Review: "Sherlock Holmes"

"Sherlock Holmes" at least has the good manners to be honest about its intentions: It's an amped-up, action-packed take on the iconic British detective, with calm deductive reasoning and deerstalker hats jettisoned for lots of science nerd tech-talk, slo-mo explosions and knife fights.
It's "CSI: Victorian Age."

Guy Ritchie brings his distinctive feverish directing style to the Industrial Age crime procedural. Robert Downey Jr., as Holmes, likes to go about bare-chested and relishes getting into brawls, so he can map out his bone-crunching moves beforehand -- thus, we get to see his fights twice, first in slow time and then sped up.

This version of Holmes also possesses observational powers that border on superhuman; after a brief glance at a person, he can tell you everything about them from their occupation to their progeny. He can discern exact chemical compositions from odor or taste.

I don't necessarily object to this modernized version of Sherlock Holmes -- the conception of the sleuth as a charming gentleman, best exemplified by actor Basil Rathbone in a swath of midcentury films, had grown rather quaint. And Holmes' knowledge of martial arts and boxing are part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories.

But Ritchie, Downey and a slew of writers seem so intent on branding their Holmes a bold departure, they forget to assemble a believable character.

Downey plays the detective as an obsessive scoundrel, who when he's not solving crimes goes into extended periods of torpor and pharmacological experimentation. The actor uses a clipped delivery designed to mask a middling British accent.

Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Holmes' right-hand man and best friend. As the story opens, Watson is leaving their shared house and partnership to settle down with an eligible lady (Kelly Reilly), so there's a bit of tension between them.

Holmes' own romantic entanglement arrives in the form of Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), the only criminal ever to give Holmes the slip -- twice. She and Holmes play a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship, with Irene's exact loyalties in doubt.

The plot is an utterly forgettable mishmash of black magic and science, with the mysterious Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) as the bogeyman. The story opens with Holmes and Watson catching Blackwood in the act of a dark sacrificial ritual, but he somehow survives his hanging execution to wreak havoc on London.

His plan is to enlist the aid of the Temple of the Four Orders, a variation on the old Masonic legends, in taking over the world.

The action scenes are quite a lot of fun, if a bit hard to follow at times. I especially liked Holmes' facing off with a giant French thug who actually gets to spout better one-liners than the hero.
This new "Sherlock Holmes" strives desperately to be new and fresh, and the strain of the effort shows.

2.5 stars

Review: "The Young Victoria"

Many people consider period costume dramas to be stuffy and rigid. The wonderful, vibrant "The Young Victoria" should perforate those preconceptions.

This gripping tale of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne of England is a full-blooded portrait of a young woman of passion and intellectual firepower, who held onto her authority despite myriad attempts by the existing patriarchy to wrest it away and make her a puppet.

Emily Blunt, who at age 26 has crackled in numerous supporting roles like "The Devil Wears Prada," leaps to the fore of her generation to join peers like Keira Knightley and Anne Hathaway. Her performance as Victoria is subtle and layered -- not to mention quite passionate, belying the name of a queen that begat an adjective, Victorian, synonymous with repressed sexuality.

The story opens with Victoria age 17, heir-apparent of her uncle King William (Jim Broadbent) but living under the stern yoke of her mother the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her consort, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong, imposing and impressive).

The pair intentionally designed every aspect of her life since girlhood to render Victoria weak and dependent upon them, so they can establish a regency and rule in her stead. They even created a set of rules, the Kensington System, in which the princess was never left unattended, even forced to have an adult hold her hand while she ascended the palace stairs.

Inexperienced but willful, Victoria bides her time until her 18th birthday and the last sands run out on the ailing monarch's reign. It's fascinating to watch the various powers maneuver to align themselves this way and that in preparation for the coming transfer of royal authority.

For example, Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany), the leader of the current government, slyly ingratiates himself as Victoria's secretary, when his real ambitions are to secure power for his own political party. This extends even to the appointment of the new queen's ladies-in-waiting; she sets off a scandal early in her monarchy when she refuses to add a few members loyal to the opposing faction to her staff.

