Review: "Everybody Knows"

What a strange thing it is to see a bride and groom launching their lives together and not smile. Yet here is an entire village, gazing upon wedded bliss and offering little but blank faces -- a few scowls, even.

That's an early scene in "Everybody Knows," a family drama/thriller set in a provincial town outside Madrid. Penelope Cruz plays Laura, who left her home decades ago to marry and live in Argentina. Javier Bardem is Paco, her old flame who now runs a vineyard on land her family used to own.

Laura's sister (Inma Cuesta) holds her wedding in the village church, the sort of idyllic scene we've glimpsed in a thousand movies -- the couple having rice thrown at them, everybody crying and cheering, a spectacle of pure joy. Yet writer/director Asghar Farhadi points his camera away to the townsfolk, who are not happy to witness this.

Ostensibly the story is about a kidnapping as Laura's teen daughter, Irene (Carla Campra), disappears from her bed after the reception. But really the film is about the tension rife within this seemingly idyllic place -- the secrets, the resentments, the hidden motivations that everyone seems to bear.

Farhadi ("The Salesman") uses the crime as the springboard to an exploration of this family and community. It's the sort of place where people embrace life exuberantly, drinking and dancing in abandon. Yet there's layer upon layer of rot underneath, and all it takes is one event like this to expose the maggot-infested core.

Allies become suspects, the truth is twisted and leveraged, and eventually we reach a point of total paranoia. Virtually any character in the story could be behind the kidnapping.

There is much curiosity about the absence of Laura's husband, Alejandro (Ricardo Darín), who stayed behind for work. He is known as a well-to-do businessman who made a sizeable donation to the church for repairs some years back. The local priest actually pauses the wedding ceremony to praise his generosity -- while musing if there couldn't be more forthcoming.

It seems this sentiment is decidedly non-secular, too.

The patriarch of the clan was once virtually the lord of this village, but he lost his riches due to drink and gambling, yet still thinks everyone should defer to him. Laura's older sister and her husband are very involved in the search, but they run a hotel that's barely paying enough to cover the loan. The list goes on.

The brother-in-law brings in a retired police detective friend to help, and soon fingers are being pointed all around.

Paco appears very happy with his wife, Bea (Bárbara Lennie), yet it seems clear to everyone that there's still something between he and Laura. When Alejandro finally shows up, his behavior creates new presumptions while dashing existing ones.

This is a very smart film, yet we never feel like we're being played for suckers. Farhadi nudges us rather than manipulates. The movie seems less interested in resolving what happens to Irene than seeing how her disappearance causes all the adults to reexamine the comfortable lives they've fallen into.

Gripping and yet very human, "Everybody Knows" is a whodunit that cares more about the how and why.

Video review: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"

There really isn’t any reason for a fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie to exist, other than guaranteed ticket sales and a boost to Johnny Depp’s flagging star. Still, as mindless special effects-driven entertainment go, “Dead Men Tell No Tales” was far from the worst the summer had to offer.

It’s pretty much more of the same: Depp stumbling about as Captain Jack Sparrow, the worst pirate in history; a CGI-enhanced villain, with Javier Bardem as Captain Salazar, an undead pirate hunter missing large chunks of his crucial anatomy; winsome youngsters in peril, in this case Kaya Scodelario and Brenton Thwaites; lots of swordplay and big action set-pieces; reprises from franchise alums Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, although the latter two are barely more than cameos.

The story is about… well, do you even need to know? As usual, it involves various forces chasing a MacGuffin, with most of the animosity aimed squarely at Sparrow.

Depp always has a lot of fun in this role, and the filmmakers keep things fresh with a look toward Sparrow’s youth -- with a little de-aging CGI help -- where we find out a little about how he became the drunken nincompoop he is. For instance, there actually is a reason behind all those little bits of jewelry and odds-and-ends he wears.

It’s undeniably a fun movie, as long as you’re willing to pull up oars on your brain and just coast with the giddy current.

Video bonus features are ample, cemented by a comprehensive making-of documentary that includes interviews with all the principle actors and crew members. There are also four deleted scenes, a photo diary by producer Jerry Bruckheimer and a blooper reel.

You’ll have to pay a few dollars more to get most of this stuff, as only a single featurette is included on the DVD version.

Movie:



Extras:

"Mother!" and the Coat of Many Colors

I was finally able to catch up with "Mother!", Darren Aronofsky's ambitious new meditation on... something that has sharply divided critics and largely estranged audiences. Just a few thoughts.

