Light And Dark Fight The Drug War In Sicario.

The Good: Performances, Pacing, Direction
The Bad: Very basic story, Lighter on character motivations than some
The Basics: Sicario is tense and clever, even if it is comparatively simple for the two stories it attempts to tell.


With how many films are released each year, it is unsurprising that there are some films I just do not get around to seeing when they are released - regardless of my intent to watch them. Last year, one of the few films to slip between the cracks that I actually wanted to see (the same cannot be said of all of the Best Picture nominees that I had to watch!) was Sicario. I knew almost nothing about Sicario, save that it had an amazing cast (Victor Garber can get me to watch just about anything!) and that the film was a crime drama centered around the drug trade.

As Sicario starts to ramp up, there is a sense that the film might simply become a rehash of Traffic (reviewed here!). Smartly, Sicario keeps the scope much tighter; it is a film where various law enforcement agents and agencies work together to smoke out the boss of a major drug kingpin. So, while there is a feeling that the film is sweeping in scope because it travels around and involves large groups of people working together, the plot is remarkably simple.

Opening in Chandler, Arizona, an FBI SWAT Team led by Kate Mercer raids a cartel house looking for hostages and, when she is shot at, it opens a hole in the wall, which reveals corpses stored there. Forty-two bodies are discovered inside the house before an agent inadvertently sets off a bomb, killing two agents. Mercer connects the house to Manuel Diaz, a major cartel leader working within the United States. Following the incident, Mercer is recruited by the Department Of Justice to join a team to get to Diaz and the cartel for which he works. The first operation she is a part of has Mercer feeling very much left out of the loop and questioning the legality of the mission as it crosses the border from El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Mexico. The mission is an extraction, an extradition that Mercer is wary of and witnesses (from a distance) the violent reaction on the streets of Juarez to.

Guillermo, the man extracted, reveals the existence of a secret tunnel between the U.S. and Mexico. Mercer, Graver, Alejandro, and Mercer's partner Reggie, bust one of Manuel Diaz's money launderers, which leaves Mercer jaded because (while exposing Diaz's methods, there is not strong, legal, evidence of a crime committed) the task force will not act upon it; they continue to focus on flushing out Diaz's superior in the cartel. Disillusioned, Mercer and Reggie go out to a bar, where Mercer hooks up with Ted . . . only to discover that he is one of Diaz's men in law enforcement in the U.S. Alejandro uses Ted as an opportunity to clean house of the corrupt police officers. When Diaz is recalled, Mercer learns that she has been used as legal cover for the CIA (which cannot operate on U.S. soil without another agency with legal authority attached to the operation), but she soldiers on, determined to find out how far back she was a pawn for Graver.

While Sicario is instantly graphic and intense, the impressive aspect of the film is its attention to detail. While Mercer is being recruited to the elite team, she is asked about having a husband and children. While it is easy to view the scene - which contains a group of white men sitting in judgment of Mercer - as something sexist or invasive, director Denis Villeneuve and actor Josh Brolin (who plays Graver, the interrogator) find just the right balance to make those who are familiar with crime dramas recognize it as a risk assessment inquiry. Sicario executes a number of the details like that incredibly well.

Emily Blunt is just the right performer to play Mercer. While she is established right away in the film as badass and efficient, Mercer gets into a situation where she is dramatically over her head. Blunt is able to make the audience empathize immediately with Mercer by playing the fish out of water. Blunt, like the audience, is along for the ride on the first big mission, but the way Blunt uses her facial expressions makes the viewer believe they have a kindred spirit. It is the way Blunt keeps her eyes constantly scanning that lends credibility to Mercer; she is aware of consequences and law that most of the audience is not. It is not easy to portray internal conflict on screen, but Blunt makes it look effortless and instantly gets the viewer to invest in Kate Mercer.

In a similar fashion, Victor Garber's very minimal role in Sicario belays a much more hefty character. Garber's role of Jennings from the Department Of Justice, might seem to exist in Sicario to both recruit Mercer and provide a legal justification for the operations that follow, but Garber plays Jennings with a quiet intelligence that lends authority to the supporting part. Benecio Del Toro might have a more substantive role in Sicario, but Garber steals the scenes he is in.

It is hard to pull off a film where the protagonist is, ostensibly, a dupe, but Sicario manages to do almost all it sets out to very well. Mercer is surrounded by people who are used to keeping secrets, so there are a number of moments of pure exposition needed to inform the viewer what is actually going on. Instead of using cheesy voiceovers or inorganic monologues, Sicario immerses the viewer in the situation and then explains and justifies as needed. Fortunately, Mercer is frequently asking "what the hell is going on" so the viewer is able to watch Sicario and feel like they are going exactly at pace with someone who appears vastly more knowledgeable in the situation.

Sicario is essentially a pair of character studies of Mercer and Alejandro. Mercer is an incredibly straightforward character with a clear moral core and series of goals. Alejandro, by contrast, is a mysterious character and watching his story unfold is much of the meat of Sicario. Despite Alejandro's motivation being handed to the viewer by Graver, the last half of the film makes him a compelling character who makes the latter half of Sicario gripping. Benicio Del Toro is well-cast as Alejandro, though he plays the quiet, mysterious role in the first half in a way that telegraphs his potentially ruthless abilities.

Like Traffic, Sicario makes a moral case alongside decidedly immoral actions. There is the obligatory acknowledgement that the war on drugs is an abject failure and that a significant problem with fighting against the illegal drug trade is that demand for the product exists in the United States. But the meat of Sicario is the interplay between Mercer and Alejandro and while it is slow in getting there, the payoff is generally satisfying.

The result is a crime drama that is engaging to watch and smartly explores the complexity of a fight that has created as many monsters as it has eliminated.

For other works with Emily Blunt, please visit my reviews of:
Edge Of Tomorrow
Looper
The Five-Year Engagement
The Adjustment Bureau
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen
Charlie Wilson’s War
Dan In Real Life
The Devil Wears Prada

7/10

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

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Avengers In, Avengers Out, Avengers In Again: The Avengers: Age Of Ultron Barely Reaches Average!

The Good: Performances are fine, Generally good direction
The Bad: Unrelenting effects sequences/splintered cast makes for a strangely underdeveloped couple of hours.
The Basics: With The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Joss Whedon has a rare stumble into mediocrity that advances the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a particularly unthrilling direction.


