Mainstream Fetish: The Misogyny Of Sucker Punch [Review This Again]

The Good: Moments of direction, One or two performances
The Bad: Problematic plot, Constantly unsettling tone, Lack of distinct or intriguing characters, Most of the acting, Poor editing, Unrelenting misogyny in the writing
The Basics: Sucker Punch twists a disturbing creepy setting and a horrible personal tragedy into a masturbatory visual fantasy that falls utterly flat.


[There is a big meme in the art community going around now called "Draw This Again." In the meme, artists illustrate how they have grown in their chosen medium by putting side-by-side pictures of art they created in the past and now. My wife had the great idea that I should do something similar with my reviewing. So, for 2017, I will be posting occasional "Review This Again" reviews, where I revisit subjects I had previously reviewed and review them again, through a lens of increased age, more experience, and - for some - greater familiarity with the subject. This review is one such review, where I am re-experiencing Sucker Punch after many years, devoid of the hype that surrounded the movie and with more experience as both a reviewer and one who has seen more works by co-writer and director Zack Snyder. The film was originally reviewed here!]

My wife and I recently began watching the television series American Gods and it did not take long into the series before I found myself looking at actress Emily Browning, who plays Laura Moon in American Gods, and thinking that she looked somewhat familiar. The "somewhat" became clear the moment I realized that she was the same actress who played the lead in Sucker Punch; with only six or seven years between the first season of American Gods and Sucker Punch, Emily Browning's appearance did not significantly change. Instead, the reason it took me so long to identify the actress on American Gods was that she had more than three expressions on the television show. In Sucker Punch, Emily Browning's performance is unfortunately limited to staring blankly, expressing anguish, and screaming defiantly.

Sucker Punch is one of those films I recall being very excited about, swept up at the time in the promotions for it, and then incredibly disappointed by it when I rushed out to see it in the theater. My enthusiasm for the film was originally sparked by how much I enjoyed Zack Snyder's cinematic rendition of Watchmen (reviewed here!), but when I watched Sucker Punch, I recalled only feeling like it was a half-assed rewrite of Brazil (reviewed here!). But, seeing Emily Browning episode after episode on American Gods, I felt like perhaps I had misjudged Sucker Punch and I decided to watch Sucker Punch again.

I was wrong about Sucker Punch in my initial assessment.

Sucker Punch is worse than it initially appeared; on many levels. I have often been called a tough reviewer, one who is much harsher in evaluating films than many other reviewers. When it came to Sucker Punch, though, I quickly discovered in watching the movie again that I was not nearly stringent enough in my standards.

Watching Sucker Punch again, this time on a smaller screen, the film's flaws are far more glaring. While the movie initially appeared to be visually-spectacular, one of the things that caught me in watching Sucker Punch again was how unfortunately choppy much of the editing was. Given that I alternated between utterly bored by and appropriately horrified by the story, the fact that Sucker Punch cannot be relied upon to be considered even a visual masterpiece made the film an utter disappointment.

Sucker Punch is a film that attempts to be clever, but quickly degenerates into visual garbage. The movie focuses on a young woman who is not even given a proper name in the film. "Babydoll" is only given that name when she is committed to an insane asylum, as part of her fantasy sequence where she tries to escape the horrors of her new reality. Sucker Punch opens with Babydoll's mother dying, her step father getting custody of her and her sister and her mother's will granting everything to Babydoll and her sister. When their step father advances upon Babydoll to rape her, she resists, but in barricading herself away from him, she leaves her sister vulnerable to his attack. While the stepfather assaults her sister, Babydoll recovers his gun and breaks into her sister's room. There, she tries to kill her stepfather, but accidentally kills her sister. Babydoll is in shock when her stepfather has her committed to an insane asylum in Vermont where he bribes the orderly, Blue Jones, to have Babydoll lobotomized.

Five days into her stay in the asylum, Babydoll is set to be lobotomized against her will. And attentive viewers will notice that the film is pretty much over at that point. What follows this opening set-up is Babydoll having fantasies of the asylum being a very different place and within that dream, she imagines escape fantasies involving herself and four other inmates of the asylum.

Sucker Punch is a dark set up for absolute narrative garbage. The entire film is established as a cheap reversal flick where only the least-observant audience will notice that the narrator completely shifts as Babydoll transitions from the lobotomy chair to the stage within a brothel nightclub. The thing is, as unsophisticated as that is, Sucker Punch becomes even more clumsy as it nears its climax. One of the other patients at the asylum, Sweet Pea, becomes the film's protagonist in the film's final moments and that makes Sucker Punch one giant narrative tense slip, where its characters and dreams within a dream make no rational sense.

Co-writer Zack Snyder hopes viewers will not notice that the film does not make rational sense as Babydoll is given the role of apparent protagonist when she is constantly a victim and damsel in distress . . . always bailed out by men. For sure, Babydoll and her comrades have grand fantasy sequences where they slaughter steampunk zombies, orcs, dragons, samurai warriors, and twisted men, but it is hard to ignore two things: 1. those sequences are supposed to be analogies for training as the young women learn to work together and fight alongside each other (which makes no sense because in the fantasies, they are entirely proficient in every way) and 2. the sequences are fantasies for Babydoll escaping her reality . . . which is supposed to be her dancing in such a sexy and seductive way and objectifying herself that it distracts all of the men around her.

One of the fundamental issues with Sucker Punch is that it acknowledges its own sickness early on, but does nothing to fix it. Sweet Pea's proper introduction to Sucker Punch is the young woman, playing Babydoll in a play, rejecting the premise of sexualizing a lobotomy victim. Sweet Pea wants better material than a rape fantasy to portray and that is, sadly, the last moment where a woman is given an opportunity in Sucker Punch to stand up for herself and stand up against the patriarchy in a coherent way.

So, what follows are five chicks running around in short skirts, dancewear, tight tops, underwear, stockings, Hot Topic fetishwear, etc. shooting guns, running, and swinging swords when they are not in a more mundane fantasy where they are being constantly assaulted, exploited or menaced by men within the asylum/club.

The real peak of suckitude (it's hard to take Sucker Punch seriously, much less evaluating it like it deserves a high level of diction to deconstruct) is that with the writing being so terrible, only two performers are truly allowed to break out and show genuine range . . . and they are both men. Sucker Punch might have ass-kicking women on screen, but the female characters are monolithic and hard to empathize with. To be clear, it is easy to be horrified by Babydoll's abuse and her accidental killing of her sister. But that's over in the first ten minutes and the rest of the movie has Emily Browning running around wearing very little, performing with a blank expression for Zack Snyder's elaborate rape fantasy. Browning, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung are given surprisingly little to do as the female characters other than cosplay and run around.

So, it is somewhat surprising when Oscar Isaac and Scott Glenn steal Sucker Punch. Glenn plays the sensei character who actually has a chance to smile in his final scene and play (no matter how nonsensical the leap is) a character who is genuinely good in a dark mess of a film. At the other end of the spectrum is Oscar Isaac. Isaac portrays Blue Jones with constant menace and a skeevie quality that is unsettling to watch. There is not a hint of the jubilation he portrayed as Poe Dameron in The Force Awakens (reviewed here!) or his innate charisma. Instead, Isaac is a thoroughly despicable villain in Sucker Punch and he rides the tone of constant menace and misogynistic malice from beginning to end.