Things are especially delicate when it comes to marriage. Victoria's other uncle, King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann), has trained young Prince Albert to woo Victoria, in hopes of using that influence to get England to assist him in European affairs. Leopold at one point becomes frustrated that Albert hasn't yet infiltrated the young queen's bed.

"You are the next piece in the game," he tells Albert.

Despite being played like a pawn, Albert finds himself genuinely drawn to Victoria, even confiding in her at their first meeting the purpose for which he has been sent. Albert is played by Rupert Friend, another young actor (who bears an astonishing resemblance to Orlando Bloom) with a budding resume.

The film's primary delight is in watching Victoria and Albert, who were both raised to be creatures beholden to others, form a long-distance bond kept alive primarily through letters. Their partnership allowed them to shirk aside the manipulations of various selfish parties and set their own course.

Director Jean-Marc Valée and screenwriter Julian Fellowes take a few liberties with the historical record -- for example, using an assassination attempt on the queen for dramatic effect (in actuality, neither of them was hurt).

But in delivering such a deliciously hearty, fervent take on life beneath the crowns and powdered wigs, "The Young Victoria" can be forgiven for eschewing a dry recitation of history.

3.5 stars

Review: "Up in the Air"

What a breath of fresh air. "Up in the Air" is brave and true and unexpected.

It starts with a premise -- about people losing their jobs -- that is dour and daring material for a Hollywood film; and it ends in a way that is not tragic or fake-happy but feels like it has concluded exactly the way it should, and yet confounds expectations.

The movie, one of the year's finest, was directed by Jason Reitman, who after "Thank You for Smoking," "Juno" and this movie should be considered the top young filmmaker working today. Reitman and Sheldon Turner have co-written (from the novel by Walter Kim) a finely-tuned script that is hard-wired into the central nervous system of a country fretful about economic ruin.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a seemingly soulless corporate flunky who spent 322 days last year flying around the country telling people they've been laid off -- and he resents the 43 he had to spend in his antiseptic little apartment in Omaha.

The tribulations of modern travel that are so vexing to us -- the endless lines and numbing connection waits and impersonal security checkpoints -- Ryan takes to these like duck to water. His wallet is filled with a kaleidoscope of elite member cards that he waves like magic wands, transporting him to the front of all lines and making hassles vanish.

When we first meet Ryan, he is doing the thing he does so well: Telling people their jobs no longer exist. He does this respectfully, but firmly; he is prepared for his "clients" to cry, or fume, or even threaten and insult him. His job is to fire workers whose bosses are too cowardly to do it themselves, and with a minimum of legal exposure.

"We're here to make limbo tolerable," Ryan instructs an associate.

The scenes where Ryan lets people go are wrenchingly authentic. Reitman directs dozens of real people who have lost their jobs -- plus a few recognizable actors, like J.K. Simmons -- through their paces without a single false note.

With one in six Americans unemployed or underemployed, these sequences will have a special resonance for many in the audience who have had that soul-crushing experience themselves.

(They certainly did for me; my newspaper job became "no longer available," to use the movie's parlance, almost exactly one year ago from the day I saw this film.)

Two developments arrive to throw Ryan's life for a loop: His own job is about to become obsolete, and he meets a female version of himself who inspires him to think about pitching his suitcase permanently.

First, the former. Anna Kendrick plays Natalie, a 23-year-old hotshot who wants to make the impersonal nature of job layoffs even more so. Her idea: Save the expensive travel costs for people like Ryan and do the terminations via computer teleconferencing.

Even Ryan, who in his spare time gives de-motivational speeches urging people to dump all their personal baggage, is appalled by the indignity. But his bottom-line boss (Jason Bateman) wants to try it out.

Natalie's ambitious, but not a bad egg, as Ryan discovers when he takes her along on one of his extended layoff trips. Kendrick gives a layered, deeply-felt performance as a young woman who has a lot technological know-how, but knows little about how people tick.