I have been worried lately that I will never again fall in love with a new work of art. I listen to a lot of music, watch and review a lot of television and movies and I try to experience food on multiple levels when I am introduced to new culinary delights. Having critical standards has led to a number of conversations around my house between my wife and I. She has voiced a concern that my idea of a "perfect film" is virtually unattainable and when I spend a significant amount of time after a viewing trying to find something wrong with a movie just to not give it a perfect ten, I am actually delivering a contrived rating that works to deny perfection, as opposed to celebrate it.

With The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, I fear no such contrivance. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron was easily the film I was most unabashedly excited about seeing this year, so it was the one I was also at the greatest risk of rating high based on prejudice in favor of the film. The irony for me is that X-Men: Days Of Future Past (reviewed here!) last year came with so much less hype and delivered such a vastly superior film that I was not genuinely prepared for how mediocre The Avengers: Age Of Ultron actually was.

To his credit, Joss Whedon had a herculean task at hand when he penned and directed The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is a sequel to Whedon's The Avengers (reviewed here!) and the marketing department at Marvel Entertainment/Disney has worked overtime to leak its forthcoming schedule of Marvel films. Joss Whedon had to try to top a superhero team origin story that brought together disparate heroes and made them into a group that could fight a single villain and his incredible army. Where do you go after that?

The problem Whedon faced conceptually within the narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was that he had one film to introduce and defeat a new villain that could hold his own in the imagination of the viewer with Loki (the adversary from The Avengers), while servicing a sprawling cast of established heroes and making that work within the confines of the stories told since The Avengers. From a studio, practical moviemaking point of view, Whedon had to wrestle with reorganizing characters so the franchise could survive if significant actors decided to leave when their contracts came up and that meant adding new cast members to the mix. With all those pressures upon him, Whedon had to write an entertaining super hero story that could entertain and set up the next, known, installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

That's a lot of balls in the air for anyone and the only real hope for the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes in the promises made outside the actual film The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Writer/Director Joss Whedon has promised that The Avengers: Age Of Ultron will have a slew of deleted scenes and unseen footage when it drops on Blu-Ray. One has to hope that there will be a director's cut because as it is, The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is something of a mess.

At the core of my issue with watching The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is the fact that so much of it felt like it had been done before that I kept waiting for the movie to begin, to get engaging, to thrill me, to show me something new, to surprise me, to . . . well, you get the picture; I just kept repeating and rephrasing things without actually saying anything fundamentally new. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron feels a lot like that. In fact, were one to do a double-feature, one suspects that if one dozed off at any point in the Chitauri attack on New York City in The Avengers and awoke at virtually any point in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, they would feel like they were in the same movie.

The Avengers: Age Of Ultron goes from one sprawling, fast-paced, CG-encrusted action sequence to another to another to another with breaks that are surprisingly uninteresting. Much of The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is like watching The Avengers blended with outtakes or b-roll footage from Iron Man 3 (reviewed here!). It is chaotic, warlike, easy to lose track of and takes a long time to get through before it gets to anything truly good. And in the quiet, character-building moments, The Avengers: Age Of Ultron focuses on the least-impressive Avenger, belabors the set-up to Captain America: Civil War and entirely jerks the audience around. We'll come back to that.

What is it about? The Avengers: Age Of Ultron follows in the wake of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (reviewed here!) with The Avengers - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and the Hulk - working to clean-up the problems left in the world from the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. In Sokovia, they hit upon the motherload: Baron Strucker and Dr. List have a laboratory where they have the scepter Loki used, along with corpses of Chitauri vessels and two powerful (for lack of a better term) metahumans. When the Avengers break in to put an end to the H.Y.D.R.A. lab, the twins Pietro (who has superspeed, much like The Flash) and Wanda Maximoff (who is not actually magical, but has the ability to influence neurons in the brain to make people see things and has telekinetic powers over matter and energy) escape. As the battle for the H.Y.D.R.A. base is winding down, Wanda returns and uses her powers on Tony Stark, who sees a nightmarish image of the Earth under attack by legions of the creature/ships that attacked New York City with the Chitauri.

Their mission successful and the scepter recovered, the Avengers return to New York City and Avengers Tower where they plan to put the problems that have been lingering behind them. The recovery of the scepter will allow Thor to return it to Asgard and remove the lingering influence of Loki from Earth, the destruction of Strucker's organization and lab effectively decimates S.H.I.E.L.D.'s biggest enemy (which removes a big psychic burden from Captain America). Only Tony Stark is not over-the-moon thrilled about the campaign. While studying the scepter, Stark realizes that the glowing piece at its tip is not a brainwashing device, but rather a complex program or neural network, comparable to (but vastly more complex and alien than) Jarvis (Stark's A.I.). He pitches an idea to Dr. Bruce Banner; they can use the alien a.i. in their mothballed planetary defense project, Ultron. Bypassing the rest of the group, Stark and Banner activate the alien intelligence and then go off to a party celebrating the victory of the Avengers over the Earth's enemies. While they party, the alien a.i. kills Jarvis and takes control of the Avengers's robotic army (a collection of flight suits much like those in Iron Man 3, which are now serviced through Avengers Headquarters).

After the main party, the a.i. reveals itself as Ultron by attacking the Avengers using the Avengers robots. Calling for human evolution through the extinction of the Avengers, Ultron disappears into every computer on earth when his robotic body is compromised, but in the attack, his forces make off with the scepter. Needless to say, the other Avengers are pissed at Stark and Banner (especially Thor, who now has to try to find and recover the scepter yet again!) and they soon become terrified that Ultron will break into computers that have nuclear launch codes and obliterate the Earth. Ultron makes a new body and heads with the Maximoff twins (who want nothing more than revenge upon Tony Stark for the death of their family) to the African nation of Wakanda. There, Ultron acquires Vibranium he needs for his nefarious plan and when the Avengers track him down, they are set upon by Wanda and Pietro. Wanda influences Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk before she is stopped by Hawkeye. Shaken, the team retreats to a safe house where they try to figure out what UItron wants and how to stop him. Their brainstorming leads them to Dr. Helen Cho's skin-growth machine where Ultron is attempting to create the entity that will be the downfall of the Avengers. But in the process, Wanda sees Ultron's plan and his idea of peace comes through an extinction-level event and she (and her brother) are forced to choose sides in the battle for the fate of the planet.