Ultimately, Sucker Punch is a mess and on the small screen, it becomes even more obvious how bad the film's content actually is. The sound for Sucker Punch cranks up the music and plummets for the dialogue. Sadly, even if one watches Sucker Punch with the volume muted, it is no better a film. Sucker Punch could be called "empowering to women" only as tongue in cheek; Sweet Pea nails it early on - Sucker Punch is a sick fantasy wherein young women at their most vulnerable are subjugated, robbed of their identity and ultimately given an entirely irrational narrative in place of an authentic story.

For other works with Jamie Chung, please check out my reviews of:
Flock Of Dudes
Big Hero 6
The Hangover Part III
The Hangover Part II
I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry

1.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Carnage To Catharsis The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 Is A Dismal End!

The Good: Moments of theme and performance, Special effects
The Bad: Unlikable or under-developed characters, Plot oscillates between predictable and undeveloped, Resolution
The Basics: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 puts to rest a series that managed to get produced at the right time . . . but will not satisfy serious film buffs.


When it comes to The Hunger Games, the truth is, the franchise did not particularly grab me. I was pretty much repulsed by The Hunger Games (reviewed here!) and while I liked Catching Fire (reviewed here!) well-enough, Mockingjay - Part 1 (reviewed here!) pretty much lost me. I just don't care about Panem. So, I was in no rush to run out and see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2. But, with it being a holiday and me being on the road alone, I figured it was time to pay my Hunger Games dues and take in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2.

Right off the bat, I've not read the books upon which the films in The Hunger Games Saga were based. This is a pure review of the film and the movie confirmed what I suspected the moment I saw The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1: Part 1 should have ended the moment the rescued Peeta Mellark reached up and began struggling Katniss Everdeen. Instead, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 begins with the potential of a young woman literally finding her voice and then rising up to raise a rebellion; instead, it is a movie about a mediocre woman using violence to solve her problems. Katniss Everdeen is supposed to be the hero fans root for, but Finnick made more substantive leaps in exposing the corruptions of President Snow, tyrant leader of Panem, in the prior film. Katniss does not follow Finnick's example in using logic, truth, and helping to turn the people of Panem against the corrupt President; as in the prior films, she mopes around until she shoots her problems away with her bow.

Having rescued Peeta from the Capitol, the rebels in District 13 are horrified to see how he has been brainwashed into an animal, intent on killing Katniss. Katniss, however, fights to keep Peeta alive and she is eager to end the conflict with Snow by getting support from other Districts. Her first attempt to shoot a propaganda film amid revolutionaries and refugees ends up with her getting shot. With the rebellion apparently crumbling, President Snow starts to weed out those close to him who might be political rivals, using poison like Finnick previously revealed. Despite being loathed now by Peeta, Katniss tries desperately to save him and be close to him, even though he is still violent from the venom that was used on him by the Capitol.

After Annie and Finnick marry, Katniss joins the squad being sent into the Capitol to disarm the traps that Snow has set. En route to Snow's mansion, Katniss and her companions are beset by creatures, weapons, and obstacles - much like the victors of the Hunger Games encountered during the games - and from Peeta's inability to control himself or overcome his programming. But as the resistance nears victory, Katniss gets information that suggests to her that Snow might not be the only villain in Panem and when someone close to Katniss is murdered as part of political theater, Katniss decides she alone must end it.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 failed to do what I've been waiting for in all of the films in The Hunger Games Saga: it did not make me care about the characters or Panem. Yes, oppression is absolutely terrible, but Panem in the films of The Hunger Games is a fiefdom of Districts serving the Capitol at a cost of two lives per District per year (one for the victor's district). The system has been working for 74 years at the beginning of The Hunger Games and, substantively, it is analogous to an unrestrained Capitalist system with an authoritarian government, so it was a hard dystopia for me to get into or care about (we have it as bad in real life; we just get to go to the movies and get a new smartphone once in a while). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 fails to make the viewer invested in the world of Panem.

Even worse, in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 it is almost impossible to care what becomes of the film's protagonist. There is no allegory in the film, so Katniss heals until she acts, mopes until she rages and the journey is unsatisfying . . . especially when one considers it without the "wow" factor of the special visual effects. Add to that, the love triangle where Katniss's heart is pulled by both Gale and Peeta is expanded in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, which feels like a time drain in an already packed film. The love triangle could have been left out and perhaps a scene could have been put in where Katniss sees evidence of the film's other primary villain, as opposed to simply taking other people's words for it.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 is notable in its underuse of performers Jena Malone (who, frankly, I can always stand to see more of in films) and Stanley Tucci. Elizabeth Banks plays Effie Trinket with less of an annoying quality than in the prior installment, so at least her talents are not as wasted this time around.

Ultimately, though, the time is wasted. Who lives? Who dies? It doesn't matter, so long as there's an Evangelical-friendly scene to cap off the movie with utter denial of the initial characterizations of the characters the corniest summing up of the events of the Saga. That, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 absolutely has.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
SPECTRE
Bleeding Heart
Hotel Transylvania 2

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Worst 10 Movies Of 2014!

| | | The Basics: 2014 was hardly a sterling year for films . . . but these ten are the movies that ought to be avoided at all costs!


It has been a long time since I have cared so little about what movies might win the Best Picture Oscar than this year. 2014 might have had some big blockbusters and two perfect films, but it had a giant load of mediocrity for the bulk of the year. While the Razzies tend to pick out the most obvious commercial failures, this year’s list of dud films would not be complete without the ten movies below.

It is important to note that while I’ve seen a great number of movies from 2014, I tended to avoid horror movies (on principle) – I’m certain if I had bothered with the latest movies from the overdone franchises of horror there might be some alterations to the list. But, for cinephiles and those who value their time, these are the 10 films too annoying, painful, boring or poorly made to bother watching from 2014:

10. Behaving Badly (reviewed here!) – The sex comedy Behaving Badly was so poorly received that even Selena Gomez appearing in it couldn’t scare up interest in the film at the box office. Behaving Badly is what happens when humor from audacious animated shows like Family Guy and South Park becomes the norm; by the time live action goes as surprising and raunchy, it’s passé. Behaving Badly might have been a cult film fifteen years ago, but in 2014, it’s utterly forgettable,

9. Listen Up Philip (reviewed here!) – The Academy and art house movie viewers usually love films about miserable people and writers at a point of crisis. Sadly, Listen Up Philip is just a collection of the worst stereotypes of writers and smart people. I never thought I’d see a year when Jonathan Pryce was in one of the worst movies of the year, but there it is . . .,