All this is VERY spoiler-y. So desist if you desire to experience the film's surprises on your own.

First off, unlike many others I don't think giving a complete analysis of the movie necessarily gives everything away. It has not so much plot twists as a labyrinthine pit of meaning that grows more intense and more amorphous the deeper you go. Once you know it's a descent, it's just a matter of pondering where you're going to end up and what meanings you're going to take away from the journey.

And I think they are multitudinous. People have come forth with all sorts of interpretation of what the film "means," and I believe they're all right. Star Jennifer Lawrence herself has posited that her character is Mother Earth and her husband, called simply Him and played by Javier Bardem, is God. But it's clear this is Lawrence's opinion, not Aronofsky's.

I don't think the writer/director actually intended any single vision of "Mother!". It is literally all things to all people... and nothing to some, who will find it overly mysterious and arty. It's less a portrait or a parable than an impression, and we put as much of ourselves into the vision as the artist did.

Certainly there are plenty of religious themes. The interlopers barging in their secluded mansion, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, never named but credited as Man and Woman, are representations of Adam and Eve. Him is tickled with their presence, especially Adam, while Mother is irked at any intrusion. Aren't I enough for you? she asks Him repeatedly. He responds with protestations of love, but there's always a "but."

Man and Woman's sons, who show up and immediately get into a fight that results in one's death, are obviously Cain and Abel in this telling. The crowds of people who show up after are the rest of mankind -- messy, violent, worshipful of Him's poetry. The outcome of Mother's pregnancy follows pretty obvious Christ parables.

But I think there are also a lot of themes about parenthood, and the chasm between male and female gender roles. These take place on a simple humanistic level, where the characters cease on some level being allegorical and are simply who they appear to be.

I also believe the film has a lot to say about the role of the artist in society, and their relationship to their fans/followers. These types of movies can quickly become tiresome, particularly in the prism of Hollywood -- 'Oh please, tell me more about your struggles with fame, adoration and all those millions of burdensome dollars.'

But Aronofsky lays out his tale without a lot of obvious egotism, showing how the creative process starts as a singular act and the work ends up becoming something that is shared and dissected and stolen. The artist gives and gives, and takes and takes. Like Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation," "Mother!" is a Gordian knot that inextricably ties up the story being told and the role of the storyteller.

In a lot of ways, the movie is really about itself.

Review: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"

If you can keep the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie straight, your cinematic compass is keener than mine. They made four of them in nine years, then none for the last six, so they merge together in a dim fog of sameness.

I remember the first one seemed fresh because it was a typical big special effects summer action bonanza set apart by Johnny Depp’s dizzy, daffy turn as the addled Captain Jack Sparrow. He quickly supplanted the ostensible stars of the franchise, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, to the point they didn’t even appear in the last one, and only make brief cameos in the fifth edition, “Dead Men Tell No Tales.”

It’s more of the same: crazy stunt set-pieces, supernatural threats, a brief foray into town for robbing and wenching, a couple of rousing sea battles and whole lot of sozzled Jack stumbling through it all.

He’s the most inept hero of any movie franchise I can think of. Imagine Luke Skywalker being really clumsy, swinging his lightsaber around drunkenly and accidentally decapitating Ewoks left and right.

Javier Bardem is the newest villain as Captain Salazar, a former pirate hunter who’s missing part of his head, and all of his soul. The “Pirates” bad guys are defined more by their special effects than their characteristics, since they’re all undead or seeking immortality, despise Jack Sparrow and need him, one of his trinkets or a piece of lore from him to get what they want.

The effect for Salazar and his crew is pretty spectacular: they’re actually missing pieces of their bodies, as if parts of them have been erased. Salazar’s got no back of his head, his skin is cracked like old plaster and oozing blood, and his hair swirls in a ghostly nimbus around his head as if he’s underwater.

Some of his crew are missing arms, legs, even entire heads or chunks of their torsos. One guy appears to be just a shoulder and a hip.

The fresh new young faces are Kaya Scodelario and Brenton Thwaites as, respectively, Carina, a curious girl whose love of science keeps getting her branded a witch, and Henry Turner, the grown son of the Bloom and Knightley characters, and doesn’t that just make us all feel old. They get to spend the movie arguing and denying their obvious infatuation.

Geoffrey Rush turns up again as Captain Barbossa, who through the series has been a zombie, then just a human villain, then a privateer in service to the British crown, and now is just back to being a pirate again. He’s worried about Salazar cutting his fleet to shreds, so he decides to seek him to reach an accord and serve Jack’s head on a platter.