Writing out the plot for The Avengers: Age Of Ultron actually makes the movie sound really interesting and engaging. On screen, it didn't seem as awesome, though (much like the way some of the plots to Star Trek: Enterprise sound pretty good, but then when one turns on the show and the characters start talking, the dialogue and acting are so bad, it doesn't matter what is going on, the show is virtually unwatchable the way it tries to tell the story). The film opens with a big battle, montage/regroup/party, post-party battle, characters argue, Wakanda battle, moody safe house scene, extended climactic battle. It's a lot of fighting. And, try as he might, Joss Whedon and the special effects department don't have a lot they can do that hasn't been mined by The Avengers and Iron Man 3 (Whedon had a real disadvantage in that Ultron's robot army is basically made up of shiny silver Iron Man-style suits).

So, it comes down to character. Tony Stark gets one or two quips (they've been in the trailers), Bruce Banner is predictably conflicted, and Nick Fury pops up for a dramatic speech just at the right time. But Ultron never pops - he's General Grievous from Revenge Of The Sith (reviewed here!) meets any generic Decepticon. Ultron is the real shock; he's such a monolithic villain. Even James Spader voicing him cannot make him seem less generic and, therefore, entirely un-frightening. Will The Avengers unite to find a way to stop Ultron? Gosh, I hope so. Come to think of it, if they just crashed the world's power grid long enough for every computer in the world to actually shut down, wouldn't that have stopped him?! The point being, it would be a surprise if the Avengers couldn't stop Ultron more than any real revelation that they can.

Of the new characters, that leaves Wanda, Pietro, Vision, and Laura. Wanda and Pietro are motivated by a sense of revenge that is adequately explained in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. It's not so satisfactorily explained to make viewers feel satisfied when Pietro doesn't kill Tony Stark in the film's first twelve minutes. Seriously; Pietro stands, watching the completely vulnerable Tony Stark take possession of the scepter when all he had to do was run over at super-speeds, kill his family's mortal enemy . . . movie over. Vision is engaging to watch, but is just about as generic as Ultron. And Laura . . .

. . . Laura gives Joss Whedon an excuse to keep Hawkeye in the mix in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Hawkeye is, as the film openly acknowledges, an archer in a team that includes a super soldier, a demigod, a trained assassin, a raging lab experiment, and an armored weapon equivalent to a small army. So, Hawkeye is given a sudden, abrupt, backstory and when the Avengers arrive at Laura's safe house, it humanizes the archer and gives the viewer an emotional root. And Whedon uses all the momentum with Hawkeye to set up one of his famous reversals and it would be truly nitpicky to say that doesn't work. Whedon pulls off his final-act reversal with Hawkeye and that is one of the few treats of The Avengers: Age Of Ultron.

Of the big three (Thor, Iron Man and Captain America), The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is unfortunately fractured. One has to guess that a number of the scenes Whedon could put back into the film center around Thor and his large chunk of time away from The Avengers entering the mysterious pool and leading to the resolution that brings him back. Thor sits out a surprising and significant chunk of The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. That gives Tony Stark and Steve Rogers a lot of time on screen to disagree. Rogers is, reasonably, pissed because Tony Stark does in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron exactly what Pierce did in Captain America: The Winter Soldier; he tried to anticipate world problems and stop them before they ever occur. Stark's characterization here makes sense: he is reeling from fear that Earth cannot protect itself and he doesn't want to debate with the team the merits of having a global defense system. When it goes wrong, Rogers climbs off his high horse to yell at him and Stark yells back. But the conflict between Stark and Rogers never quite boils up to the level where it would create a credible schism to result in Captain America: Civil War. In fact, while the conflict between Stark and Rogers is essential for that, Whedon takes a big crap on the writer who has to create that film with where he leaves Stark. And while Rogers moralizes, he's essentially the same guy we've been seeing. This time, he's already so disillusioned from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s actions in The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he doesn't seem particularly surprised when one of his teammates screws him (and humanity) over.

The other big character arc in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is just a colossal mindfuck for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After finally figuring out how to make The Hulk interesting and truly work, The Avengers: Age Of Ultron belabors a romantic relationship between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). Mortgaging the chemistry Romanoff and Rogers developed throughout Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers: Age Of Ultron teases a "will they or won't they" through most of the film. The result is particularly unsatisfying, if for no other reason than that Joss Whedon (who is both incredibly intelligent and remarkably personable, at least in interviews!) perpetrates the stereotype that incredibly smart people are emotional idiots. Bruce Banner can be absolutely brilliant, but to offset that, he can't have enough emotional maturity to face his demons, ask for help, or accept the compassion and love of someone who fits him surprisingly well.

The acting in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is good. But, that's it. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is not bursting with big emotional scenes that allow the actors to actually do much in the way of stretching. In fact, newcomer (to the franchise) Elizabeth Olsen is given the character with the biggest emotional journey. Wanda transitions from angry to triumphant (her smile at seeing Tony Stark shaken after she mojos him is wonderful) to horrified when she realizes Ultron's plan is embodied well by Olsen's performance. Olsen has good emotional range for her eyes, posture and body language to sell the conflicted emotional states of Wanda well. Sadly, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is not given as much in the way of big moments to make Pietro pop.

So, Joss Whedon had a tough task with The Avengers: Age Of Ultron and the fact that he has already said there is much more to the movie than viewers will see in the theaters virtually guarantees a time when he admits that the theater version is not the film he intended to make. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron contains noticeable narrative gaps, some troubling gaffes and a "ho-hum this is *supposed to be* adventure" feel to it that makes one wonder if more will actually be better when the longer version is eventually revealed.

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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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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If The Avengers Were Made As A Science Fiction Comedy: Guardians Of The Galaxy!

The Good: Good humor, Decent soundtrack, Good plot development
The Bad: Rather obvious (and rushed) character development, Nothing exceptional in terms of performances, Distracting 3-D in several points
The Basics: Guardians Of The Galaxy further expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe while amusing viewers . . . without resonating the same way as the prior installments.


Guardians Of The Galaxy has a number of reasonable comparisons to the giant Marvel film The Avengers (reviewed here!), not just because both are set within the same storytelling universe. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was established in Phase One (reviewed here!) as a surprisingly grounded place: Tony Stark needed time to train within his suit of armor, Steve Rogers was a unique warrior set in place as the only stopgap against an army powered by an extraterrestrial device and for the bulk of his time on Earth, Thor was without his godlike powers. For all of the supernatural and comic book conceits that exist in science fiction and comic book movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe did not employ most of them (save in the Hulk movies, which is arguably why they failed). In other words, most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe strove to generally recreate the real world and then add slight twists to it and explore how “real people” and the “real world” would react to those twists.