8. Expelled (reviewed here!) – While the major studios were duking it out during Oscar Pandering Season, one chose to dump one of its worst creations during the same time. Alas, hoping all the attention the big dogs would get vying for serious box office dollars might allow a concentrated fan effort to make an upset was not a marketing technique that worked. Instead, this droll comedy represents one of the year’s biggest conceptual failures: the entire premise is a slacker gets expelled from school and then has to apply himself to get back into school. The Herculean efforts made by the protagonist to get expelled make his ridiculous efforts to avoid boarding school all the more unrealistic, especially when he sees that the place he is threatened with ending up is incredibly easy to escape from! With no significant performers, performances, or ideas, Expelled is gut-wrenching to watch,

7. Horrible Bosses 2 (reviewed here!) – At the other end of the spectrum from Expelled is Horrible Bosses 2. Packed with talent, this limp sequel parades out as many of the stars from Horrible Bosses as it can to remind viewers what they liked about the original before degenerating into a disappointing and decidedly un-funny hostage caper movie that adds nothing worthwhile to the franchise. Seldom have so many truly funny and smart individuals been part of something that falls so short of humor and was so very dumb,

6. Authors Anonymous (reviewed here!) – I’m not sure if I should admire Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting for taking her time off as one of the highest paid actresses on television to appear in an indie film or lament that when she made the effort, she was put into essentially the same role. Either way, Authors Anonymous might be the best proof that when you’re at the top of the industry, it’s time to experiment and spread your wings (when there’s no risk to your finances or career for trying). Unfortunately, Authors Anonymous is neither ambitious, nor smart; it is not funny, nor does it allow any of the performers in it to truly showcase their talents – it is more a string of jokes that fail to land and missed opportunities than a film painfully bad to watch,

5. Vampire Academy (reviewed here!) – My only guess is that Vampire Academy was in production before Beautiful Creatures (reviewed here!) proved that not all supernatural teen lit translated into box office gold. Vampire Academy was so unmemorable that when I began assembling this list, I found I could not remember what was so bad about it. So, I picked up a copy, popped it in the Blu-Ray player and by the time the characters started talking to one another, I remembered! The dialogue is horrible, the acting is atrocious, the story is so familiar it has become an archetype - complete with the requisite and obvious reversals.  The only reason to pay to see this film would be if a Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of it was produced,

4. Bad Neighbors (reviewed here!) – I know I am in the minority of the world’s population on this one, but I did not find Neighbors funny. Dumb frat guys behaving badly, tormenting a working family . . . this is a horror movie disguised as a comedy and while Rose Byrne might have had a good year at the box office, it’s hard to imagine she or most of the rest of the cast is proud of this “comedy,”

3. Happy Christmas (reviewed here!) – Forgettable and neither complicated, nor entertaining, Happy Christmas was the last straw for me with actress Anna Kendrick. Kendrick either has one way to perform or she does not have the wherewithal to stand up to directors to challenge her to do more than appear on screen and keep her mouth partially open. Seriously; I know Anna Kendrick has a nice smile, but at some point, viewers need something more from her than reaction shots where she looks surprised, with her mouth slightly agape. Yet Happy Christmas seems to hinge on that one note of performance. As little as I ever root for the career death of anyone, as one who loathes how Lena Dunham has become the voice of fauxmanism (that’s "faux-feminism" or "a dumbing down of the fight for equality and civil rights," for which Dunham has become the poster woman), when Girls comes to its inevitable end, one hopes anyone who thinks of hiring Lena Dunham again might just check this film out and be assured that investing in her future is not worth it,

2. The Wait (reviewed here!) – Jena Malone did not have a good year in 2014. Her character in Mockingjay – Part 1 (reviewed here!) was virtually absent until the last few moments (and allowed her to show off none of her talent!) and Inherent Vice (reviewed here!), was delayed into 2015 in most markets, which meant that the most time she had on the big screen was in this lemon. The Wait is, as its name suggests, a ponderous film in which very little happens. At least Malone’s career will not suffer much from the film’s release . . . it did not get a wide-enough release, so most people will never see it to know how bad it was,

. . . and . . .

. . .the worst movie of 2014 is . . .

1. Making The Rules (reviewed here!) – Robin Thicke acting vehicle. Need I say more? Given how few people witnessed this cinematic atrocity, I probably should. Frances Conroy appears in her worst supporting role since supporting in Catwoman, Jaime Pressly plays Abby a lonely housewife obsessed with former boyfriend played by Robin Thicke and what is supposed to be a steamy, sexy drama about temptation is just another stupid, escapist trashy romance novel that isn’t smart enough to acknowledge itself for what it is. At under 80 minutes, at least Making The Rules does not make us suffer watching its terribleness long, but when that is the best that can be said about a film, it is hardly a ringing endorsement!

For other lists, please check out my:
Worst Ten Episodes Of Star Trek: Enterprise
The Top Ten Episodes Of Frasier
The Top Ten Episodes Of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

To see how all movies I have reviewed have stacked up against each other check out my Film Review Index Page where the movies are organized from best to worst!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Goofy, Grassed, Grand - Inherent Vice Translates Pynchon To Screen Well!

The Good: Wonderful acting, Distinct setting, Fun-to-watch characters, Good direction
The Bad: Unnecessary narrations, Needlessly complex at points
The Basics: Not as fun as reading Pynchon, P.T. Anderson makes a compelling film with Inherent Vice that captures the ‘70s drug culture in California well.


Without a doubt, the film I was most excited about in 2014 was The Zero Theorem (reviewed here!). While that might seem like a strange place to begin my review of Inherent Vice, it might make more sense when I note that Inherent Vice is this year’s The Zero Theorem. Allow me to explain; in 2013, The Zero Theorem was put into very limited release in the U.S. right around my birthday and my plan was to go see it with my wife on the big screen as part of that personal event. Alas, it was not to be; the film was delayed repeatedly in the U.S. and came out here in even limited release than it was supposed to! In 2014, the earliest showings of Inherent Vice also seemed like they would coincide with my birthday, but the film was delayed until Oscar Pandering Season. The result was a delayed sense of excitement for the film.

Add to that, Inherent Vice lives in the shadow of The Master (reviewed here!), a film that ruined my birthday back in 2012. Seriously. My wife saved up to pay for the day out and we made a whole event of driving to a theater that was actually showing The Master, because of my love of the works of writer/director P.T. Anderson and then the film sucked righteous balls (is, I believe, the delicate, p.c. way of saying it). So, Inherent Vice became a film I was excited about, but I did not attach a temporal limitation on that excitement. Now out in wide release, I finally managed to see the latest film by P.T. Anderson.

Inherent Vice is based upon the novel Inherent Vice (reviewed here!) by Thomas Pynchon and it is worth noting that while I have read and reviewed the book, this shall remain a very pure review of the film alone. That said, it’s a pretty exciting thing for me to see one of my favorite directors tackle the work of one of my favorite authors. While I have so far considered The Big Lebowski (reviewed here!) the most Pynchon-esque film I’ve yet seen, I was eager to see how Anderson would do with actual Pynchon.

