences to more easily connect with the characters and their most uncommon lives. Even the constant use of "Bertie", rather than formal titles or the Duke's actual name, goes so much further than most films about a King at making the topic seem relevant to the average person.

Ultimately, The King's Speech is an actor's dream project. The movie relies entirely on the character-driven plot and performances. Fortunately, it is exactly the plot, script and performances that lift this film to a level of greatness seen in maybe only one other film in 2010.