Until the climax of The Avengers, when an interstellar alien force invades, and outside the climactic event of Thor: The Dark World (reviewed here!), the Marvel Cinematic Universe has worked hard to keep a realist sensibility to itself. Taking an entirely different tact is the new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians Of The Galaxy. Guardians Of The Galaxy, as the name implies, is set (mostly) in the farthest reaches of the galaxy (where a sizable population still looks mostly human) and explores the larger consequences of the artifacts that the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been introducing. Those artifacts, like the Tesseract and the seed in the Thor sequel, are given an explicit name in Guardians Of The Galaxy: they are Infinity Stones (which Marvel geeks knew years ago). Guardians Of The Galaxy introduces another one and reveals what their purpose is . . . along with the motivation Thanos had for hunting the Tesseract in The Avengers. More than just in its outlandish setting, Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a much less grounded place. Guardians Of The Galaxy feels like exactly what it is: a film based on a comic book.

That is not to say Guardians Of The Galaxy is not good. It is. Guardians Of The Galaxy is a fun and funny science fiction comedy, continuing the tradition of the niche genre like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (reviewed here!) or Men In Black (reviewed here!). Unlike the former, Guardians Of The Galaxy lacks a sense of theme and universal resonance and treads more toward entertainment than enlightenment.

Opening in 1988, Peter Quill’s mother dies and the young boy flees into the night where he is promptly abducted by aliens. Twenty-six years later, Quill is scavenging on a dead world where he recovers an orb from the ruins. Moments after he gets the item he was sent for, he squares off against Korath and his forces. Evading them and retreating to his ship, the Milano, Quill decides to betray his employer and sell the recovered Orb on his own. While Quill heads to Xandar to sell the Orb, the villainous alien Ronan dispatches Gamora (who volunteers) to recover it. When the potential buyer for the Orb freaks out – after learning Ronan is after the artifact – Quill is attacked by Gamora, a sentient genetically-modified, cybernetically enhanced raccoon named Rocket and his humanoid plant companion Groot, and the Nova police force.

The quartet is imprisoned on a remote world, the Kyln, where virtually everyone wants to kill Gamora, especially Drax The Destroyer. Quill manages to save Gamora’s life and refocuses Drax on finding and killing Ronin. The quintet stages an incredible escape from the Kyln by working together, with the four aliens actually waiting for Quill when he goes back for his prized mix tape. Hunted by Ronan, Quill’s regular employer Yondu Udonta and the police force from Nova, Quill and his compatriots become determined to keep the Orb from falling into the hands of Ronan and Thanos when Ronan reveals that the Orb contains an Infinity Stone with virtually unlimited power to destroy. Working together, Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot must protect the citizens of Xandar from the genocidal plans of Ronan and Thanos.

In many ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy is a very typical science fiction film. In fact, its reliance upon humor makes it fun, but also as formulaic as virtually every comedy to grace the big screen . . . ever. Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe simply by realigning the physics of the galaxy to allow virtually every comic book conceit as opposed to conforming to realistic physics. That makes the fight scenes in Guardians Of The Galaxy extraordinarily dynamic and animated, especially when Groot and Rocket are involved. They hop around without clear boundaries on their abilities (Groot, for example, is entirely inscrutable and only reveals the extent of his powers and abilities when they become relevant and necessary).

Peter Quill is a decent anti-hero; he does the right thing when it suits him, but he is a Han Solo-esque bounty hunter who also strangles small animals to use them as microphones when the mood takes him. In his quest to get respect in the galactic underground as Star Lord, Quill does not actually distinguish himself in any strong or meaningful way. Less the function of his personality or values, Quill manages to survive Guardians Of The Galaxy simply by biology. Heavily alluded to in the film’s very first scene, Peter Quill is not simply a human, but his heritage is only a minor subplot in the larger film.

Far more of a component of Guardians Of The Galaxy is establishing and then defying the premises of the universe and characters Peter Quill is a part of. In this regard, Guardians Of The Galaxy is painfully formulaic. Elements that are established in an obvious way include Groot’s limited vocabulary (he, we are told, only speaks the three words “I am Groot,” though Rocket seems able to interpret what he means by it as the film goes on), Gamora’s absolute refusal to dance, and the obviously seeded gift Quill receives from his dying mother that he has not opened over the lapsed twenty-six years. For sure, viewers need a film with character development to make any movie worth watching, but Guardians Of The Galaxy is like watching a checklist of the elements that are used to establish the characters getting checked off. Virtually everything established about a character, up to and including Drax’s lifelong struggle with metaphor, is defied by the film’s end. Guardians Of The Galaxy is obviously intended to build a franchise, but the way the film ends, there is almost nowhere to go for the characters that will not force the writers to completely redefine them. This would be analogous to Bruce Banner learning to control his ability to transform in Hulk (such an ability would have left the character with nothing compelling for The Incredible Hulk or The Avengers). So, in some ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy undoes its own attempt to build a franchise by making a solid (if formulaic) story.

In a similar fashion, Guardians Of The Galaxy is nothing extraordinary on the acting front. John C. Reilly is (mostly) goofy as the Nova Police Officer Dey and Glenn Close is appropriately authoritative as Nova Prime, the leader of Xandar. Djimon Hounsou plays the villainous Korath with virtually the same presence that he has played many other adversaries over the years. The film’s lead, Chris Pratt, plays Quill as an everyman and he does so with a similarly goofy quality (but without the slouch) to his character from Parks And Recreation. Even Zoe Saldana (who plays Gamora) is used in such a familiar way that director James Gunn doesn’t even bother hiding the allusion to her playing Uhura by throwing her in a miniskirt at the movie’s end.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is charming and worth watching, but it is hardly a great and enduring film the way some other, recent super hero films have managed to be.

For other works in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, please check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Iron Fist - Season 1
"What If . . . " - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

7/10

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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One Of The More Jarring, But Enjoyable, Films Blending Humor And Violence: True Grit Delivers!

The Good: Great acting, Wonderful writing
The Bad: Very simple plot and characters
The Basics: The Coen remake of True Grit is funny, violent and all-around enjoyable as a fourteen year-old girl goes searching for frontier justice in the American West.


Right up front, it is worth noting that I have never seen the original True Grit, so this is intended as a very pure review of the 2010 version of True Grit as re-imagined and recreated by the Coen Brothers. I am, it should also be noted, not a fan of Westerns in general. The only real draw for me to True Grit was that I recently rewatched The Big Lebowski (reviewed here!) and absolutely loved it. I like the weirdness of most of the Coen Brothers’ movies, so I thought I would give True Grit a chance.

And it was well worth the time and attention I gave it.