And P.T. Anderson got it right more often than not. Before watching Inherent Vice, my only real trepidation with the idea of an adaptation of Pynchon’s works was that Pynchon’s diction is much of the magic of his novels. He can get away with a certain amount of crazy plotting and random twists because his poetics are amazing. Lacking that, how it would translate to screen seemed uncertain, but Anderson, who adapted Pynchon’s novel, respects much of the author’s writing by using voiceover narration surprisingly well. And, Anderson chose one of Pynchon’s more linear narratives to adapt for the screen!

Doc Sportello is laying in bed one night when his ex-girlfriend, Shasta, shows up. She asks the private detective for help with a situation she is in; her married boyfriend, Mickey Wolfmann is in trouble. Wolfmann's wife, Sloane, and her lover are trying to run a scam and they want Shasta’s help. Sloane wants to commit Mickey to an assylum and run off with his wealth and he wants Shasta to assist him in the con, which has led Shasta to a strange moral quandary. Wolfmann’s name comes up prominently in Sportello’s first case the next day when Tariq Khalil (of the Black Guerilla movement) hires him to get money out of a member of the Aryan Brotherhood with whom he’d done business. Sportello heads out to where Channel View Estates are being built by Wolfmann’s company and there he discovers the only operating unit is a “massage” parlor.

But soon, Sportello’s problems multiply as his search for Charlock end with Sportello knocked out and awakening to a interrogation by his nemesis, LAPD detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen about Charlock’s murder and Wolfmann and Shasta’s disappearance. While Sportello is apparently rescued by his lawyer (who is more a marine law lawyer than a criminal lawyer) and released upon his own reconnaissance, he soon finds himself in the crosshairs of the LAPD, FBI, and various criminal enterprises, including Golden Fang gangsters who own the boat by the same name. As drug-smuggling criminals, corrupt cops and swindlers manipulate Sportello, he is knocked around Gordita Beach as a tool for their various interests.

Inherent Vice, like the book, is filled with characters who are goofy and several who are only incidental to the “main” storyline being presented. Hope Harlington’s investigation into her husband’s “murder” and subsequent windfall deposit into her bank account is seemingly random until Coy Harlington turns up as a target of the Golden Fang. With so many characters, some get severely underused – like Dr. Blatnoyd, D.A. Kimball and Smilax (Doc’s lawyer) – and serve more to deliver plot exposition. Conversely, Sortilege might provide some beautiful narration in the form of Pynchon’s lines as voiceovers, but her part in the movie captures the time and place (1970’s California beach country) and the absurdities of it more than provide a real or viable character (her voiceovers about astrology are cringeworthy, but fit the character fine).

What Inherent Vice does well is showcase the talents of director P.T. Anderson and the actors he chose for the film. Inherent Vice might well prove that The Master was an exception to the rule of Anderson’s greatness as a writer-director. In adapting Pynchon’s novel, Anderson was able to take the essential elements of the story and bring to life a sense of Pynchon’s quirky characters. No matter how ridiculous the plot or characters get at various points in Inherent Vice, Anderson makes the film look great and he makes it all feel very much part of the same, distinct setting and narrative.

To make Inherent Vice work, the giant cast had to be fleshed out with amazing talents and fans of Anderson’s works like Magnolia (reviewed here!) and Boogie Nights (reviewed here!) will be unsurprised that he has once again assembled a memorable ensemble cast. Leading the cast are Joaquin Phoenix as Doc Sportello and Josh Brolin as Bigfoot. I’ve never been a fan of Phoenix’s performances – save in Her (reviewed here!) – but as the drug-addled detective Doc Sportello, Joaquin Phoenix nails it! Phoneix taps into the depth of his performance arsenal and comes up with completely credible body language and line deliveries for a befuddled, confused, tool of a protagonist and he makes Sportello work in ways I did not anticipate when the casting for Inherent Vice was first announced!

At the other end of the spectrum, Josh Brolin gives a solid performance as Bigfoot Bjornsen. Brolin’s magic is in playing the part entirely straightlaced; Bigfoot is a character who is a parody of a cop who does not realize he is a joke. Brolin balances the serious line-deliveries with utterly goofy physical comedy (Bjornsen has an oral fixation that Brolin brings to life perfectly!).

The rest of the cast, including Jena Malone, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Jaeger, Eric Roberts, and Katherine Waterston do a decent job of balancing expository backstory to make their characters pop with performances that show instead of tell who they are supposed to be. The result is a film that has moments of peril, but is dominated by a fun, weird, sensibility that one used to only look to the Coen Brothers for (on film); now, P.T. Anderson gives them a run for their money and Inherent Vice delivers an engaging experience for moviegoers!

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
To Write Love On Her Arms
The Last Five Years
The Voices
Love, Rosie
The Seventh Son
Song One
Project Almanac
Match
Vice
American Sniper

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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An Illustration Of Consequences For Those Who Do Not Understand Nuance: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.

The Good: Themes, Decent use of the expanded cast
The Bad: Unlikable characters, Plot is more set-up than substance
The Basics: More a tease for the final installment, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is thematically heavy-handed and the film is surprisingly easy to skip!


Despite the fact that my review of Catching Fire (that’s here!) remains one of my most-read reviews, I am not what one might call an enthusiast of The Hunger Games franchise. In fact, when the cinematic rendition of The Hunger Games (reviewed here!) was released, I argued that even reviewing it was utterly pointless; the novel series had such a huge fanbase and Lionsgate had thrown so much advertising at the undecided masses that it was going to be a huge phenomenon regardless of critical analysis. At this point, there is little purpose to bothering to review The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, either, except for those who might have soured on the franchise from the first two films and need a reason to go and see it or skip it.

My vote is actually in the “skip it” category. Not since 28 Weeks Later (reviewed here!) has there been such an unnecessary sequel. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is entirely a transition movie and given where it begins (desperately hinging on seeing Catching Fire) and where is ends (with, presumably*, the initiating incident which will finally crystallize the budding rebellion in the world of Panem), it seems like it would be virtually impossible to watch The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 when it is released next year and not get everything that happens in Part 1 from context clues. Seriously; if anyone out there is on the fence and willing to try, I’d love to be proven right on this one! The reason for this is simple: despite the influx of characters into the universe of The Hunger Games, the ones who survive The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 are only incrementally moved in this film. And, on the plot front, what events do occur in the film have ramifications that will undeniably be self-evident in the second part . . . and the rest is just a dressed up version of what we saw in Catching Fire. [* I wrote “presumably” because I have not read the books, so perhaps the final film will take an abrupt right turn from the direction it has been going for the past three films, though I doubt it!]

The 28 Weeks Later analogy is not an inapt one; where 28 Days Later described the horror of uninfected people fleeing crowds of infected individuals and left it up to the viewer, like the protagonist of the film, to grasp the level of horror and change in the world, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 illustrates over and over and over again what Catching Fire began and showed quite enough of. In Catching Fire, President Snow’s tenuous grasp over the 12 Districts of Panem is slipping and he sends in faceless soldiers into the Districts to do things like beat insubordinate old men to death and shoot rebels and menace crowds with firearms just off camera from televised events. We get it; people are rebelling, Snow’s forces are pretty mercilessly killing them. When that, and the 75th Annual Hunger Games, fail utterly, Snow uses his military to bomb Katniss Everdeen’s home district right off the map. We get it.