It’s a fun, giddy movie that only works if it doesn’t stop moving long enough for you to think about how the different pieces fit together. For instance, it’s weird that the local British officer (David Wenham) is hell-bent on executing Carina for supposedly being a witch, but is happy to recruit a real one (Golshifteh Farahani) to track down Sparrow.

A few moments that stand out: we learn the origin of all those quirky bits ‘n’ pieces that make up Jack’s accoutrements; some rotted shark carcasses get reanimated by Salazar and set to snapping; and a daring Carina doffs her stuffy long dress to swim to safety. “I saw her ankles!” Henry crows.

Co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson keep things moving at a brisk pace, feeding Depp plenty of moments for his little woozy reactions and quips. Interestingly, if you think about the plot you realize you don’t really need Jack Sparrow to make it all work.

He’s the oddball bit of grease that keeps this pile of claptrap turning long after it had any business embarking on another voyage.

Review: "The Counselor"

Cormac McCarthy is a glorious novelist, and many of his books have been turned into exceptional films -- "The Road," "No Country for Old Men." But his first attempt, at age 80, at an original screenplay falls flat on its Gucci boot heels.

This story of drug intrigue along the U.S./Mexico intrigue is a murky mess, all character but little plot. The movie at one point actually loses track of its main character, an amoral (and never-named) attorney played by Michael Fassbender. In the final act, McCarthy and director Ridley Scott start introducing a bunch of new characters played be recognizable actors, who say a few lines and disappear with little consequence to their appearance.

It's almost as if there was a raffle entered by a bunch of thespians who wanted to say they were in a Cormac McCarthy film.

A strange undercurrent of sexual energy runs through the movie, with many encounters between characters having the feel of a power-trip seduction. There's very little actual sex, though, and one comes away believing these people like to talk about sex more than actually engage in it.

Penelope Cruz plays his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, a sweet and unsullied woman who has no idea her man is in deep with the Mexican drug cartel. He provides her the high life of magnificent houses, cars and meals, and she's innocent enough to accept that he earns his pile defending low-rent criminals (like Rosie Perez, who has a strong, single scene).

The counselor has an association with Reiner (Javier Bardem), a flashy club owner and drug kingpin, and decides to go in with him on a big narcotics deal. The lawyer thinks this will be a one-off, but Reiner knows better. The two men like each other's company, so going into business seems like the next step.

Hanging around the edges is Malkina, Reiner's cruel cat of a girlfriend, played by Cameron Diaz in a performance shockingly devoid of any nuance. Malkina is a predator in every way -- for money, sex and attention. As if the filmmakers hadn't made this point clearly enough, they gift her with a cheetah pattern tattoo all over her body, and a pair of the actual animals as pets/guardians.

My biggest problem with this movie is that all the characters speak as though their dialogue was written for them. Everything sounds very arch and constructed, as if we're supposed to revel in the resplendence of McCarthy's prose instead of believing these words would actually fall out of somebody's mouth. It's the sort of thing that works on the page but not on the screen.

Example: "Isn't that a little cold?" "The truth has no temperature."

Considering the story revolves around drug trafficking, the actual mechanics of the plot are left rather unclear. We never actually see or hear from the cartel people, though shadowy go-betweens turn up and depart without much rhyme or reason. The truck hauling the drugs -- we're never even told what kind it is, other than it's a lot -- has all sorts of adventures on the road, changing hands several times. The counselor and Reiner get blamed for the loss, even though they were just victims, and spend the rest of the movie on the run.

Brad Pitt appears a few times as Westray, a slithery associate of the counselor who also has some skin in the game and delivers apocryphal warnings about what's to come.

This is the sort of movie in which early on, we are told about a particularly nasty way for someone to die. And we know we're just marking time until one of the people we're watching meets that grisly fate.

This is the sort of movie that is bewitching to actors, since they get to speak a lot of pretty dialogue and wear cool clothes and engage in conversations where everyone's trying to pretend how smart they are. But for audiences it's a listless wander through the desert, where the scenery is pretty but the map was lost long ago.

Video review: "Biutiful"

While it's not a film for everyone, "Biutiful" has rich rewards for those who appreciate sad foreign films with elliptical storylines.

I admit I'm not usually a fan of these types of movies, but this moving drama from writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Babel," "21 Grams") stars Javier Bardem in an Oscar-nominated performance as a man caught between worlds. It's a heartbreaking film that is a joy to watch.