Vera Farmiga plays Alex, Ryan's fellow traveler, who has quickie hook-ups with him whenever their flight plans align. It's a wonderfully perfect arrangement for two people who shirk any emotional tie-downs. When Alex tells Ryan that she is "the girl you don't have to worry about," his face glows with bliss.

I've already written 600 words about this movie, and could easily go another thirty score. Suffice to say that Ryan's journey is just beginning. The scene where he asks his stranger of a sister permission to give her away at her wedding, and is refused, packs as much emotional punch as anything I've seen this year.

For a story about a guy who spends his life "Up in the Air," this movie carries a bundle of weight.

3.5 stars

Review: "Nine"

As a musical, "Nine" is fairly enjoyable. There's a lot of pageantry, dancing, gorgeous costumes and equally gorgeous women wearing them. The songs aren't really strong enough to make you want to rush out and buy the soundtrack, but the actors, mostly non-professional singers, carry them off fairly well.

As a story, though, this film version of the Broadway show -- which, in turn, was adapted from Federico Fellini's seminal autobiographical film "8½" -- "Nine" leaves much to be desired.

It's the tale of Guido Contini, a successful Italian movie director struggling to make his 9th film, though he doesn't have a script or even a notion of what it's about. Nonetheless, sets are being built and costumes being stitched, and the flurry of activity at the studio has an undercurrent of panic because his last two flicks were flops.

Meanwhile, his personal life is a shambles as he juggles his wife, mistress and lead actress, all vying for attention.

Now, let me get my biases right off my chest here: I'm not a big fan of movies about tortured artists. Whenever a film endeavors to convince us how much people who paint or write or direct have to suffer for their art, it makes me want to watch them dig sewage ditches or teach at an inner-city high school, just so they'd know what real hardship is.

Filmmakers using their art medium to contemplate their own role in creating it just strikes me as wretchedly narcissistic.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido, who makes us like him a little bit by acknowledging in his opening song that he's a 10-year-old boy housed in the body of a man nearly 50. He knows he's headed for a cliff, creatively and romantically, but he just can't take his foot off the gas.

Day-Lewis nails the Italian accent, and makes for a striking figure with his head and shoulders perpetually hunched like he's expecting a blow. His singing is just so-so, though he only performs a couple of tunes.

The rest of the songs are sung by the various women in Guido's life, swirling through his imagined movie as they represent different aspects of his own fantasies and delusions.

The best song, and singer, is "Be Italian," sung by pop star Fergie (aka Stacy Ferguson) from the Black Eyed Peas. She plays Saraghina, a beach-dwelling prostitute who taught Guido a few things about love when he was a boy.

We already knew Marion Cotillard (who plays Guido's wife Luisa) could sing from her Oscar-winning performance in "La Vie En Rose." So it's no surprise that she pulls off her two songs quite well, particularly the raging emotions of "Take It All."

Nicole Kidman (as Guido's leading lady) also does well with "Unusual Way," as does Penelope Cruz (as Guido's desperately needy mistress) with the torch song "A Call From the Vatican."

Judi Dench, as Guido's longtime costume designer and confidant, is less impressive with her tune, and Sophia Loren's lullaby as Guido's mother is so short it seems tacked on just to give an excuse to include the Italian screen legend.

Kate Hudson, playing a nosy American journalist, has fun with the upbeat "Cinema Italiano," which was not in the stage version but was written exclusively for this film.

Director Rob Marshall ("Chicago") is a dazzling visualist, and the musical scenes hum along under their own energy and momentum. Whenever the music stops, though, "Nine" is revealed as a silly story in need of a chair.

2.5 stars

Video review: "(500) Days of Summer"

One of the unexpected delights of the cinematic year, "(500) Days of Summer" was the sleeper hit that reminded us romantic comedies don't have to be formulaic and gooey.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel play the couple, who, unlike in most films of the genre, don't spend 80 minutes clashing with each other before suddenly realizing they're in love.

They hit it off right from the start -- mostly because Summer is a fearless gal who makes the first move on office drone Tom -- and spend the next 500 days riding the ups and downs of modern romance.