So, where Catching Fire unfortunately repeated the plot conceit of The Hunger Games for its latter half, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 browbeats the audience with repetition of Snow’s desperate attempts to retain power and control over the districts that pay tribute to his Capital. Where Catching Fire had an old man getting his head blown off, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ups the stakes with a line-up of children. Snow, apparently, is not the only one too stupid to realize that if fear failed to keep people in line, more fear won’t stop the rebellious forced; director Francis Lawrence and the screenwriters assume the audience needs to see more and more violent incidents to understand that.

We don’t.

Following her arrival in the subterranean District 13, Katniss Everdeen learns that the world of Panem is on the edge of full-scale revolution. Despite District 12 being obliterated, Katniss’s losses are remarkably small; she is reunited with her sister and Gale in District 13. There, she meets District 13’s “President,” Alma Coin. Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee want Katniss to become the symbolic leader of the revolution, a figurehead that will galvanize their movement. But Katniss is frustrated and determined that Peeta be rescued from the clutches of President Snow. When Peeta, who was captured after the arena was destroyed during the climax of the last Hunger Games, is shown on broadcasts as enemies to the Rebellion, Katniss is convinced that Peeta has been brainwashed and must be saved.

In exchange for committing forces to a rescue operation, Katniss allows Coin and Heavensbee to use her for their own propaganda machine. The result is a conflict that does not climax, a character whose heroic journey is stalled, and a film that seems much more like filler than flash.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is thematically unsettling in that protagonist Katniss Everdeen, who worked very hard to resist being a part of Snow’s propaganda machine in the prior installment, is willing to be a part of Coin’s media blitz against Snow in this one. Either way, she’s just a tool and like Snow menacing her family in exchange for her campaigning and illustrating love for Peeta, Coin withholds resources to rescue Peeta until Katniss commits to help her cause.

Unfortunately, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 flops even more in-context of the larger Saga . . . for anyone who has a memory. Katniss Everdeen didn’t love Peeta in The Hunger Games, she did not particularly love him in Catching Fire (though she was protective of him). In Mockingjay – Part 1, Katniss is more obsessed with saving Peeta without having an emotional connection to him to back that up. Katniss seemed happiest in District 12 when she was with Gale and now she and Gale could be together; from the moment Peeta first appears in Mockingjay – Part 1, the damage he can do is done. He is Snow’s mouthpiece. For a character who has no genuine love for him, assassination should bear the same emotional effect as rescue (a loss to a rebel is a loss to a rebel; how one commits resources says a lot). In the simplest possible terms, Katniss feels more like she is going through the motions with pushing for a rescue attempt as opposed to a character who has a heartfelt love and genuinely likes the guy she is concerned with.

To that end, Jennifer Lawrence does what she can with the role that spends much more time being passive and lackluster than truly compelling. Katniss Everdeen is barely the hero in the process of becoming, as opposed to the “political pawn who realizes she’s actually a rook;” Lawrence has very little she can do with such a limited character.

The rest of the cast is as good as the writing allows them to be. Josh Hutcherson may be bland as a love interest, but as a brainwashed figurehead delivering Snow’s talking points, he seems to have found his niche. Jenna Malone’s time on screen makes no real use of the actress's talents; her character is an afterthought and her appearance is little more than a cameo near the climax of the film. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Harrelson, and Donald Sutherland each return to their roles flawlessly. Julianne Moore, Mahershala Ali, and Robert Knepper join the cast and integrate well. Moore is given the most screentime of the new arrivals and she is exactly what she needs to be in order to sell the character of President Coin. She is dignified enough to be realistically presidential and she delivers the character’s strategies with a sense of pragmatism that makes her a good embodiment of a rebel. While Jeffrey Wright is simply continuing his role of Beetee, he is a pleasure to watch; the part of the intellectual with a grasp of both physical and political sciences suits him well.

Ultimately, though, none of the performances are so superlative that they become the “must see” embodiment of any of the actors’ talents, the characters are not drastically transformed in a way that the next film would not have to say (yet again) what happened to them and the themes are nothing new to the audience of the first two The Hunger Games. The result is a film that may be very safely skipped.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
To Write Love On Her Arms
The Seventh Son
Paddington
Inherent Vice
Selma
Still Alice
Predestination
The Interview
The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies
Expelled
Annie
Comet
Horrible Bosses 2
10,000 Days
Interstellar

4/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Happy Oscar Sunday! A Visually Striking, Boring, Bothersome Story: The Wait

The Good: Good direction, Purposely unsettling mood.
The Bad: Characters make little to no sense, Nothing exceptional on the acting front, Absolutely nauseating sense of mood.
The Basics: Alternately vague and mysterious and intensely specific and horrifyingly real, The Wait is a troubling mood piece.


Mood pieces are a tough sell in modern cinema. I’m not saying that only David Lynch can really pull off a mood piece, but after Mulholland Drive (reviewed here!), it is hard to make a real, deep, moody, visually-striking, dreamlike film (despite there being a rational order to Mulholland Drive that makes the dream movie actually make complete sense). “Mood pieces” are films that are far more concerned with style over substance and they belabor the creation or manipulation of a specific emotion over telling a concrete, linear, or rational story. The Wait is a mood piece and if you’ve never heard of it, there is a reason; it’s an independent film that had exceptionally little in the way of exposure. I’m starting my day of celebrating the year in cinema (tonight I’m having a little Oscars celebration!) with an indie film and The Wait was an unfortunate choice.

The reason none of the nominees for Best Picture are mood films is that mood films are tough to pull off effectively, exceptionally difficult on rewatchability and are marketed by no major studios or film distributors. The Wait embodies many of the problems of the indie mood piece; it is dense and flighty, deals with troubling topics and manipulates/confuses the viewer. In fact, I have not felt more consistently nauseated through the act of watching a film since Tideland (reviewed here!). Set in a small resort community in Oregon during a forest fire, I was sold on watching The Wait because it stars Jena Malone (whose part in the film becomes substantive long after I was already grossed out, bored, and stopped caring about the film). The Wait is like Tideland meets Dreamland (reviewed here!), but it is a film devoid of all charm, originality or characters worth caring about. So, while the movie very effectively creates a mood, it is homogenously unpleasant and not worth allowing oneself to be manipulated for the hour and a half.

Opening with the death of her mother in their remote house, Emma is surprised to get a telephone call from a woman she does not know. The woman knows that she is a Libra and her mother has just died and she tells Emma to hold tight, implying that her mother will resurrect. Emma tells her sister, Angela, who reasonably disbelieves the idea that their mother could come back from the dead. Despite it being unlike her, Emma asks Angela to wait on dealing with their mother’s body. While they deal with the body and the decision to wait, Emma’s children get freaked out and their neighbors in the small community of cabins react to their own lives.