As a Coen Brothers film, True Grit is loaded with quips and witty dialogue and a wonderful sense of cinematography and good acting to boot. Within moments, I found myself enjoying True Grit more than the similarly hyped Lincoln (reviewed here!) and the blend of humor and character kept me engaged the whole film.

Mattie Ross spends almost no time mourning the death of her father when he is killed by Tom Chaney. Instead, she decides that when the law opts not to pursue Chaney, who fled the small city, she will hire a bounty hunter to track down Chaney and bring him to justice. She wants to employ the most ruthless U.S. Marshall she can find and that is Rooster Cogburn. Mattie watches Cogburn take the stand in another case where he killed two of the three suspects and she tries to hire him then. The quick-tongued Mattie wakes up the Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf, at the foot of her bed and learns that he has been hunting Chaney (under a number of aliases) across the South and West. LaBoeuf brings his knowledge of Chaney and Cogburn brings his ruthless determination (once Maddie prods him into it and gets him sober enough) to the hunt.

When the two men head out without her, Mattie pursues, which annoys LaBoeuf. Mattie works to keep Cogburn focused on finding Chaney in the wilds, frequently threatening everyone with legal actions. When they part ways with LaBoeuf, they hunt for Chaney through the wilds, following vague leads (like recovering the gold piece that Mattie’s father was carrying) and dead bodies (and strange living people) in their pursuit of justice. The pair and LaBoeuf hunt for Ned Pepper to find Chaney and bring their judgment upon him.

True Grit is all fun and amusement until it takes the predictably Coen-esque turn for the abruptly violent and shocking. True Grit is unfortunately gruesome when it is not being chuckle-out-loud funny. But the humor is quickly mixed with scenes where characters have bitten through their tongues and have other body parts chopped off. The most cerebral form of humor in the film comes from Mattie. Mattie is the smartest person in the film – explaining Latin legal terms to Rooster and outmaneuvering Stonehill to get the money to bankroll her quest for vengeance – and her naïveté plays off Cogburn’s drunken worldliness with great comedic effect. Indeed, her trying to get Cogburn to live up to his promise to bury one of the scoundrels is met with his observation that the man shouldn’t have died in such a cold climate where the ground was frozen over works because of Mattie’s wide-eyed optimism before and after.

When the Marshall and Ranger beg off, the mission changes as Mattie is captured by Pepper and Chaney. Even so, True Grit keeps a fast enough pace to be consistently engaging and funnier more than it is horrifying. The characters, who could come across as simply goofy are presented as quirky instead and that works for a story that is rooted in a dark quest for revenge.

Jeff Bridges deserves a lot of kudos for his role as Rooster Cogburn. He is hilarious as he slurs through the role, creating a character who is almost as funny as The Dude in the exact opposite way as his iconic Coen Brothers character. Jeff Bridges plays Cogburn as a drunkard and with a lack of focus that fades to a strong moral core that keeps him determined and willing to sacrifice everything for Mattie. Matt Damon is like no other role he has played as LaBoeuf and he manages to get through the entire film without his trademark smirk, illustrating that he can act.

True Grit is held together by Hailee Steinfeld. Steinfeld is the fourteen year-old Mattie and she is articulate enough to make the character completely viable. She has a presence on film on that is uncommon in young people. In fact, not since Dakota Fanning in i am sam (reviewed here!) has a girl so driven a film and stolen the spotlight. It is virtually impossible not to watch True Grit and predict that she will have (barring a Lohan-like collapse) a long and fruitful career.

True Grit becomes a little muddied in that Cogburn becomes obsessed with finding Ned, as opposed to keeping on Mattie’s focused quest for Chaney alone, but it might be the best film yet that blends humor and violence into an overall satisfying film.

For other films with Barry Pepper, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Seven Pounds
25th Hour
Battlefield Earth

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the reviews I have written!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Every Bit The Winner You Might Have Heard, Milk Chronicles An Important American History Struggle!

The Good: Great acting, Decent directing, Engaging story, Good character development.
The Bad: Slight pacing issues
The Basics: Sean Penn's performance as gay right's activist and perennial San Francisco political candidate Harvey Milk lives up to its hype in Milk, now on DVD!


I loathe returning to my home town every year around the winter holidays. Sure, many people may dislike the journey or getting caught up in old roles with family members. I can't stand the newspaper in the city I grew up in. Since they got rid of their regular movie reviewer, the reviews are done by a hodgepodge of syndicated sources and their digest of movie listings (which includes ratings from the critics) is abysmal. Looking at the paper around the holidays is to be forced to consider that perhaps all of the movies out are being rated on a scale of ten (if you didn't read that right, go back and try again. Yes, it's not a scale of one to ten . . .). Around the end of the year, during what I cynically call "Oscar Pandering Season," the reviewers seem to get lazy and rate everything a "10." I can't stand that. Occasionally, that means I'll withhold a review of a great film just to not mistakenly get lumped in with those praising everything.

A couple years back, one of the films I waited to review was Milk and now with it out on DVD and me not wanting to wait for Gay Pride Month, I decided it was a good time to get mine posted. For the bottomline first, the hype surrounding Milk is worth is; Sean Penn is amazing, the film is important, but it is not perfect.

Shortly before his assassination, Harvey Milk sits at his kitchen table and contemplates his life as an activist for gay and lesbian civil rights in San Francisco. Starting then in the early 1970s in New York City, Milk turns forty and picks up Scott Smith. Their relationship takes them rapidly to San Francisco where the two set up a camera shop in the Castro district. Milk soon sees the inequities of how gays are treated in the area, including acts of police brutality. Determined to change things, Harvey Milk runs for one of the trustee positions on the City Council.

Milk loses and he continues fighting the good fight, building a political machine for the primarily gay Castro district for almost a decade. He makes powerful allies and when the time comes, he makes a powerful enemy on the city council in Dan White. As the political fights drive Scott away, Harvey develops a romance with a much less stable man and as change slowly comes, reactionary elements in the United States rise up to menace the progress Milk and his followers make in California.

Milk is a triumph of character and an argument for the inalienable human rights of all Americans, not just white heterosexual males. Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk as an average man in love who is treated poorly for who he loves. He organizes as a businessman would, quickly determining which businesses in the area are gay friendly and which are not and organizing the community around the principle of spending money to promote social justice. FYI, it is still a philosophy that works! Milk evolves from a radical who looks outside the mainstream into a politician who becomes slick and organized without ever losing touch with his base.