Bardem plays Uxbal, a conflicted man working the back alleys and sweatshops of Barcelona. He tries to find jobs and homes for illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa. Uxbal genuinely cares about these people, but he makes sure to get his cut of the action.

Meanwhile, he's face with the certainty that his terminal stage cancer will soon claim his life, and he struggles to secure a future for his two children in the face of his ex-wife's erratic mental state. One of the immigrants, a woman named Ige, comes to live with his family after her own is torn apart despite Uxbal's interventions.

The best thing about the film is the relationship between Uxbal and his ex-wife, Marambra (Maricel Álvarez). We sense the years of abuse and estrangement forming an ocean between them, but the deep ties of affection still bind them together. Uxbal's greatest test is whether he can resist her bottomless neediness for the betterment of their children.

The only element that doesn't really fit into this strange but wonderful mix is Uxbal's supernatural ability to speak with dead spirits. It's the one piece of this sad, sweet gumbo that just doesn't fit.

Extra features -- the same for Blu-ray and DVD versions -- are rather modest in scope, but impactful.
There's about six minutes of interviews with the principle actors, and a featurette on some of the second-tier crew. Most interesting is a 21-minute documentary shot by Iñárritu during production on a Flip cam. It's packed with behind-the-scenes moments that are worth visiting.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "Biutiful"

Lyrical, poetic and heartbreaking, "Biutiful" is not for everyone. This sprawling (2½ hour), occasionally dream-like Spanish-language drama from writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Babel," "21 Grams") explores one man's journey toward death in the grimy underworld of Barcelona.

It's the story of Uxbal, played by Javier Bardem in another virtuoso performance, who's a middleman between illegal immigrants and companies that want to employ them on the sly. A sensitive soul, he truly cares about these foreigners from Senegal or China or some other shore -- though he makes sure to get his cut.

Uxbal is the divorced father of two, with an ex-wife, Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), who's desperate to reinsert herself into their lives, claiming to have overcome her bipolar disorder. She's a fountain of neediness and capriciousness, promising to take the children on wonderful vacations one minute and abusing them the next.

Meanwhile, Uxbal is dying of prostate cancer. He endeavors to keep it a secret as he busily attempts to put his affairs in order. Chief among them is finding better working conditions for a couple dozen Chinese slaving away in a basement sweatshop.

To add to Iñárritu's strange, bitter -- but nourishing -- brew, there's an element of the supernatural: Uxbal is able to communicate with the recently dead, and help along their way those souls reluctant to journey into the afterlife.

This last piece is the one that doesn't seem to fit the puzzle. Unlike Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter," the main character's ability to communicate with the dead is not the centerpiece of the story. It is, in fact, so tertiary that we often forget about it for long stretches, only to be surprised when some boogum pops up in the corner to remind us of Uxbal's visions.

I can't help wondering what would be lost if Iñárritu, who shares screenwriting credit with Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone, had simply written these distracting ghost story interludes out of the movie. Not much, I suspect.

Much more gripping are Uxbal's interactions with the various denizens of the backstreets. There's Hai (Cheng Tai Shen), owner of the sweat shop and Uxbal's partner, when it suits them both. Hai is exploiting the illegal workers, of course, but he's not a heartless thug. His own family lives above the workers in the same building, and no doubt he believes he's giving them a chance to one day move up like his kin have.

Then there are a group of African street merchants who hock their wares to the passersby. Uxbal negotiates with the police -- aka, bribes them -- to leave them alone. But the Africans keep intruding into the tonier sections of town, and are even dealing drugs on the side.

After her husband is arrested and threatened with deportation, a woman named Ige (Diaryatou Daff) comes to live with Uxbal and his children. At first he takes her under his wing because he feels guilty about the arrest. But as his physical condition worsens his need, not just for assistance but empathy, comes to reflect that of Marambra.

The relationship between Uxbal and Marambra is the most painful, and best thing about "Biutiful." There's an ocean of hurt between them, a lifetime of accusations and recrimination. Their love remains strong, but Uxbal knows having her around will always prove harmful to the children.

Uxbal is a fascinating mix of incongruities, the hard-heartedness he shows toward his ex-wife and sometimes even his children, contrasted with his fumbling attempts to help immigrants who don't have a friend. "Biutiful" is a troubling, exquisite vision of human contradictions.


3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Eat Pray Love"

It's good to see Julia Roberts back in serious-actress mode a decade after "Erin Brockovich." But "Eat Pray Love" was not the right movie to cement her comeback.