Emma seems to believe that her mother’s resurrection will occur and that the act could get the family onto the morning news programs. She begins planning a celebration with her daughter, though as night falls, Angela calls the coroners to come take the body. The sisters begin a showdown with one another over their course of action and their history with their mother.

Mood pieces are not supposed to make rational sense necessarily, but The Wait tries to make some rational connections as Angela tries to justify why her mother might resurrect (based on silicon in the ground and fire retardant magnesium being dropped all around). The explanation comes between emotional outbursts, after unfathomably irrational moments, and when the character is clearly in a state of shock. Like any other film, mood pieces have to get the viewer to care about the characters long enough to sit through the movie; The Wait fails to do that.

Amid the death, creepy relationship between Emma and her daughter and Ian (Angela’s son) wrestling with the emotional consequences of his friend making a pass at him (while Ian remains obsessed with a girl nearby), The Wait falls down because the characters fail to react with a sense of realistic consequence. Perhaps the most problematic is Angela. Angela reveals to Emma early in the film that she was molested by her mother. So, when the mysterious neighbor, Ben, shows interest in Angela’s niece, there is a logical disconnect that makes no sense. Instead of wondering why the hell an adult stranger would want to make a young girl a gift or have some of her possessions, Angela enables him. Angela’s lack of a protective instinct toward her niece makes no sense, especially for a woman who is not in denial of her past abuse.

What also makes no sense – in a way that is essential to making one willing to experience the mood piece and enjoy the experience at all – is how Angela humors Emma from the beginning. First, the phone call Emma gets is painfully vague (and its source is revealed late in the film), which makes it a pretty big leap for Emma to be willing to believe Tia meant that her mother would resurrect. But Angela goes along with it. Angela’s willingness to humor Emma makes no sense: Angela has unresolved issues toward her mother (why the hell would she want her mother to return?!), does not believe in reincarnation, and Emma is crazy. Emma is not crazy in a vague, not medically-substantiated way: she is bat shit crazy with a severe personality disorder that makes her irrational, self-centered and a credible threat to her child, Angela, and Angela’s son. But Angela humors her, going along with her loopy plan to keep their mother’s corpse around on the hope it will reanimate.

All The Wait has going for it is the direction. M. Blash may have written a senseless script, but he directs it well. The Wait is murky and creates a constantly unsettling mood. Blash may have gotten great performances out of Jena Malone and Chloe Sevigny before, but here they are poorly used (when she is not acting spasmodically manic, Sevigny’s Emma just stares creepily into the camera). Still, he makes the film look good with a sense of style and production values that are professional.

It is not worth it, though. The Wait is, at best, a movie that will make one’s stomach clench up and twist over and over again as the characters on screen act in unsettling manners and in inorganic ways that defy logic, basic human emotion or any sense of rationality. For a day when I plan to enjoy my love of the cinematic arts, The Wait was a bad choice.

For other works featuring Jena Malone, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Sucker Punch
The Soloist
Pride & Prejudice
Saved!
Donnie Darko

1/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Why Catching Fire Is Worth Watching (When The Hunger Games . . . Not So Much)!

The Good: Good story, Decent use of themes, Generally good acting, Decent effects
The Bad: Characters still fall a little flat
The Basics: Rectifying many of the issues that made The Hunger Games not worth watching, Catching Fire becomes a Fall film worth tuning in to!


Lionsgate has made a huge mistake. I write that as someone who is not a fan of The Hunger Games Trilogy, despite the fact that my wife has now read all three books. I was not impressed by The Hunger Games (reviewed here!) and I have noticed that the merchandising for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire has been pretty anemic. In fact, outside the limited edition Hallmark Mockingjay ornament (reviewed here!), Catching Fire has not had a big pre-release push on the merchandising front. There seems to be a good reason for that: Catching Fire is a far more cerebral film than its predecessor and a far better one.

That leads me to my opening assertion: Lionsgate has made a terrible mistake. I was not a fan of The Hunger Games but I get how Lionsgate felt compelled to make the movie and make it first. Viewers needed to be introduced to the universe of The Hunger Games and understand the brutal methods of power and control utilized by the Presidents of Panem, including the current one, Snow. But when my wife finished reading the books, she noted that Catching Fire was the longest of the books and she complained that nothing much happened in Mockingjay. The mistake Lionsgate made: cramming everything from the second book into a single movie. Instead of breaking the final book into two films, the second book has a very natural break in it that could have made it a far better movie. This is a film with a lot crammed into it.

As it stands, though, Catching Fire is ambitious, generally smart, and well-presented, living up beyond the potential of The Hunger Games to make for a vastly superior film. Unlike the first film, which essentially made the audience into the citizens of the corrupt Panem, rooting for Katniss Everdeen to slay her child opponents in a bizarrely orchestrated bloodsport, Catching Fire exposes the movement throughout Panem that is leading to a genuine revolution. For half the film, the consequences of the corruption embodied by President Snow is explored and the viewer is given a fairly decent (and entertaining) civics lesson on the power of the individual and the methods employed by corrupt individuals in the highest levels of government. The allegory is strong and worthwhile and it makes most of Catching Fire worthwhile. The latter half of Catching Fire develops nicely as a story of sacrifice and rebellion realized; a story that would have carried more weight if some of the characters involved in making the sacrifices (and orchestrating the rebellion) were characters the viewer cared about more.

Catching Fire picks up where The Hunger Games left off. Having been triumphant dual survivors of the 74th Annual Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have become symbols of defiance throughout the Districts of Panem. Katniss realizes this while on tour in District 11, where the child, Rue, she worked to protect in the Hunger Games hailed from. Having seen Katniss defy the rulemakers in the Hunger Games, by threatening to kill herself with Peeta at the climax and rob the government of a victor to trot around, Katniss has inspired the rebels scattered throughout Panem to openly engage the government forces. When Katniss learns that the previously-destroyed District 13 may not be the abandoned wasteland the government claims it is, she becomes even more sympathetic to the anti-government forces.

To stop the growing insurrection and to psychologically devastate the Districts of Panem, President Snow uses the 75th Annual Hunger Games as a way to dispatch of the troublesome Katniss, Peeta, and other prior victors at the Hunger Games who have symbolic value to the Districts and the Rebellion. Traumatized from the moment she is forced back into the games, Katniss works to keep Peeta alive. But soon, other contestants in the Games begin to ally themselves with Katniss and it becomes clear that Snow may have botched his attempt to stop the rebellion.

Right off the bat, it is worth noting that President Snow is one of the lesser villains of modern cinema. How a man who expects to rule with an iron fist using fear and ritualized demoralization does not see the potential of prior victors slugging it out as a bad idea seems particularly lame. For sure, Snow is getting some bad advice from the new Game’s Master, Plutarch Heavensbee. Heavensbee’s role in Catching Fire might go over the head of Katniss, but it is unlikely to stymie fans of science fiction or political dramas. While there is almost always a Brutus in a political drama, it weakens the Caesar of the work for them to be so blind to it. As a result, President Snow’s miscalculations in pitting former victors against each other (which basically puts the people who have been most traumatized by the system in one place for days on end and seems like it would do little outside inspire further acts of televised resistance) weaken the President of Panem.