What is perhaps most important about Milk is that the film manages to make its statements while still being entertaining. The character struggle and journey of Harvey Milk is a compelling one. Writer Dustin Lance Black and director Gus Van Sant make the journey more than a preachy diatribe on gay rights, instead focusing on the dynamic man Harvey Milk was. As his personal life becomes complicated, his political career takes an upswing, the friendships and relationships offer wonderful contrasts and the viewer feels the tension Milk does as he is pulled in different directions.

As well, there is something entertaining watching Penn as he completely becomes Milk. Harvey Milk's rhetoric quickly becomes a universal call for human rights, not just a cry of "we're here, we're queer, get used to it." In fact, outside the film's earliest moments when those who might be squeamish about two men kissing might become uncomfortable, the film presents a remarkably sexless and surprisingly neutral take on homosexual love. Instead, the film becomes about social movements.

As a result, Milk and Harvey Milk become obsessed with creating infrastructure, improving upon failed attempts and growing to change the institutions of oppression. Milk is likable, utilizing a network of people who come to believe in him and the way the film is shot, we want to believe in him. Indeed, as the film goes along - and there are some slower points that allowed me to detach from the film to consider it - I began become increasingly depressed knowing that Milk was rushing toward his death (a fact revealed in the first two minutes of the movie).

Sean Penn is appropriately brilliant as Harvey Milk, creating a distinctive body language for the character that is looser than anything I've seen Penn in before, until Milk steps into a public setting. There, Penn adds tension to Milk's upper body and he holds himself with dignity and an awkwardness that is palpable. This might well be the performance of Penn's career, rivaling that of his work in I Am Sam (reviewed here!).

As well, Milk utilizes its supporting cast amazingly. Josh Brolin plays White with an unsettling quality that makes him a surprisingly good villain. Indeed, Brolin's performance here illustrates to me that he was woefully miscast as George W. Bush in W. (reviewed here!) because here he is able to throw his body into the performance and make himself appear nervous, uptight and troubled. Alison Pill is charming and realistically efficient at Anne Kronenberg and James Franco gives a performance that is likely to surprise most of the fans of his stoner comedies.

On DVD, Milk includes an insightful commentary track from director Gus Van Sant. As well, there is a tribute to Harvey Milk featuring some of the people who are portrayed in the film. The film is a little light on bonus features, but given that it is a drama and not a big special effects movie, this is understandable. Fans of the film will find a little extra value in the bonus features. Unfortunately, the DVD does not have Sean Penn's acceptance speech from when he won the Best Actor Oscar.

Ultimately, Milk is a socially important film which is unfortunately still teeming with relevancy now. As times change and the United States looks to grow and build, gay and lesbian civil rights continue to come up as an issue and until all people are granted equal rights under the law, the United States fails to live up to its potentials. We don't need Milk to teach us that, but it is refreshing that those of us who believe in the universal promise of the American dream have a film like Milk to remind us that progress can be made and change is inevitable.

For other political movies, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Frost/Nixon
Fahrenheit 9/11
All The King’s Men

9/10

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

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

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Josh Brolin May Be Many Things, But He's No W.

The Good: Moments of character insight and decent direction, General format of story
The Bad: Pacing, Acting (casting), Light on DVD extras
The Basics: Oliver Stone's W. is strangely unsatisfying - especially to those who despise the administration of the former president - from the casting on down.


Having survived the administration of George W. Bush (which was not always a forgone conclusion in my case), I finally found myself at an emotional place where I was ready to open up to some entertainment about the former president. I had, previously, watched the documentary George W. Bush: Faith In The White House (reviewed here!) and been irked at the propaganda feel of that. So, when I felt ready to lighten up and allow myself to be entertained by the foibles of the former president, I got out W. on DVD. If there was anyone ready and eager for a film the ripped into the administration of George W. Bush, it was me.

Unfortunately, W. is not that film. Oliver Stone, strangely, takes the safest possible route creating a timid, neutral presentation on the 43rd president that ultimately makes no real statement in any direction. This is the story of a hapless man, trying desperately to live up to his father's expectations, not of greatness, but rather of productivity. In W. George H.W. Bush does not have aspirations that his son Junior will do anything extraordinary, merely that he will do something and stick with it long enough to accomplish something. Sadly, Oliver Stone allows most of the compelling moments in the last eight years fly by with little recognition of their importance or George W. Bush's role in creating the history we have just lived through.

Following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush and his cabinet and advisors consider how to strike back at those involved. As Bush's approval ratings soar, key members of his inner circle - Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice - encourage Bush to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks to allow a strike against Iraq by U.S. forces. As the speeches are altered and interrogation techniques are approved, the United States moves closer to war and George W. Bush considers how he got to the most powerful position in the world.

He reminisces of time in Texas and at Yale, his fraternity days and the times when he was just a young, rowdy guy who drank, danced and had sex with some blonde he didn't have money for a ring for. He dreams of baseball and catching a hit that might otherwise be a home run and he slouches from oil rigs to investment banking jobs to working on his father's presidential campaign, while George H.W. Bush continually bails him out of jams he gets in (sometimes literally). George W. Bush meets Laura, finds god, gets sober and on his father's campaign meets with the extremists in the Republican base, specifically Karl Rove, who sees in George W. Bush the potential to be the tool the ideologues need to restore their vision of America to the presidency.

W. might have succeeded has it not been released in 2008. Seriously. I write this not because the film would be any better years from now, nor because of the hope the Obama Presidency created to foster the impression many of Bush's most egregious positions and executive orders would be overturned, but rather because the film had to compete against Frost/Nixon. The strength of Frost/Nixon is arguably on the performance of Frank Langella, a man who neither looks nor sounds like former President Nixon. Langella could not (obviously) get over the first part, but within moments of his appearance on screen, Langella's body language and speech patterns are those of Richard Nixon. Langella transforms into Nixon and it is eerie and powerful to watch the movie because the performance is so amazing.

Sadly, Josh Brolin does not pull off George W. Bush. Josh Brolin, who impressed me with his performance in No Country For Old Men (reviewed here!), is cast to embody George W. Bush and he fails utterly, save two shots in the entire movie, one on the baseball diamond, one talking to his speechwriters with his hair rumpled. The rest of the time, Brolin utterly fails to embody Bush. It is not just that he does not look much like Bush, but Brolin does not move like the former president at all. Will Farrell had a much better take on George W. Bush for one simple reason; presenting a parody of George W. Bush often presents the most real body language of the man. Before those who still adore our previous president jump on that, go back and watch videos of George W. Bush; the man has a very loose body language. His head wobbles, when he speaks - especially in the early years of his administration - he shifts from foot to foot, and when he first appears before cameras, he looks more determined to not break into a smile than anything else. He's an easygoing guy . . . he's a GUY. What some found charming or appealing was his accessibility and that largely came from his body language of being a loose, cool guy one could sit down, have a beer with and watch the game with.