Director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber coyly shift the timeline back and forth, using numbered titles to let us know which day we are in the progression. So we know that Tom and Summer hit a rough patch somewhere around Day 320, while Days 50-100 are that love-stupid phase where everything seems magical.

Extras aren't exactly huge in scope, but are fairly substantive and engaging.

There's a little over 14 minutes of deleted and extended scenes. Most of it is the usual extraneous stuff that deserved to end up on the cutting room floor, except for a hilarious opposite-day version of the musical number set to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams," with this time everything going awry -- the passer-by bumps Tom instead of smiling, the bird poops on his shoulder, etc.

Webb, Neustadter, Weber and Gordon-Levitt team up for a nicely bantering commentary track. Among the revelations is one of the writers confessing that "about 75 percent" of the fracturing relationship depicted in the movie actually happened to him. Talk about suffering for you art.

Told with original verve and hipster irony, "(500) Days of Summer" is funny, charming and smart filmmaking. It's a romantic comedy even the boyfriends will love.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Reeling Backward: "8½"

Before I watched "Nine," the musical film based on the Broadway show based on Federico Fellini's 1963 film "8½," I figured I'd better watch the original.

After doing so, I have to admit I feel pretty much the same way about it as I did "Nine." Here's what I wrote in that review:

"I'm not a big fan of movies about tortured artists. Whenever a film endeavors to convince us how much people who paint or write or direct have to suffer for their art, it makes me want to watch them dig sewage ditches or teach at an inner-city high school, just so they'd know what real hardship is. Filmmakers using their art medium to contemplate their own role in creating it just strikes me as wretchedly narcissistic."

I still enjoyed Fellini's film, even though "8½" is the very essence of self-indulgence. This is a movie in which the filmmaker expresses his ambivalence and confusion about his role as a maker of movies, and his life in general.

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido, a 43-year-old director just coming off his greatest success. It's time to start work on a new film, but his personal life is in a shambles. Meanwhile, his producer is pushing him to start production immediately on his most ambitious (and expensive) movie yet, while his writing collaborator wastes no opportunity to talk about how bad his new script is.

The story, such as it is, unspools as a collection of fantasies and memories, the one often bleeding into another. Mostly they're about the women in Guido's life, how they've influenced him and how he's mistreated them. At the center is his wife Luisa, played by the stunning Anouk Aimee. She's almost contented herself with his constant philandering, but cannot reconcile his lying about it.

As the story opens, Guido has fled to a remote spa to recover his health and sanity, but the production follows in his wake. He invites Luisa to join him, even though he's already set up his mistress in a nearby hotel.

The central fantasy sequence is one in which Guido imagines himself the lord and master of a household filled with a harem of women. They dote on him, wash him, even carry him around like a baby. But when one of the older women protests at being sent "upstairs," it sparks a revolt that forces Guido to fight off his female antagonists with a whip, like a lion tamer.

I have not seen a lot of Fellini -- my first experience was with the excellent "La Strada" from a few years earlier, before the director became fascinated with spectacle. I must say I found the march of numerous faces difficult to follow, particularly some of the women he sprinkles around the film.

"8½" is a very personal film, I think, about a man trying to sort out the demons inside his head and heart. It makes for an interesting journey into the filmmaker's soul, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend more than a brief vacation there.

3 stars

Coming this week

Madness! Madness!

Those are the last words of perhaps my favorite film of all time, "The Bridge on the River Kwai." It also describes my life lately.

Believe it or not, it is possible for even a movie nut like me to get temporarily tired of going to the cinema. I'm about at that breaking point myself, even though the vast majority of end-of-year flicks I'm seeing have been good, and a number of them excellent.

I saw "The Young Victoria" the other day, and immediately said to myself, "I may have to rejigger my Top 10 List" -- which is coming next week, btw.

So, on that note:

For new movies, I'll have reviews of "Sherlock Holmes," "Up in the Air," "Nine," "It's Complicated" and the aformentioned "Victoria."

Probably just one Reeling Backward essay this week, on Fellini's "8½."

The video review will be "(500) Days of Summer."