For her part, Katniss Everdeen comes across as less whiny in Catching Fire than she did in The Hunger Games. A lot of the credit for this has to go to Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence portrays Katniss as a young woman who is ignorant of political intrigue, as opposed to just stupid. Despite having the tactical wherewithal at the climax of The Hunger Games to extort the Capitol for her and Peeta’s lives, Katniss is still just an inexperienced young woman whose tactical abilities largely come from hunting. While that is an asset inside the games, it does not realistically prepare her for clandestine approaches from rebels and Lawrence walks the fine line that makes Katniss seem reasonably ignorant as opposed to laughably daft.

Unfortunately, Josh Hutcherson is still thoroughly white bread as Peeta Mellark and Liam Hemsworth’s Gale is presented with so little substance as to not make him a viable romantic interest for Katniss. Hutcherson’s presence in the movie is undermined by the far more dynamic Sam Claflin as Finnick. Finnick seems instantly more interesting than Peeta and where Peeta bumbles through the film, Finnick actually is presented with all the seeds of being an able leader. Claflin plays Finnick well and the onscreen magnetism he possesses serves the character well. Also noteworthy of the Catching Fire cast is Jena Malone. Malone manages to make the acerbic Johanna Mason seem unlike any of the meek roles she has played in the past and she plays the rougher edges in Mason without any sort of hints at her Sucker Punch (reviewed here!) character.

Before Catching Fire degenerates into the choreographed blood sport – though this time there is so much more going on inside the arena than simple survival that the audience does not fall into the trap of being like the citizens of Panem and there is little entertainment in the deaths in the arena – the film manages to captivate. As the story of sacrifice and rebellion grows, the viewer actually begins to care what might come of Panem, if not Katniss.

Catching Fire is a strong middle act and the struggle of the twelve (or thirteen) Districts against the oppressive Capitol seems crammed into a film that moves along at a decent pace, but glosses over some of the subtlety that might have made Panem one of the more interesting dystopian realms. As it stands, Catching Fire might have a problematic antagonist and an ally hampered by lackluster acting, but it progresses The Hunger Games Saga in a direction that is enough to make viewers want to see how the Rebellion fares. What might have made the Saga, and this installment, more compelling is a fundamentally more interesting protagonist. Jennifer Lawrence does what she can with Katniss Everdeen, but for the bulk of Catching Fire, viewers are rooting for a pawn and that’s not an enviable place for a storyteller to hinge their success, nor an audience to hang its hopes.

For other action/science fiction second act films, please check out my reviews of:
The Empire Strikes Back
The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug
Thor: The Dark World

7.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Cold Mountain Is Another Sad Southern Perspective On The Civil War

The Good: Peripheral characters and actors
The Bad: Dull leads, Boring story, Pacing
The Basics: Worthwhile only for the peripheral characters and actors, Cold Mountain is a long, disappointing Southern Civil War story.


Have you ever noticed how the majority of movies on the American Civil War take place from the Southern perspective? It's almost as if the South is obsessed with the Civil War and their loss that they just cannot get over it. Instead, they seek to recapture something from that time. Cold Mountain recaptures the oppression and ruthlessness of the South as it rebelled against the North.

In the little town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina, little southern belle Ada Monroe waits for her love Inman to return to her. While she waits, her home is menaced by Home Guard, the Southerners who didn't go off to fight "Northern Aggression" and instead stayed home and harassed the locals. Ada is aided by the appearance of Ruby Thewes, who helps her out around her property in exchange for room and board. Inman, for his part, becomes mortified by the killing on the front lines and heads home in a weird odyssey that is nowhere near as entertaining as, say, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Cold Mountain suffers, first and foremost, by its cast. Jude Law, as appealing as he is supposed to be, is exceptionally bland and a pretty terrible actor. He wasn't charismatic in A.I. (reviewed here!), he's only vaguely interesting here. In fact, of the main three in the cast, Law is the high point. When he journey's home and looks rugged and bearded and un-Jude Law-like, his acting ability comes out and he is able to deliver some performances that are respectable, most notably the subtlety of his scene near the end where he turns back toward the road (to reveal more of the scene would expose more of the plot than you should know).

It is always a mystery to me how Best Supporting Actress is chosen. Rene Zellweger won the award for her performance in this and I was left thinking she had Kim Bassinger Syndrome. KBS is a rare affliction whereby an actress with a minimal role in a film somehow is granted great recognition for the role, when it was relatively minor (like Kim Bassinger's role in L.A. Confidential). My personal belief is that Zellweger won solely on the strength of her delivery of the "rain speech;" for the rest of the film she is so distantly behind Kidman and Law that "Supporting Actress" is something of an overstatement. If you're disturbed by Zellweger's squinting and whining, this is not the movie for you. Her brief performance includes one or both in every frame.

Kidman rounds out the main cast playing the dull and uninspired Ada who is only of real interest so long as her father (played well by Donald Sutherland) is in the flick. Kidman's character has little character and Kidman's performance is weakened by the fact that - as a weak character - she must play off other people to define herself. As a result, much of Kidman's performance is simply reacting, not actually imbuing the character with, well, character.

In contrast to the dull, plodding main characters and the uninspired performances by the leads, the supporting cast is pretty wonderful with a great array of actual characters. The always-wonderful Brendan Gleeson plays Ruby's father and as a credit to his acting ability, manages to portray him without even a hint of his 28 Days Later character. Gleeson reminds us how good character actors can be.

Supporting the film as well are Ethan Suplee, as the tragic Pangle, Jack White, as the musician Georgia, Kathy Baker as Sally - a role that redeems her tired performance as "hook lady" from Boston Public, Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Reverend Veasey - a fugitive to accompany Inman, and Donald Sutherland as Reverend Monroe. These characters are each more interesting than the main three and quite well-portrayed by their respective actors. Kathy Baker, for example, plays exceptionally well outside the special effects to make her pallor and near-death quite vivid and real.

But so much of Cold Mountain hinges on plot and it's not terribly compelling. After the first group of people are tormented or killed for harboring deserters or being a deserter, we understand how harsh the Home Guard is. The repetition of it simply fills time and delays the obvious conclusion to the movie. And the serious problem is that those characters we care the most for are so briefly in the movie before they are snuffed out.

It's basically a "soldier makes his way home from war and encounters obstacles" film. And intermingled with that is a "women at home fighting in their own way" story. The latter story suffers because the women are not interesting or particularly strong; indeed, Ada is almost entirely defined by her waiting for Inman and thus seeks her definition from a man. Consequently, the other half suffers because it does not take long before the viewer begins to wonder, "Why is Inman working so hard to get home to such a dull woman?" And Inman's own lack of genuine personality is confusing as well. We have a dull man determined to make it home to a woman who defines herself based on him, resulting in a cyclical motion of complete boredom.

Blood and guts fans will enjoy the battle scenes and Cold Mountain sadly has a scene of rural living involving the exsanguination of a goat that is very realistic and almost more tragic than the human costs of the movie. In short, though, this is a tired, tiresome movie, without anything truly new and led by characters and actors that were overpaid for their performances they failed to deliver on.