Josh Brolin completely fails to get that. He is stiff throughout W., treating everything as if it is serious and while he appropriately furrows his brow whenever anyone asks Bush to consider something, Brolin doesn't get the performance right. Thandie Newton, who plays Condoleezza Rice, pulls off her brief supporting role better than Brolin manages to get the main role.

Unfortunately, because so many of the figures are public figures still at the forefront of the American consciousness, the look of the characters is incredibly important and here the casting and make-up were not as precise as they ought to have been. Jeffrey Wright's Colin Powell's forehead is a little too high, Toby Jones's Karl Rove is too obviously toady and James Cromwell - whose work I usually adore - is hit or miss as George H.W. Bush depending on the scene. In fact, the only casting that is perfectly executed is Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney. Dreyfuss assumes the look and bearing of the former vice president perfectly, though he essentially replays his role from The American President to pull this off. Elizabeth Banks and Ellen Burstyn both evolve into the roles of Laura and Barbara Bush, respectively, but they do not appear on screen convincingly as either at their first appearances. Oliver Stone ought to get credit, though for taking two beautiful women and toning down their looks to try to fit the roles (conversely, Newton plays her Hollywood good looks perfectly in the role as Rice, who always seemed attentive to her appearance).

So, the casting is seriously off. Add to that, W. is poorly paced and more than the character lacking direction, there are too many portions where the viewer is left feeling like Oliver Stone does not know what he wants to be saying with the film. Ultimately, he ends up saying very little. As Bush is pressed toward war by Rove and Cheney, Powell stands as the lone dissenter and Bush gleefully steamrolls over his objections to the group's plans. Powell, unfortunately, is presented with only limited backbone and the viewer ends up feeling more empathy for him than for the hapless title character.

More than anything, Oliver Stone seems to be making a film that takes the tact that George W. Bush was a guy who did not truly care about anything who stumbled into the presidency. Once there, he was content to let others do what they felt, signing off on critical orders based on how many pages he was handed. He is not a caricature here as a witless man or incompetent president, merely a guy who roams uncaring through the world until he is at an important office that actually makes demands upon him. The character is not pitiable, nor is he or his exploits interesting to watch (just as many of us were uninterested in participating in his years as president).

Now on DVD, W. features a similarly listless and controversy-free commentary track by Oliver Stone where he avoids any real thorny issues and talks more about the making of his boring film. There are trailers for other Lionsgate films and there is a mildly more engaging featurette on the actual Bush Administration in which several liberals decry his policies without getting too specific or relating it back to the film.

And keep in mind, I was ready to like this film! But at the end of the day, I wanted W. to inform or entertain or some combination of both. It did neither. Instead, it plodded along for far too long with a guy who could be virtually any Southern or Midwestern heir doing little and evoking little empathy or interest for doing it.

For other works with Toby Jones, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Snow White And The Huntsman
The Hunger Games
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
My Week With Marilyn
Captain America: The First Avenger
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part II
Frost/Nixon
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets
Ever After
Orlando

5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Mimicking Successful Science Fiction: The Razor Decision On Mimic

The Good: Competent acting, Excellent effects, Occasionally unpredictable
The Bad: Mostly predictable plot, Unmemorable characters
The Basics: Overall only occasionally entertaining, Mimic requires suspension of disbelief and/or scientific ignorance.


"If a gun is introduced in the first act, by the final curtain it must go off," is a pretty standard rule of plot. There are variations on this, of course: in Bound it's a pair of sheers. In Mimic it's a subway. And by no means is it a solid rule; many films get away with defying the convention by not having the gun go off or - like American Beauty - introducing a whole lot of guns. Then the movie becomes about why and how the convention is defied. When the intelligent viewer sees the subway in Mimic, we know it's going to run someone or something over. Horror, even more than science fiction, suffers from a lack of originality and surprise.

Such as it is, the plot of Mimic is a remarkably standard science fiction / horror plot. In the recent future, a plague carried by cockroaches is stopped by the work of inventive geneticists who develop a better beetle to go around killing the roaches and thus stopping the plague. Yeah! I'll admit, despite the scientific implausibilities that follow, the initial idea is an intriguing one.

Then, in an improbably leap of science, the genetic code of the new creature goes awry and evolution makes a few massive leaps underground resulting in terrifically huge bugs that have no problem with making a meal out of men. So, after an intriguing setup, the movie quickly degenerates into something most of us have already seen before. And the problem is, we've seen it done better.

Mira Sorvino plays the scientist, Dr. Susan Tyler, sent as part of a team to investigate the phenomenon and discovers the very cool, very creepy bugs. She's accompanied by a subway worker, Leonard, played by Charles S. Dutton in a very well acted role. In fact, the acting is one of the few extraordinary things - Mira Sorvino plays her part well. And Charles S. Dutton does his best with Leonard.

The problematic aspect is that the characters either aren't interesting or aren't acting like normal human beings. The male lead, Jeremy Northam, opposite Sorvino was completely unmemorable. Indeed; I had to check the IMDB to remember his character's name (Dr. Mann). And poor Charles S. Dutton - this film was made shortly after Alien 3 and if you watch Mimic you might wonder, as I'm sure he did, if he was picked for his role based on his role in the Alien film. Leonard and his far more developed character, Dillon from Alien 3, have ridiculously similar character resolution.

One of the few successful aspects of the plot is the way it comes together. A young boy is abducted near the very beginning of the film and he is weaved throughout film expertly. The problem is, while the threads come together, the viewer tends to lose interest. I'm a patient person, especially when it comes to film, but this movie tried my patience and bored me. If it wasn't for the acting and the occasional moments where the director managed to surprise me in the way the bugs appeared, this movie would have been a complete wash.

Recommended only for fans of science fiction or horror solely because there's not much to the film for those who are not.

For other science fiction films, please check out my reviews of:
Avatar
The Star Wars Saga
Skyline


4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Films Barely Worth Reviewing, Vol. 5: The Other Nightwatch: The One NOT Worth Viewing Or Buying!

The Good: Moments toward the end have some decent acting/sense of pace
The Bad: Terrible storyline, Generally bad acting, Worthless characters, No real DVD bonuses
The Basics: A terrible film that deserves not to be seen by anyone is immortalized on DVD and one wonders why.