Based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, it's the story of an early-middle-aged woman who goes through a nasty divorce and decides to spend a year traveling the world. She spends time in Italy searching for the perfect pizza, in India getting in touch with her new-found spiritual roots, and finally in Indonesia where she falls in love with a Brazilian businessman played by Javier Bardem.

It's all a little too rote, and no wonder: Gilbert came up with the idea for the book beforehand, and used the advance money to finance her trip.

Those who've read it (unlike me) say the author is very upfront about the calculated nature of the whole enterprise, but the movie doesn't offer a peep. She's supposed to just leave her home in a whirlwind of passion and soulful discombobulation.

She meets a variety of characters, including a toad-like little holy man, a drawling Texas who shares her faith in Hinduism, and the aforementioned Latin lover.

It's a beautiful-looking movie without much really going on in its head, or its heart.
Bonus features are served in rather modest helpings.

Oddly, the centerpiece of the offerings is an extended version of the film. At a sprawling 139 minutes, the last thing this movie needed to be is longer.

The DVD comes with the extended version and a single featurette following director Ryan Murphy's journey to make the film.

In addition, the Blu-ray edition boasts a trio more featurettes: A making-of doc, and two more on Finding Balance and Praying in India.

For the true videophile, that's hardly adequate nourishment to justify buying your own copy.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 2

Review: "Eat, Pray, Love"

Here's my six-word review of "Eat, Pray, Love": I wish they'd stopped at "Eat."

This new Julia Roberts star vehicle is based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert about the year she spent traveling the globe to rediscover herself following a painful divorce. She spends four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia seeking nourishment -- for, as the title suggests, her body, soul and heart.

It's a more ambitious role than Roberts has tackled in the decade since her Oscar-winning turn in "Erin Brockovich," and one centered around a woman of refreshingly mature years. I admired Roberts' grasping for something meatier, but this film sticks her with an unrelatable character that even her coltish smile can't beautify.

Director Ryan Murphy, who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation with Jennifer Salt, spends an excessive amount of time setting up Liz's life in New York prior to her trip. In these sequences Liz is established as a successful but skittish woman who doesn't seem to belong anywhere, or to anyone -- even herself.

She quickly, and callously, decides to divorce her husband Stephen (Billy Crudup). Despite his flightiness, he does seem very determined about his desire to stay together and attempt to work things out. When she won't even try, our sympathy for her wanes.

Sooner than would seem appropriate, or even comprehensible, Liz ends up in the arms of David (James Franco), a much younger actor who turns her on to meditation and Hindu scripture. She soon decides that she needs to learn to love herself before she can love another again, though she at least packs her newfound spirituality for the trip.

The first sequence in Rome has an uplifting energy as Liz searches for the perfect pizza, learns the lingo, and absorbs the Italian devotion to beauty and pleasure without any American veneer of guilt. It's here that she seems to tame her self-absorption a bit, finds some new friends and truly grows as a confident individual.

The spiritual section in India shifts into a seriously downbeat gear, as Liz lives at a Hindu temple, prays and meditates, and verbally jousts with Richard (Richard Jenkins), a fellow American -- well, he's Texan, which to the typical New Yorker is far more exotic than the Far East.

Richard, who looks like James Taylor and talks like Obi-John Wayne, calls her "Groceries" for her healthy appetite and counsels her to clear her head of self-doubt and regret, or it will ruin her life. Richard knows this through personal experience, as he lays bare in a rooftop scene that's supposed to be revelatory and emotionally cathartic, but just makes the audience want to tiptoe down the stairs and escape.

The vistas are perhaps the most beautiful in Bali, but Liz's journey of discovery grows less genuine with every step. She romances a Brazilian businessman (Javier Bardem) who's also been through a painful divorce, and studies with a medicine man (Hadi Subiyanto) who looks like Yoda, but with a worse dental plan.

I confess that I found Liz's New Age-y proclivities a dreadful bore -- I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole Guru Gita thing, which involves a bunch of people chanting at a painting of a woman, as near as I can figure. At 139 minutes, the movie feels sprawling and self-indulgent.

And I'm always suspicious of memoirs in which people ditch their entire lives for parts unknown and unexpected adventures -- and, it turns out, for good reason.

After seeing the movie and doing a little Googling, I learn that the real Elizabeth Gilbert pitched the idea for her book to a publisher before embarking on her journey, and used the advance to pay for it.

"Eat, Pray Love" seems less like a year of wild abandonment to indulgence and exploration of the inner soul, and more a calculated mission to land on Oprah's Book Club. It's mass-produced gruel, dressed up as native cuisine.

2 stars out of four