For other works featuring Natalie Portman, check out my reviews of:
Thor
No Strings Attached
Black Swan
The Other Woman
The Darjeeling Limited
V For Vendetta
The Star Wars Saga

4/10

Check out how this film stacks up against other films I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where the reviews are organized best film to worst!

© 2012, 2005 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Saved! Is Another Perfect Comedy With Real Social Commentary!

The Good: Wonderful social commentary, Surprisingly good acting, Decent character development, DVD bonus features
The Bad: Somewhat predictable.
The Basics: On DVD, Saved! is a funny, blasphemous film with decent bonus features and a lot of humor.


My partner and I have had a great number of conversations about religion because we both had times in our lives where we had faith and we both had events which caused us to lose our faith in organized religions. While we've conversed about our thoughts about various Christian - or, as I am quick to point out, Paulist - hypocrisies in the establishments and hierarchies of the churches and religious movements, we have seldom explored the limited art that is daring enough to criticize them. To date, the only movie we have seen together that deals with religious hypocrisy is Dogma (reviewed here!). So when she asked me to take a break from my Best Picture Project to watch Saved! with her, I was eager and a little surprised that she had beaten me to seeing the film.

As is appropriate, my partner called it absolutely right for me: I loved Saved! and it is one of the first new films in a long time I am pleased to enthusiastically recommend and spread the good news of. Ironically, my partner's history with the film paralleled the film. While my problems with the resurgence of the Religious Right has largely been political, my partner's issues are largely personal. When Saved! first hit DVD, she fell in love with it and used it to try to wake her mother up to the contradictions within the Church. Her mother, blinded by ignorance, failed to believe in the film's reality. The truth is, the strength of Saved! is that it finally exposes the social problems with the Paulist movements and the ignorance of those embedded within it. The movie calls out the hypocrisies in youth movements that preach abstinence, homophobia and religious intolerance. More than that, Saved! makes the social commentary with interesting characters and startlingly good acting for an obscure film.

Mary is a Christian teenager who is a about to enter her Senior year at the prestigious American Eagle private school. She is dating a boy named Dean who comes out to her over the summer. Mary devotes herself to trying to un-gay Dean and she has a vision of Jesus Christ, who tells her to help him. Mary takes this as a sign to have premarital sex with Dean and on the first day of her Senior year, Dean is sent away to Mercy House to undergo re-education to make him a heterosexual. Mary and her friend, Hillary Faye, begin the year trying to spread the word of Christ, especially to the delinquent Jewish student, Cassandra. Hillary Faye's handicapped brother, Roland, becomes intrigued by Cassandra's freespirited ways and becomes her friend.

But when Pastor Skip's son, Patrick, comes to American Eagle, Mary is instantly smitten and shocked when Patrick appears to prefer her to Hillary Faye. Mary puts him off when she realizes that she is pregnant with Dean's child and this causes her to question everything she has known. Cassandra and Roland see Mary leaving a Planned Parenthood clinic and show her friendship and support. This infuriates Hillary Faye further and Cassandra works to make sure Patrick stays interested in Mary and thwart Hillary Faye's stranglehold on American Eagle.

Mixed in with the story of youthful discovery of the hypocrisy upon which they have built their lives is a subplot where Mary's mother is clearly involved with Pastor Skip, whose marriage is anything but happy. Pastor Skip, standing for the Christian sense of morality, is unwilling to divorce his wife, but cannot (obviously) make his relationship with Mary's mother public. This leads to one of only two problems I could find in the entire film. Near the climax of the film, Mary's relationship with Skip is made explicit and because the scene occurs in public, the viewer has to wonder if Skip has become a complete moron or if the writers just got completely careless.

While Saved! has a few moments of predictability, at least for those who can see which way the wind is blowing with the satire, the only other real problem with the movie is with the casting. Martin Donovan is wonderful as Pastor Skip and he is well-cast. Dean is played by the equally-good Chad Faust. While Patrick is Pastor Skip's son and Dean has no relation, Faust and Donovan have a remarkably similar facial structure. The eyes and jawline of the two actors is unsettlingly similar for two characters who have no relation.

That said, Saved! is funny, heartwarming and enlightening. Saved! exposes the Paulist community for exactly what it is; as human as any other group of people. As a result, the characters are motivated by fundamental human desires and faults. Mary tries to do what she believes is right based upon her faith and her vision, even though it is irrational and objectively foolish. Similarly, Hillary Faye is jealous and conceited, just like many girls her age. What many might not realize before watching Saved! is that the Christian community has cliques just like every other group of people, especially young people.

Saved! is also blessed (I couldn't resist) with amazing acting. For a film using no a-listers, the movie is dead-on with the acting. Arguably the most recognizable name comes from singer Mandy Moore, who plays Hillary Faye. Moore brings the same upbeat eagerness to Saved! that she brought to American Dreamz (reviewed here!), but she manages to have a much darker undertone to her character here which she pulls off plausibly with a very tight body language. As well, Mackauly Caulkin, who plays Roland is decent. He plays Roland with a jaded sense and while my partner rightly observed that he ought to have bulked up to play the role of a young man who has been wheelchair bound for years, he makes one believe that he actually is wheelchair-bound, especially in the lone scene where he pulls himself up off the ground.

But almost the entire film hinges on Jena Malone, who plays Mary. Mary has a character arc that takes her from blind faith to agnostic and Malone makes the transformation entirely realistic by gradually introducing elements into Mary's character that make the changes a natural progression. From playing opposite a fifty-foot tall cutout Jesus (one of the powerful acting moments where Malone swears bitterly at the sign) to playing with Mary-Lousie Parker (Mary's mother) to Faust, Malone holds her own and has a surprising screen presence. I write "surprising," because Mary is supposed to be the sidekick and is intended to be awkward when she has the spotlight cast upon her, in complete contrast to Moore's Hillary Faye. Yet, Malone makes the simplicity of Mary work and be more exciting than the flash of the film's resident blonde. Malone's unassuming quality, in fact, makes her more watchable and intriguing than anyone else. While Malone may seem blandly wholesome initially, Mary's story takes off and Malone makes the character's transformations work.

On DVD, Saved! features two different commentary tracks which are entertaining and insightful on the making and reception of the film. There are bloopers which are moderately funny and deleted scenes which flesh the movie out even better. In addition to the theatrical trailer, there is also a featurette on the making of Saved! but some of that is repetitive from the commentary tracks. All in all, though, Saved! makes decent use of the medium.

And for those with a stomach for social satire, Saved! is funny and clever, with a dry wit and an open humor alternately. The film promises viewers it will expose what virtually every other group has had exposed: that at the end of the day, we are all people and as much as groups try to separate themselves, they are largely motivated by the same basic emotions. This is a clever and enjoyable way to remind some dogmatic individuals about that.

For other works featuring Jena Malone, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Sucker Punch
The Soloist
Pride & Prejudice
Donnie Darko

10/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an orderly listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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