Since it was first released on DVD, I've had a request in at the library for an interlibrary loan for Nightwatch. I have been so very eager to see the Russian fantasy/science fiction epic which opens a trilogy of films that some are calling one of the essential films to see for the genre. So, when I checked my account online and saw Nightwatch was in for me, I rushed over to the library to pick it up.

Imagine, if you can, my disappointment when instead of finding Nightwatch the foreign science fiction epic (reviewed here!), I discovered the thin disc of a horror film that had escaped my notice in the first run sitting there. My heart sank and I took it thinking that I might as well review it. I've been trying to not appear as as much of a crank as my review count might make me appear. But as I debated between a one and two rating on this Nightwatch, I thought, "It's stupid to rate this higher than it deserves just for a sense of balance . . ." And in all seriousness, this is a film that ought to be avoided.

Martin Bells is putting himself through college and to afford that, he works nights at the local morgue. The morgue is quiet and unsettling and when Martin is not there, he's paling around with his best friend, a chauvinistic jerk named James, or in bed with his girlfriend, Katherine. Conveniently, there is a serial killer on the loose and Martin's morgue is where the bodies from that set of killings end up. When someone plays a prank with one of the stiffs, Martin's credibility around the place is compromised and while he lets James talk him into some ridiculousness with a prostitute, he finds himself being investigated for the murders in town.

And by the time this film is even remotely good, it is so far past the point where one cares that it is a challenge to muster up the enthusiasm to write even this review about it. On the plot front, it's a ridiculously simple movie. Man is living in a town where there's a serial killer killing women, he begins questionable relationships with women who are not his steady, dependable girlfriend, he ends up accused of being the killer, a pawn in the real killer's plan. It's like Dimension film's standard script.

Actually, that might be the best way to take this film; it's the standard Dimension Films horror flick, utilizing a few recognizable performers . . . poorly. There's the pretty standard bits of T&A and blood as well as a cameo by a horror genre regular, in this case Brad Dourif, whose appearance is only slightly more substantive than his stint in Pulse. But the truth is, it is the typicality of this film that makes it so pathetic. There is never a single moment in the film where one suspects that Martin might actually be guilty of killing people. His friend, James, on the other hand . . .

. . . but even that, with such a limited number of characters to choose from, the list of suspects is pretty small. And when the killer is revealed there is no real surprise (especially based upon the obviousness of his first appearance next to the protagonist). Indeed, all one needs to do to guess the killer is stay awake long enough to see whose first appearance is accompanied by the greatest attempt at shock.

It's that kind of film.

Sadly, this could not be more true and it is not a joke. Nightwatch telegraphs the emotions, telling the viewer "this is scary! be scared!" as opposed to building a genuinely frightening set of circumstances or mood. The score overwhelms any moment that could have been subtle or interesting and replaces it with the feeling of "you should be feeling this right now." As a result, the camera work is lazy, the editing is boring and there is no genuine sense of fear created.

The truly abysmal aspect of Nightwatch is the characters. Not a single one of them is likable (though there is one near the very end who becomes tolerable) and if one is looking for a film where women are treated well, this is not one of them. For sure, part of the point of the film is that women are being killed and not being treated kindly whatwith being prostitutes and all, but the problem with the film is that the two primary non-prostitute women, Katherine and Marie, are treated just as badly. Despite being the dates of Martin and James, the closest James and Marie get to anything is childish bickering. There is no chemistry between Katherine and Martin.

Because of that, one supposes the writer and director, Ole Bornedal, thought viewers would buy just how easy it is for James to talk Martin in to spending time with a prostitute. Martin, who we are supposed to believe is in training to be a lawyer, seems fairly dim and he simply goes along with James setting him up with a prostitute to get a handjob from in a fancy restaurant . . . because . . . ?! Yeah, we're just supposed to accept that. Martin is dull and depressing to watch and there are moments in the movie where one feels genuinely hopeful that he might turn out to be the killer just so he might have a personality. Or that he would be killed just to get him off screen. He never seems remotely like a guy worth crawling through glass to save the life of.

The only remotely interesting character in Nightwatch is James and he's a misogynistic jerk whose tenure on screen is painful to watch given the inherent cruelty of his personality. James treats the prostitute whose services her purchases for Martin in a subhuman fashion for his own amusement and this makes him interesting and disturbing to watch. For sure, it's not entertainment and it is a poor substitute for creating a character of substance, but in a pinch, it'll work and James at least gives the viewer something to squirm about. He's a privileged brat and the real mystery on the character front is why a square like Martin hangs around him and why Marie doesn't kill him.

James is played with a flat creepiness by Josh Brolin who brings nothing to the role that isn't in the script. There is a coldness to his performance that makes the character seem constantly bored and there are moments Brolin himself seems bored by the job. Sadly, he might be the best performance in the flick.

In fact, the real crime of Nightwatch is not the series of murders, it is that great actors were subjected to performing in this movie. My heart leaped when I saw Lauren Graham in the opening credits because I love her work as the star of Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!). Graham is woefully underused as Marie and it's sad to see her subjected to this role. John C. Reilly takes a pass on being credited at all in this movie and it's hard to blame him.

Nick Nolte appears in his pretty standard fashion without giving anything that the viewer has not already seen if they've seen him in anything else. Similarly, Patricia Arquette's only moments of decent acting come so long after the viewer has stopped caring that I almost missed it. The truth is, in the last ten minutes of Nightwatch, Arquette gives a decent portrayal of a terrified woman, but until then she plays her dull role with blandness and . . . I've run out of synonyms for "boredom."

Ewan McGregor plays Martin and one wonders why he bothered. I have to assume that between Trainspotting and Star Wars: Episode I, McGregor lost a significant bet and rather than go into debt with loan sharks, he phoned in this performance for the cash. McGregor lacks his trademark charisma and spunk and there's not a moment on screen where he is interesting to watch or makes us care about his character.

On DVD, Nightwatch has trailers. That's it. Fortunately. I would have hated to sit through anything else for the purpose of this review. If you've never heard of Nightwatch, there's a reason. It's absolutely terrible drecht and it is not worth your time, effort or attention. It's not worth the DVD pressing that will make it virtually eternal and available for the collective unconscious. Hopefully, this falls into the most unreachable places of that. It's where it belongs.

For other works with Brad Dourif, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Priest
The Return Of The King
The Two Towers
Alien Resurrection
"Beyond The Sea"
Dune
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

1.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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